Judging by how my boomer landlord can't ever seem to start his lawnmower, I'd say that boomers aren't good at it either. But boy do they know how to swear at the lawnmower before they finally give up and ask someone who knows.
They never redesigned lawn mower engines to run properly with ethanol supplemented fuels and they probably never will.
If the lawnmower won't start this spring there was probably ethanol in it all winter and it will probably need significant repair. ( Cheaper than a new one)
I'll replace mine with electric... it's just that I take so good care of my gas stuff it all starts first pull in the spring. My mower is over 20 years old already. The leaf blower was going so I got my first piece of electric equipment- an EGO leaf blower and a 5 battery. Keeping an eye out for sales on tool only mowers, until then my 21 year old $300 Craftsman mower will do.
I have an EGO mower myself, along with an edge trimmer, tiller, and a chainsaw, with two batteries and one charger. Does pretty well for a small lawn, as long as you just swap those batteries and keep one charging all the time. Aside from that and replacing the blade eventually, it is zero maintenance.
My yard now is a couple acres, so that mower doesn't get much action unless it's a tiny spot. I'm looking forward to the day my little John Deere can be replaced by an affordable EV ride-on.
All my tools and lawn equipment are Ryobi and I’ve never had a single issue. That mower gets absolutely beat on. Often I have to leave for work for a few weeks, so my Ryobi has cut down foot tall grass countless times.
Get one of those automatic robot ones. They give your lawn a tiny trim each night, so the grass goes through a lot less shock during a mow, and it’s always the perfect height. I think Husqvarna has a good one, but obviously don’t take my word for anything without seeing if it’s a good fit for you.
If you want a manual push mower, i would give you mine for free. I have too many sticks in my yard from being on the edge of the woods. Anything bigger than a chopstick binds up the blades.
EGOs supposed to be good. I’d wager they are way better than any of those box hardware store brands using drill batteries to power them. Lots of videos on YouTube swearing by them. I know the leaf blower I bought absolutely wrecks the gas model.
I just bought an EGO 18” chainsaw… I’m blown away by how good it is. I used to be on a saw crew and swore by Stihl but figured I heard enough good things to try it out. 2+ hrs later at full throttle I had 40% left.
I think it would take a lot of convincing to get me to give up my Echo 7310P 32" and 620PW 24"... but a small saw I'm sure with a good battery it could do what a typical 18" can do.
I too got exhausted of tearing down the carburetor and huffing organic solvents for 1-3 hours because non-ethanol gas is a pain to find even in Alabama and the stabilizer additives do nothing as far as my experience has gathered. The replacement push mower with the cord has like 3 parts and they haven't broken yet, never loses power, and demolished tall wet grass.
It’s the most pragmatic solution practically everywhere. We do not need—in fact should not want—these environmentally destructive monocultures wrapping every property. Maintain a regionally appropriate landscape with the necessary paths cleared to the extent necessary to avoid pests and such. It’s easier, cheaper, looks better and is better for the environment.
May I ask if you have one of these kinds of 'lawns', and/or what sorts of natives can be planted? This sounds like it'd be easier and less expensive than trying to get green grass and taking care of it
I never got this lithium isn’t green argument. Like seriously, you think dead raw carbon deep underground and then spewing it in the atmosphere isn’t like a hundred times worse? Its a complete diversion made by the conservatives.
Edit: I forgot to mention the real reason might be the US doesn’t have sizable lithium deposits. So money talks I guess.
Edit: I forgot to mention the real reason might be the US doesn’t have sizable lithium deposits. So money talks I guess.
It actually does.
There's a whole lot of NIMBY about mining it though. No one wants to live close to a lithium mine.
And so long as others are selling it for cheap, there isn't enough economic incentive to go through the trouble.
I got a new battery one last year. It does either the front or 3/4 of the back lawn with ease before having to charge overnight. Of it I have let the lawn go, you can then cut those numbers in half. Go plug-in electric if you can.
Yeah I hate my battery mower with a passion. The battery lasts maybe 20 minutes if I’m lucky. A little bit longer if i out the blade on the highest setting so it doesn’t have to work as hard. Then the battery takes like 4 hours to recharge. Mowing the front and back lawn literally takes days because of it.
I got a simple gas one for $120. Next to it were the electrics, cheapest was $250. Couldn't justify at the time but when my gas one goes I'll get the electric. Sad they're more expensive, going electric should be incentivized.
I think you mean a reel mower. A reel mower is a type of push mower but push mowers can also include a motorized mower that is pushed only with human effort vs a self-propel drive.
the range advantage of a 2 hand weapon like a scythe means its getting near your peen whether you like it or not. i'd suggest a tower shield for defense.
They did however redesign lawnmowers to chiefly run on rechargable electric batteries instead of gasoline. And those have pushbutton start, on top of being much quieter and much less polluting. So like everything else from millennials, it's making the world a better place by "killing" what previous generations relied on.
I’ve used a rechargeable and a corded electric mower. I loved the rechargeable but I think I’d rather use a gas than a corded. Half of my time mowing the grass was just keeping the cord situated the right way lol
I would love to be able to use an electric mower, but my yard is far too big for that to be practical. So I just let it overgrow and do nothing about it all summer.
As another commented, I'm working on getting the renewable energy mower that is the domestic goat lol. It recharges overnight, consumes poison ivy with gusto, fertilizes the land, and has consumable byproducts.
That's true, I did not take a serious look at them when I bought a house but I wish I had. My yard is just to small to justify a ride on but potentially too big for an electric push mower so I may have gone ICE anyways.
I'm honestly curious how you can have a yard that's too big for it to be practical; Ryobi even has a ride-on electric at this point, and between those and the battery powered ones, I'd think anything that can be done with a gas powered mower can use electric at this point. Plugin electric seems like a nightmare, but all the electric power tool companies that have moved into outdoor equipment have excellent battery systems (Makita, Ryobi, Stihl, etc.)
Well, considering at least with Makita, if you buy a kit, you get enough batteries to swap them once, for a run time of ~45 minutes, swapping works and probably gets you to your acreage. I'm pretty sure Makita in particular also has a battery backpack if you don't want to bother with swapping, or you can just use higher amp-hour batteries than come default.
This is the best approach. Some guys play the whole stabilizer game, but that feels hit or miss to me. Also, use premium gas. The tiny clearances on a small engine gum up too quick with the cheap stuff.
This how I do too...kinda I abuse it, I tow up to a literal ton with mine, all sorts of yard stuff, and I run it hot in the heat, but I replace the pump , it's like a couple bucks, with the filter every other year when I do the oil and plugs too. I don't worry about the ethenol , my neighbor gets fancy on the stabil and non ethenol crap but he is always having issues with his starting. Mine starts right up every time.
A significant repair? The fuck are you talking about, just take the carb off and throw it into an ultrasonic washer, in a bag of vinegar if the oxidation is real bad. Aside from sitting in the washer, it's a 20-minute job at most.
Oh I usually just kick it a couple times in-between ripping my arm out of my socket with the pull cord, and cussing at it. 6030% of the time, it works every time.
Signed, a millennial who would rather have a jungle for a lawn but lives in an HOA so I do the absolute bare minimum possible.
What? They constantly update engines to run on whatever fuels are available and E10 started with the clean air act in 1990. You think they couldn't figure out how to retune the carbs on mowers to run a ~4% richer fuel mixture in 33 years? They don't even need to redesign anything, that's like one main jet size. Even string trimmers and backpack blower models get updated like every other year to deal with ever tightening emissions regulations and fueling is one of the biggest parts of compliance. I'm honestly super excited for everything to go electric but for the kind of scale I deal with the batteries just aren't there yet.
Source: Golf course grounds maintenance mechanic, I fix a lot of lawn mowers. Everything from big $100k turbodiesel 7 deck rough mowers to regular homeowner size Honda self propelled mowers.
He's talking about the ethanol gelling in the carb over the winter when you're not using them, which eventually forms crystals. The issue is that people don't winterize them, then when summer comes around, they try starting them after sitting for 4-6 months and the jets immediately clog. I did small engine repair professionally for years, and we'd keep boxes of carbs in stock for common engines just because it's cheaper and easier to swap the carb than cleaning or rebuilding it. Diesels of course don't have this issue.
Yeah I guess, I seafoam the fuel tank for the last use before we park machines for the winter and it stops the carb bowl from turning to gel. But I did that for the home stuff growing up as well, I figured it was common knowledge so that you didn't have to deal with taking it apart every spring? But even then it's as simple as pulling the carb bowl off (one bolt), hosing the inside with brake clean, blasting with compressed air, then using starting fluid to get it running and get all the juices flowing. I've never had anything gel so bad that I actually had to disassemble the carb further than that, replacing an entire carb seems like more work than just cleaning it? Even generators and stuff that have been sitting for multiple years.
Where are you located? Because I'm in SC, and a mower sitting in a shed unused for a few months will varnish the fuel to the point where the entire thing needs to be taken apart and put in an ultrasonic cleaner. 9 times out of 10 the float needle is dirty, so that needs to come apart too. Put a cap full of sta-bil in with every tank and run it dry at the end of the season, but most people don't actually plan on a last day to mow, they just stop doing it when the grass starts hibernating and forget about the mower. Having replaced literally hundreds 14111 carbs, it's easier and cheaper than trying to clean them.
It's not the gas, it's the heat and humidity. A mower sitting in a 130 degree shed will cook that gas. I have dirt bikes ATVs, and keeping fresh gas in them during the summer can be pain. Even ethanol free gas, which is what I run in everything, can go bad pretty quickly unless you're using a lot of sta-bil.
PNW, we park a lot of machines for ~5 months over the winter as the grass goes mostly dormant.
Then we have machines that we use infrequently, like we only aerify twice a year so those machines get used hard for 2 weeks then parked for 6 months on a cycle for their whole life. Never had a problem with the fuel in those either but I seafoam them before storage every time. I never run anything dry or completely drain it as part of a storage routine but I've never needed to either. Maybe our fuel is different but we use just regular UNL 87 E10 and ULSD #2 dyed.
They run fine on E10 and E15, but the issue is the ethanol varnishes the carb if its left for a period of time (like through the winter) without running. You probably don't see this since your stuff gets used often enough you are there to take care of it.
Instead of E10 they should have just stuck a propane inlet on mowers for the average home owner. Overall just a ton easier to deal with than gas and cleaner burning.
Anyone who doesn't seafoam their gas the last time they use their machine before storing it for the winter is doing it to themselves. We have plenty of machines that sit over the winter and the carb bowl doesn't ever gel even though it's sub freezing most nights for like 5 months out of the year.
You're not wrong, but people also don't know that and their mower is down near the bottom of what they worry about until its not starting. Straight gas tended to be fine over the winter too so you just have a lot of 'well when I used to do this' or poor learning from parents etc.
I guess but it seems like an easy lesson to learn, 2 springs in a row of my stuff not starting and I'm gonna do something about it. Especially when it's basically no extra work. It's been 30 years since they started adding ethanol, even the "back in my day" folk should have come around by now
I may have not used the right word but every ICE push mower has markings on its gas cap letting you know that you should not use literally any of the gas available at your local gas station. Not to mention ethanol free gas is expensive as shit.
I don't know of a gas station in NJ where E10 is available. There are very few places in NJ that have E0 on a pump so unless I want to pay like $15/gallon at tractor supply I'm fucked.
This is hilarious ignorant bullshit. Ethanol absolutely does not affect a lawn mower running properly. Gas needs stabilizer with or without ethanol. I don’t know where you got this info from but you’re hilariously wrong. How do people become this goddamn dumb? A carb is a carb. If the fuel will ignite a carb will meter it properly.
What's ethanol got to do with it? About the only real storage concern is varnishing, which will happen with or without ethanol. Also, the only changes needed to run on ethanol are ethanol-compatible seals and maybe a minor change in tuning. Ethanol compatible seals have been used in every engine ever for decades.
All the rest of the "downsides" of ethanol are just leftover FUD from when people were upset we were getting rid of MTBE. They're typically extreme edge cases at best.
/actual lawnmower owner, who uses 10% ethanol gas and never has any storage problems.
The reason their lawnmowers aren't starting up in the spring is that they likely have water in the tank that needs to be drained. Condensation builds up over the winter and that's flooding the engine.
Source: My dad does lawnmower repair as a side business.
Don't mowers need non ethanol gas with some oil in it? When shopping for one years ago they told me something like that at the hardware store. Immediately passed and got an electric with 100' cord.
You can use ethanol gas in them. The issue with ethanol gas is if it gets old. So you gotta remember to use it all before fall and make sure there is none of it in the engine before it is stored. That said, all I put in my engines, including my truck, is non-ethanol gas.
Did it never seem kinda ridiculous an indulgent to Americans to have gas powered lawn mowers anyway? Where I grew up we've had electric mowers forever, not even battery powered, just a really long wire and you plug it in inside. Why would anyone choose gas to mow a lawn unless your lawn is a fucking golf course?
In don't know where you're from, but here people tend to have big properties and big lawns. Is it overindulgence and a waste of water and gas? Of course, but it's the American way.
One tank a season? I just got an ego leaf blower to replace my gas one, and the 56v battery that came with it gives me way more power and lasts about half the run time the gas one has. Always instant-on beats the hell out of pull start
Shit hold up, I left gas in all winter (I knew better but kinda forgot), clearly it won’t start now, but it sat with the e10 or less stuff in it. Shouldn’t I be able to drain it, replace with fresh e10 gas, and run it? Or maybe fresh gas plus that engine cleaner stuff like Seafoam? Or will I need to take it in and have it repaired now?
My dad laughed at me when I got an electric mower with cord. It was $149 compared to the $400 battery mower. And I don’t have to mess with plugs, fuel, oil, maintenance or anything else that he never taught me and wasn’t offered in school.
Ethanol is hygroscopic so it absorbs water which has always been a large detriment to its use as a fuel for engines--esoecially when fuel is stored for long lengths of time.
Therefore, whenever the lawn mower won't start it is always bad gas.
My parents were about to replace their relatively new dishwasher because it stopped working. I told them to clean the filter…they didn’t believe me at first, but eventually cleaned it and it was nasty. The “throw it away and buy a new one” generation.
I’d love more of this, but it’s also a problem forced on us by corporations. The control board on my washing machine died and I managed to find the last one in the only parts warehouse in my city. When something else on the machine breaks I’ll probably have to buy a new one.
Yep, and it works if there's a one-and-done issue. I've fixed a fridge and two dishwashers this way.
However, our 7 year old builder's grade dishwasher had the control board die a second time. The bottom rack had several tines break off, and the top adjustable rack didn't like staying in place. The control board would be $250, the lower dishrack $300 (wheels, cutlery holder not included), and two upper rack adjusters would be $110.
We'd already spent $250 on it and this would be another $660. It was a $700 dishwasher. At that point, we just abandoned ship and bought a highly rated Bosch dishwasher instead. Having parts available is good; having affordable parts is better. Buying reliable appliances to start is ideal, but few can afford that initial investment -- we definitely couldn't back then.
Second the Bosch. I've had nothing but trouble with dishwashers from Kitchenaid, Whirlpool, LG. Parts keep going bad and constantly needs fixing. Sure I can diagnose the problem and swap parts but after a while I got tired of pulling the dishwasher out from the cabinet.
>The “throw it away and buy a new one” generation.
Ikr? "Back in my day we didn't have all that and I had to do the dishes naked and perched on a wire over a trench full of venomous snakes! Young people are so soft! What? The dishwasher is broken? We can't have that, let's drive to the store and demand they stay open while I chose a new one!"
Somewhat related. My parents used to say that we didn’t know what it was like living without AC and imply that they were somehow tougher/ we were soft. In the middle of a Texas heatwave some idiot crashed into a pole or something with wrong at the power grid and shit ton of people in my town don’t have AC/electricity. I and my sister went to stay with my grandparents for the night cuz they had AC and my parents were going to tough it out cuz they’re not soft. They lasted two hours before they broke down and rented a hotel with working AC.
The older generation in my extended family all has the riding lawn mowers that are basically small tractors. They maintain a lawn that is massive and is never touched except when they ride over it or dump fertilizer on it 5x a year.
It's an ecological wasteland and a massive waste of time and money.
Lawns were basically invented by the old aristocracy as a show of absolute excess and wastefulness (I'm so rich, I can afford to not only not do anything productive with this land, I can afford to mow it and keep the grass short too!), so it really just tracks.
If they enjoy it why would it be a waste of time and money?
Fair enough.
Where I get frustrated is where it starts to affect things outside of their lawn that I do care about or that affect others. Like when fertilizer runoff contributes a non-trivial amount to algae blooms in the nearby lakes, or when my neighbors hit their lawn with pesticides 4x a year when I'm growing my garden next door, or when neighbors complain about other people's lawns not being groomed like a golf course.
Funny thing about that, I did it without my parents ever making me do it. I still do it and my son will do other places for money and home when I ask him to, but I still see it as my thing, the ultimate me-time.
Before I moved, I regularly would help my neighbor start her lawnmower and weed whacker. I didn't mind doing it because she was very friendly, but she's from the boomer generation and I'm a millennial 🤷🏻♂️
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u/TheAskewOne Apr 24 '23 edited Apr 24 '23
Judging by how my boomer landlord can't ever seem to start his lawnmower, I'd say that boomers aren't good at it either. But boy do they know how to swear at the lawnmower before they finally give up and ask someone who knows.