Corded Electric Lawn Mower?

Rather than risking a hijack of the other mower thread that is active right now, I decided to start a new thread to ask this question. Does anyone have experience with a corded electric lawn mower? I have a small yard that I have been cutting with a me-powered reel type mower. It doesn't cut very well and my efforts to sharpen it have made it worse. (Sharpening involves applying a grit paste to the blades and turning them backwards with a hand crank so they hone themselves against the bar that they normally cut against.) A "professional" tune up of the mower will cost almost as much as a new one and, reading reviews of these mowers, it sounds like having to mow each area twice to get an adequate cut is about par for the course even after a tune-up. My yard is small, but not small enough to want to do that each time. So I am in the market for a new mower.

Environmental concerns and the lack of ethanol-free gas in the Chicago area have me leaning toward an electric mower. I have read the concerns expressed in the other thread about the short lifetime of the batteries used in mowers. My yard is small enough that I don't have to worry about the length of a single charge, but I don't want to replace an expensive battery or the entire mower after a couple of years.

Corded mowers are cheaper upfront and generally have higher stated power. My question is, how much of a hassle is it dealing with the cord as you mow? I don't have a lot of obstacles in my yard for a cord to tangle on. Is it a major pain to deal with the cord at each turn? Any tips on brands or models, and good places to buy?

I also had a reel mower I used on a small lot for ~9 years. Yeah, it required multiple passes and wasn't great. I also had a corded string trimmer, and it was just a pain to get the cord out and coil it back up, etc - to say nothing of obstacles. That left me never wanting to deal with cords on lawn tools, ever again.

I bought a Makita cordless string trimmer, and it is incredible. Since I have lots of the batteries (same LXT batteries that the drills, etc, use), I also just bought this:
http://www.acmetools.com/shop/tools/makita-xml02ptx1

Before you balk at the price, though: I don't need the grinder or the charger, so if I ebay those, I'm left with a mower and 2 batteries for $229. Heck, the pair of batteries costs more than that. If you happened to already have a pair of the batteries, you could essentially sell all the "accessories" and have the mower for free. Should the batteries die, there are knock-offs available relatively cheap.

Just my thoughts...

Other than the obvious problem of avoiding cutting the cord, you need to insure the cord has adequate wiring or the current draw of the mower. Voltage drop in long cords with under sized wire will reduce the power of the mower significantly. I have a cord powered string trimmer and it runs at about 2/3 rpm unless I use my home made #12 AWG 50 foot power cord. Locating a 25 foot or longer cord with #12 or larger wire will be a problem. Most big box and regular hardware stores don't carry them. You will need a cord to reach from your outlet to the most distant area of your yard from the receptacle while avoiding any obstacles.

Use to use an electric mower on my Parents lawn for many years and went through 2 of them. They do wear out. As far as the chord goes, you just have to be careful and if you work out a pattern the chord never gets in the way. I use to drape the chord over my shoulder and never ran a chord over. To me this is better than any battery mower on the market. Those batteries are expensive when they go and now makes that mower cost more than a gas powered mower or electric.

By the way you can buy 12/3 extension chords in Lowes and Home Depot. Any size length you want.

http://www.homedepot.com/s/12%252F3%...20chord?NCNI-5

I remember ours well from the 60's. It would get clogged up many times per mowing. I assume they have improved them since them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dan Friedrichs

I bought a Makita cordless string trimmer, and it is incredible. Since I have lots of the batteries (same LXT batteries that the drills, etc, use), I also just bought this:
http://www.acmetools.com/shop/tools/makita-xml02ptx1

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Amazing, Makita finally brought this mower to the USA! It is too later for me since I am fully invested in the EGO cordless stuff now. I would have considered Makita if it was available since I have lots of batteries.

Thanks for the feedback, guys. A couple of follow-up questions:
John, are you saying that the corded mowers wear out or were you talking about the battery powered electrics? I don't expect anything to last forever, but I was hoping to get at least ten years out of a corded mower.
Dan, you say you just got the Makita. Have you used it enough to give it a positive review? 36 volts is smaller than the battery operated mowers I had looked at (40V and 60V, if I recall correctly). Thanks for the link to the 12/3 cords; I will have to factor that into the price equation.

I haven't received it, yet - looks like they just introduced it to the US, and it's supposed to ship in a few weeks. I have the string trimmer, and it's fantastic. Since these are brushless, they have electronics to convert the DC battery voltage into AC for the motor, so the absolute value of the battery voltage doesn't matter - it could be anything, by the time it hits the motor.

Apparently it's been available in Europe for awhile, though, so if you look it up on Amazon.de (here's the link), you can read reviews written by Germany owners :) I find those very amusing - seems like the average intelligence of those review writers is a few notches up the ladder from the US-based reviewers...

I'm on my second corded mower in 30 years. Once you get the first bit cut and keep the cord on that side when mowing everything works well. Never cut a cord in 30 years.

As far as my point about wearing out had to do with a chorded lawn mower. It all depends on how much grass you are cutting and how often and how thick. We had them back in the 60's also and had Black and Decker models. They are basically a shop vac type motor. On the ones we had the armature wore out on them after about 6 years. We had a property of about 50 X 100. Need to keep the blade sharp on them or else this puts a strain on the motor. The same can be said for the battery operated mowers. The harder a motor works the faster that battery will drain. I own chorded edge trimmers or weedwackers as they are called and have to replace them every 5 or 6 years. But they are not expensive so no big deal. If i had to keep replacing batteries that could get expensive. The lithium batteries are a big step up to progress but not the last that you will see. There will be improvements technology continues to evolve.

Now to me you can not beat a gas powered mower. I have had a Sears mower for over 25 years. Had to reinforce the deck because of rotted holes, but replaced wheels filter and spark plugs. Sharpen the blade at the beginning of a season every year. Have a property 100X 100 and first pull and the mower starts every time. Never drained the gas in the winter and still starts right up.

I had one.
Black and Decker.
Never again.

Never cut the cord - and I wonder if the stupid thing actually had the power to cut the cord???

Anyhow, it was so under powered it was ridiculous. It was fine in late Summer when the grass was mostly dormant, but, in the Spring? Forget it.
When the smoke monster came out of the motor one day, I replaced the electric with the cheapest gas mower I could find.

We've used a corded mower for years. Virtually no maintenance and starts first time every time. To deal with the cord, I start at the electrical box and work out as much as possible. That way the cord is seldom on uncut grass. The only maintenance aside from sharpening the blade has been replacing the brushes. The motor appears to be 90 volt D.C. and I've replaced the switch one time. We have Black & Decker, I don't know if there are any other corded electric manufacturers.

Our neighbor has a battery powered mower - don't know the make - and it seems to work well but she can't let her grass get too long and she doesn't (can't?) mulch. She bags all her clippings.

My dad had a corded electric reel mower back in the 1950's. No ground wire, so if you touched it in the wrong place you got zapped. It has a reel on top that kept the cord out of the way. Of course you don't have to worry about that now. Don't worry about finding ethanol free gas. I have never used it in any of my many gas powered lawn tools, snowblowers, snowmobiles, boats (other than in FL where that is all the marinas carry), chainsaws, mowers or tractors and have never had a problem. One of our local stations carries "recreational" ethanol free gas, it costs an extra buck a gallon.