OT: Electric lawn equipment

[superbowlpats]

I had an Ego mower, really liked it, quiet, one charge could do my 1/4 lawn. But about 4 years in the battery crapped out. Mower has a 5 yr warranty but the battery only 3. replacement Ego battery was going to be $400 almost what I paid for the mower.

Luckily my son now has a lawn service do his yard and me gifted me a Honda HRX mower. Its loud so I need to wear ear protection but cuts the grass better than the Ego.

I have an Ego chainsaw. Its ok for small work but best of all it always works unlike my Stihl chainsaw.

For battery hand tools I have Bosch.

[benb]

Interesting thread. We have about 1/3 acre of grass and we've had the same Honda gas mower + Echo trimmer for the last 14 years now. I change the oil on the Honda every year or two but neither has needed any other work in all that time, not even spark plugs.

We also are on our 2nd snowblower, the yard isn't that big partly cause our driveway is a little ridiculous.

I will definitely go electric when/if anything breaks.. but I am real curious about it all. One big annoyance with the ICE stuff is oil is annoying to dispose of here.

I think our mowing + trimming is not real heavy duty, but the snowblower is the one that strikes me as tough. We have an Ariens Pro with a 450cc motor, it is a pretty darn big snowblower. Our previous one was a Toro and it had a lot of issues with it breaking.

Our local hardware store sells Ego and what got me is the Ego snowblower is absolutely tiny. It's literally like half the size of the Ariens, and considerably smaller than the Toro was too, I am really curious how it performs. Obviously electric motors are very powerful, but with a snowblower it is everything else in the design which is critical. The Toro never, ever had engine problems, it was everything else which would break. The Ariens clearly had much more attention paid to the design of the blower/chute, drive unit, controls, belts, belt tensioners, etc.. As a result of that it basically never clogs, it's never broken anything, it doesn't eat belts, etc..

Maybe the electric motor can be used to simplify some of the design elements since it can go down to 0 rpm when you stop. But it still requires a lot of safety involved.

[gravelreformist]

For home use, I actually think much of the Ryobi stuff is decent. I have an impact wrench that has seen quite a lot of use for over 15 years and still going strong. The tools they sell today still use the same battery system, so I've added a drill and angle grinder over the years. Some of their yard stuff is pretty lightweight, but their top end mowers get routinely high reviews.

I've had my previous Echo electric mower for about 7 years now. A couple of years ago we moved and now have a much larger lawn to mow, and I bought a used commercial gas mower because it took several batteries to get through the lawn. Cut quality and mulching power were actually a huge step down, so I turned around and re-sold the gas mower.

Last night I just mowed for the first time with the new Ego LM2200SP with 10ah battery. Grass is at its thickest of the year right now and it was able to easily mulch at a much lower cut height than the previous Echo electric. Cut quality is fantastic. If you register this mower within 90 days of purchase, you get a 5 year warranty on the battery which is a good thing as they go for $500.

Current deal includes a free 5ah battery which is a step down in both run-time and power, so not sure how much use I'll get out of that. Word of warning - apparently there is a rash of theft of batteries from these things at the retail/supply chain level. Might want to verify that the correct battery is present before taking delivery.

[AngryScientist]

Originally Posted by benb

One big annoyance with the ICE stuff is oil is annoying to dispose of here.

.

Here in NJ, anyplace that sells motor oil must take used stuff back to recycle.

Autozone, Advanced Auto, Pep Boys, etc - they all have a big tank in the back of the store they just let you walk back to and pour used motor oil in.

I would be surprised if your MA local stores are not the same. They dont exactly advertise that service, but I bet if you ask they have a recycling program that would be easy for you.

[tellyho]

benb, I notice you're also in eastern MA. We haven't had any snow in 2 years! Unless your part of eastern MA is significantly farther north than my part. I don't even own a snowblower - instead, I have teenagers .

My friend has a plug in snowblower that she loves; that's probably the way I'd go, but I'm guessing you have a long driveway.

And yes on disposal - you can just drop off your oil at Autozone. At mine, it's literally walk in and put it on their trolley. I change the oil in both my cars and the only barrier to disposal is remembering to take it to the store.

[batman1425]

I've got a smattering of the 40v Ryobi lawn tools. Our yard is very small so something "better" isn't in the cards for my use case. After 4 years of use, the batteries are meh. A few will need to be replaced soon. I have a trimmer with pole saw attachment, blower, mower and 2 different hedge trimmers. Cheap, work well enough.

Like most cordless tools, the batteries are where the value is in the tool. If you can find deals at Depo for packages that have batteries as separate add ons/line items, you can buy the bundle then return the tool to effectively get the battery at a discount or vice versa if you just want the tool. I've gotten a lot of milwaukee stuff that way.

[gravelreformist]

Originally Posted by benb

I think our mowing + trimming is not real heavy duty, but the snowblower is the one that strikes me as tough. We have an Ariens Pro with a 450cc motor, it is a pretty darn big snowblower. Our previous one was a Toro and it had a lot of issues with it breaking.

Our local hardware store sells Ego and what got me is the Ego snowblower is absolutely tiny. It's literally like half the size of the Ariens, and considerably smaller than the Toro was too, I am really curious how it performs. Obviously electric motors are very powerful, but with a snowblower it is everything else in the design which is critical. The Toro never, ever had engine problems, it was everything else which would break. The Ariens clearly had much more attention paid to the design of the blower/chute, drive unit, controls, belts, belt tensioners, etc.. As a result of that it basically never clogs, it's never broken anything, it doesn't eat belts, etc..

Maybe the electric motor can be used to simplify some of the design elements since it can go down to 0 rpm when you stop. But it still requires a lot of safety involved.

Ego makes a wide variety of snow blowers from tiny toys to proper dual-stage models. https://egopowerplus.com/power-snow-blowers/

On the one hand, I expect that the top end models have more torque than all but the burliest gas snow blowers, on the other hand, I know how quickly even the mowers burn through batteries under heavy load. Not sure that battery is the right way to go there if you do a lot of heavy snow blowing.

[benb]

I do think global warming is taking care of the snow issue.

The worst too winters since we bought our house we had > 100" of snow those winters and it was horrific. One of those was before we had a snowblower and we were paying a plow guy to do it. It got to the point where the walls of snow were so high they had to send a front loader to move the piles of snow!

Our main issue is we have a very wide section of the driveway, it is more like 3-4x the normal width of a driveway, as wide as the road in front of our house.

That extra width puts a tremendous strain on the snowblower because they usually can't throw the snow all the way across it. Then the snow has to be picked up a 2nd time. At that point it's compressed and it's even harder to pick up, and the other thing with global warming is we've ended up with very heavy/wet/slushy snow. If it's nice and cold and the snow isn't wet, and the wind is blowing the right direction the Ariens *can* throw it all the way off the wide part, but snowblower "throws X feet" ratings need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Wet snow + wind not cooperating and they throw like 1/10th what they're rated for.

If I did try an EGO I would go right to their absolute biggest model. I'm not sure which one I saw in the store. EGOs biggest model is still a good bit less than my Ariens cost.

But maybe with the way things are going if the Ariens got retired we'd go back to a plow guy, with less frequent snow it's harder to justify buying another snowblower.

[p nut]

benb - I’m an electric tool advocate but for your usage, stick with gas. Electric blowers do not do well in the cold, nor with slushy, heavy snow. Even in the ultra dry high desert here, it’s sometimes a struggle for some of my neighbors with electric blowers if it gets over 3-4”.
My driveway isn’t too bad so I stick with a Sleigh shovel (saves my back).

[benb]

I honestly can’t wait to get every gas device out of my life but they kind of need to break first and yah, the snowblower will probably be the last to go. It gets used the least and has the most emissions equipment on it. The trimmer is definitely the worst since it’s two stroke.

[dddd]

I maintain a hillside "grass" easement that spans four properties, and when my neighbors kindly offered to buy me a new EGO mower I turned them down, mainly since the property is very rough on mowers (that I have been sourcing only from curb sides and thrift stores because of the abuse factor).

The persistent neighbors then bought themselves a brand new one so that they could offer me their gently-used (21") one, which I accepted. It's RWD and with 7.5AH battery and fast charger.

So far, one year in, this thing is holding up to the very rough conditions and plenty of rock-strikes, using only the mulching blade setup. It runs for over an hour on most days, that's plenty of walking exercise for me on the undulating terrain.

For anyone that cares, EGO is apparently Chinese-owned ("Chervon"), but with US offices and assets so no concerns about liability/accountability.

For giggles I viewed a few Youtube videos pertaining to EGO battery repair as well as aftermarket "clone" batteries, which eased my concerns about maintaining or replacing batteries in the future.

My EGO mower's only issues are:
1) sometimes there seems to not be enough power to start the blade turning even with a freshly-charged battery, which requires that I push down harder while installing the battery, more than enough to get the solid click sound.
2) sometimes the wheel drive motor fails to disengage from the wheels when I release the Touch-Drive button, so the mower becomes difficult to push forward or pull back (the de-energized motor remaining "in gear"). Pushing alternately forward and back then seems to free it up.


My other positive E-tool choices have been the older Craftsman C3 19.2v system (drills, drivers, recprocating saws and air compressor), most sourced from Goodwill (including some good lithium batteries) for dimes on the dollar.
These tools have held up even to some moderate professional contracting work thus far.

My Walmart Hyper Tough 20v "toy-looking" blower and string trimmer have impressed me over two years time, especially considering the total $99 buy in.

A similarly-minimalist Black & Decker 20v leaf blower I bought the other day at Goodwill for $12.95 (including battery and charger) only offers the "Walmart" level of power with it's Turbo switch held on, but the battery checks out so the default low/quiet power setting is seemingly just the way this thing is intended to be.

I also went through a few older lead-acid battery mowers that I found in the second basement of my 2013 home purchase, these were only about 13" cut and held up to abuse better than I would have expected, being that they were mostly made of plastic. My various all-steel gas mower deck housings didn't hold up as well to the rock strike abuse but of course mowed faster.
Prior to my moving here, I don't believe that this property had ever been mowed, only weed-whacked (but for the confined area immediately behind my house). Of course I never claimed warranty benefits on any of the damage, but did manage to sell a few gas mowers that still had life in them for perhaps less-rigorous use. I replaced a lot of blades, geared/treaded wheels and flywheel locating keys mostly.

[wc1934]

Originally Posted by tellyho

benb, I notice you're also in eastern MA. We haven't had any snow in 2 years! Unless your part of eastern MA is significantly farther north than my part. I don't even own a snowblower - instead, I have teenagers .

My friend has a plug in snowblower that she loves; that's probably the way I'd go, but I'm guessing you have a long driveway.

And yes on disposal - you can just drop off your oil at Autozone. At mine, it's literally walk in and put it on their trolley. I change the oil in both my cars and the only barrier to disposal is remembering to take it to the store.

You can thank me for the absence of snow! 3 years ago I purchased the top of the line Ariens snowblower - used it twice!!

[cyat.es]

I've got an Ego mower, backpack blower, and trimmer and two batteries I swap between them. Very happy with all three. The fast charger is a good investment.

Only downside is that the mower will burn through a battery quickly if grass is really long and/or wet.