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Not sure if this belongs in electronics or home, to be honest!
I'm interested in looking at some battery powered lawn mowers but have come to the conclusion that I have no clue what I should be focusing on.
Is voltage "equivalent" to horsepower? That is the higher the voltage the more power? Are there any other attributes I should look into? For those with battery powered lawnmowers is there any routine maintenance I should be aware of?
For what it's worth, I have .17 ac of 1.5 inch high Bermudagrass on a flat lot. I don't foresee any tough mowing that would tend to bog down a lawnmower.
I have the Ego 21" 56v. I love it. It's a bit expensive compared to gas mowers but worth every penny imo.
No gas to worry about ever. It's got a 5yr warranty. The only maintenance is cleaning it and sharpening the blade once a year or so. That is easy, you remove it with a wrench, sharpen with a file by hand and re-install it.
It's $400 for push, about $500 for self-propelled. I wanted the exercise so I got the push. They make two different size batteries. I got the smaller one (5Ah) which will run about 60 minutes. It takes about 45 minutes for a full charge. They make a 7.5Ah which will probably give you 90 minutes run time, depending on the grass of course.
Watts are equivalent to horsepower, not volts. 1 horsepower = 746 watts.
Just to add watts is amps * volts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gguerra
The only maintenance is cleaning it and sharpening the blade once a year or so. That is easy, you remove it with a wrench, sharpen with a file by hand and re-install it.
If you have small impact driver it's the easiest thing to use however if the blade has been on there for years it's not coming off with small impact driver. When sharpening make sure you use an equal amount of stokes with the file or passes with the grinding wheel on both sides. Not ideal but hang the blade on nail through the center hole to make sure you haven't taken it too much out of balance. If it's tipping to one side or the other take a little metal off the side that is tipping down.
If you have small impact driver it's the easiest thing to use however if the blade has been on there for years it's not coming off with small impact driver. When sharpening make sure you use an equal amount of stokes with the file or passes with the grinding wheel on both sides. Not ideal but hang the blade on nail through the center hole to make sure you haven't taken it too much out of balance. If it's tipping to one side or the other take a little metal off the side that is tipping down.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BoSox 15
have .17 ac of 1.5 inch high Bermudagrass on a flat lot.
Any battery-powered lawnmower will suffice.
When you buy your first battery-powered device, you are making a mental commitment to that battery system. Batteries are not interchangeable.
Battery voltages from 18-volt to 56-volt.
But every system (or brand/voltage) has a different set of tools that it supports.
So, first, determine what tools you need or might want.
Then pick the system.
For example, Home Depot's Ryobi brand of 18-volt tools includes both outdoor and indoor tools. That is why I chose it. The tools are not the highest quality, but I don't need that. What I do get though is: lawnmower, leaf blower, string trimmer, hedge trimmer, drill, buffer all using the same batteries.
For example, Stihl's 36-volt system is just for outdoor tools. The quality is excellent, but the tool selection is limited.
When you buy your first battery-powered device, you are making a mental commitment to that battery system. Batteries are not interchangeable.
Battery voltages from 18-volt to 56-volt.
But every system (or brand/voltage) has a different set of tools that it supports.
So, first, determine what tools you need or might want.
Then pick the system.
For example, Home Depot's Ryobi brand of 18-volt tools includes both outdoor and indoor tools. That is why I chose it. The tools are not the highest quality, but I don't need that. What I do get though is: lawnmower, leaf blower, string trimmer, hedge trimmer, drill, buffer all using the same batteries.
For example, Stihl's 36-volt system is just for outdoor tools. The quality is excellent, but the tool selection is limited.
I still have corded tools and a cordless mower. No need to commit all the way unless you actually need all new tools and of course have the money to spend. These cordless tools are way more than their corded counterparts.
I can pretty much guarantee that an 18v mower will bog down way before a 56v. Voltage does matter in a practical sense, when you start to cut tall thick grass.
In the world of electric mowers, volts = horsepower.
Analogous to cordless power drills, the higher the volts, the more powerful the drill will be.
We are not talking electrical theory here.
Not correct electrical theory, anyway. You could have low voltage and high current, or high voltage and low current, and deliver the same power. But there are practical reasons why generally, when a device uses more power, it makes sense to deliver it at higher voltage.
I have a neighbor on a roughly 1/6 ac. lot who uses the Ego mower. He told me he has not yet had to use the second battery. Don't know what kind of grass, whether San Augustine or Bermuda.
If the battery runs out while you're mowing, you have a second one in reserve fully charged and swap it out; a couple minutes delay at most.
And volts is NOT horsepower. For DC motors like we're talking you can probably easily find either the watts (measure of power) or amps (multiply times voltage to get power) rating. The reason in general higher power DC motors in consumer devices use higher voltage battery packs is to keep the wire sizes rational. In other words, as per that "theory" you're so busy being scornful of without understanding, P = V*I and I = V/R so P = V^2/R. So increasing V is the best way (subject to thermal limitations) to increase power for a fixed amount of winding turns and wire size in a DC motor, is to up the voltage. But when you get right down to comparisons between two tools, the one with higher voltage may or may not deliver more power. For that matter, the motor type is also highly important; you've got your choice amongst brush type, electronically commutated induction, or permanent magnet rotor type motors. The highest efficiency amongst current commercial production motors will be the permanent magnet type. So you could easily develop more usable mechanical power at the motor shaft with a lower voltage PM motor than a higher voltage induction motor.
I'm not a battery expert so I can't tell you what the negatives of a higher battery voltage (except maybe cost) would be, but I'm sure there are tradeoffs in going to a higher battery voltage.
At any rate, there aren't a lot of choices amongst practical in-production battery lawnmowers, so battery voltage won't be a deciding characteristic anyway. I would say that the actual operational characteristics will be far more important like how long a charge lasts, how much it weighs, how long it takes to charge, how long and how difficult it is to make a battery swap in midstream, cost, long term durability, how many charge cycles the battery will last, etc.
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