Soldato
Thought this might be of interest to some on her.
It's a little rambling so tldr: current mower broke, bought a robot.
I've got a medium size garden of about 1/2 an acre including the house so i think around 1400m2 of grass. We finished the house and moved in in the end of 2015 and i pretty much let the garden do it's own thing for the first 12 months as they say you should do. Grass mostly self seeded and i kept on top with a strimmer the first year, i then bought a 'project' ride on mower on eBay on a whim as it was local and very cheap (£50 in the end). It needed a fair bit of work so i cracked out the tool kit and the welder and after sorting it out and buying a few bits for it did me well for the last 2 years.
That is until i went to start it a month or so back and it wouldn't turn over properly, whipped the head off but i'm pretty sure it's the 'dogbone' which is a balancer in the bottom end which is broken. i tried to remove the engine to take it to bits and rebuilt it but i ended up breaking some pulleys along the way which were rusted solid after 25+ years in situ so long story short i decided to cut my loses and buy a new mower.
The prices of used ride on mowers is quite steep and you seem to pay a lot of money for something which has done a lot of work and will need a fair bit of repair/maintenance in the near future so after starting with a budget of around £500 and deciding i'd be getting nothing much better than my current one, £1000 came and went as again they all looked like they needed work so in the end i had pretty much settled on a new 30" Husqvarna ride on as at least i'd get several years hassle free and know it'd be looked after.
My local dealer also sells the robot Automowers, i'd been interested in them since i heard about them a few years ago but was put off by the price, but now i'd talked myself in to spending the best part of 2 grand on a mower anyway i thought i'd have another look.
Ended up getting an Husqvarna Automower 420, middle to top of the range they do. They work by laying a boundary wire all the way around the ouside of the area you want it to cut which the dealer did for me, it's then fenced in by this and mows in a random pattern within. It's quite hypnotic to watch when you first get one.
As it is very random in the way it cuts it takes a few days for it to get to everywhere, it's also designed to cut every day and take only a mm or 2 off the grass so it never gets long, that way it only makes very small clippings which mulch down so there's no need to collect anything.
I left it going 24/7 for the first 5 days to get on top of the garden as it hadn't been cut in several weeks as i'd managed to injure my groin
after that i've set it to do between 10:00 and 18:00 which for the current weather still seems overkill so i may bump it down a bit. After a few weeks when i'm happy it's not doing anything daft or getting stuck on things i'll set it to mow overnight as it's almost silent so the garden will always be perfect in the day time.
This is a before and 2 days after shot at it's highest setting:
I'll slowly reduce the cutting height once we've had a bit of rain as i don't want to damage the grass.
We've got a bit of an orchard growing but the trees and bushes are all quite small, the mower will happily bump off objects, turn around and go on it's way but i didn't want it to damage any of the plants so i bought some more wire to boundary off the plants myself. You do this by going around each bush one to the other in a big loop. In this highly technical drawing the blue is the existing boundary wire running around the edge of the orchard, the red is the new wire i laid around each tree and back again. If the wires are laid right next to each other the mower ignores it so it only sees little islands of places it can't go around the trees.
This is a video of it navigating just after i'd finished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nz2FRVuPGg
So to sum up i'm very happy with it so far, the grass looks better than it's ever done and i've not had to be out mowing in the recent heat so win win. It should save me a good 3+ hours a week and look more consistent so i can spend the time with the family instead and just a little bit strimming the edges to make it look really neat. I'll update in the future as it is meant to improve the quality of the grass over time so it'll be interesting to see.
The cat really isn't sure what to make of it though https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldEnSGfFJvg
It's a little rambling so tldr: current mower broke, bought a robot.
I've got a medium size garden of about 1/2 an acre including the house so i think around 1400m2 of grass. We finished the house and moved in in the end of 2015 and i pretty much let the garden do it's own thing for the first 12 months as they say you should do. Grass mostly self seeded and i kept on top with a strimmer the first year, i then bought a 'project' ride on mower on eBay on a whim as it was local and very cheap (£50 in the end). It needed a fair bit of work so i cracked out the tool kit and the welder and after sorting it out and buying a few bits for it did me well for the last 2 years.
That is until i went to start it a month or so back and it wouldn't turn over properly, whipped the head off but i'm pretty sure it's the 'dogbone' which is a balancer in the bottom end which is broken. i tried to remove the engine to take it to bits and rebuilt it but i ended up breaking some pulleys along the way which were rusted solid after 25+ years in situ so long story short i decided to cut my loses and buy a new mower.
The prices of used ride on mowers is quite steep and you seem to pay a lot of money for something which has done a lot of work and will need a fair bit of repair/maintenance in the near future so after starting with a budget of around £500 and deciding i'd be getting nothing much better than my current one, £1000 came and went as again they all looked like they needed work so in the end i had pretty much settled on a new 30" Husqvarna ride on as at least i'd get several years hassle free and know it'd be looked after.
My local dealer also sells the robot Automowers, i'd been interested in them since i heard about them a few years ago but was put off by the price, but now i'd talked myself in to spending the best part of 2 grand on a mower anyway i thought i'd have another look.
Ended up getting an Husqvarna Automower 420, middle to top of the range they do. They work by laying a boundary wire all the way around the ouside of the area you want it to cut which the dealer did for me, it's then fenced in by this and mows in a random pattern within. It's quite hypnotic to watch when you first get one.
As it is very random in the way it cuts it takes a few days for it to get to everywhere, it's also designed to cut every day and take only a mm or 2 off the grass so it never gets long, that way it only makes very small clippings which mulch down so there's no need to collect anything.
I left it going 24/7 for the first 5 days to get on top of the garden as it hadn't been cut in several weeks as i'd managed to injure my groin
after that i've set it to do between 10:00 and 18:00 which for the current weather still seems overkill so i may bump it down a bit. After a few weeks when i'm happy it's not doing anything daft or getting stuck on things i'll set it to mow overnight as it's almost silent so the garden will always be perfect in the day time.This is a before and 2 days after shot at it's highest setting:
I'll slowly reduce the cutting height once we've had a bit of rain as i don't want to damage the grass.
We've got a bit of an orchard growing but the trees and bushes are all quite small, the mower will happily bump off objects, turn around and go on it's way but i didn't want it to damage any of the plants so i bought some more wire to boundary off the plants myself. You do this by going around each bush one to the other in a big loop. In this highly technical drawing the blue is the existing boundary wire running around the edge of the orchard, the red is the new wire i laid around each tree and back again. If the wires are laid right next to each other the mower ignores it so it only sees little islands of places it can't go around the trees.
This is a video of it navigating just after i'd finished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nz2FRVuPGg
So to sum up i'm very happy with it so far, the grass looks better than it's ever done and i've not had to be out mowing in the recent heat so win win. It should save me a good 3+ hours a week and look more consistent so i can spend the time with the family instead and just a little bit strimming the edges to make it look really neat. I'll update in the future as it is meant to improve the quality of the grass over time so it'll be interesting to see.
The cat really isn't sure what to make of it though https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldEnSGfFJvg
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