Gas lawnmower & Trimmers

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Keith Sinclair

Keith Sinclair

Senior Member
Joined
May 10, 2012
Messages
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Location
Hawaii
Saw on news that California will ban sales of gas mowers & trimmers starting
2024.

When I took over neighbors yard couple years ago bought a Honda mower. I do 4 yards now including my own. No way my electric mower could handle. Esp. up here in the valley where it rains a lot and grass can get thick fast. Get special gas from gas station that most professional yardmen use.

Two stroke gas trimmer have had for 5 years. Always run it dry if stored more than couple weeks.
When warm always starts on first pull. Very strong trimmer. I still use my electric mower & trimmer for light jobs.
Was thinking of getting a 4 stroke Honda trimmer because could predict that two stroke would be outlawed some day.
But my two stroke still works like new only changed sparkplug & air filter so far.
Use 50/1 oil gas mix.
 
Speaking of gas, the Navy started building the under ground storage tanks at Red Hill in 1940
before the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese.

Moving the Pacific fleet to Pearl Harbor planners were worried above ground tanks too
vulnerable to air attack. The tanks were finished
in 1943. They were built well on basalt lava
and gravity fed to Pearl Harbor.

A aging tank sprung a leak in 2016. The tank was emptied & repaired. It started a concern justifiable because the tanks sit just 100 feet above the Honolulu under ground aquifer that gets replenished with rain water that seeps through the lava.

Couple weeks ago people in Navy housing were
complaining of fuel smell in their water. Stomach, skin from showers, even hit the elementary school. People were getting sick. Navy slow to react. Not until it was all over local news.
 
Just bought a Honda SP to replace our 15yo Briggs-engined push mower. Wife does most of the mowing and is very happy with it so far.

Have had Honda 35cc line trimmer for almost 15 years. Recently replaced the line holder but otherwise no problems. Plenty of power but if I had my time over, I'd get the 25cc as the 35cc is a bit heavy for my wife.

Also have a Honda blower. Replaced a 2 stroke one maybe 7 or 8 years ago. It's a bit heavier but much less smelly and doesn't surge as much as the 2 stroke one. A bit more airflow too.
 
I use electric blower also use it to quick dry my car after washing. Just so long as keep it charged.
 
Winter Park, Fl. had an online survey for residents to take on banning gas leaf blowers. Personally, I hate the way some yard crews on my street run the absolute piss out of them like it's the new favorite toy. I bought a battery powered blower a few years ago, because tree stuff falls all the time. The battery operated blower makes it way easier to use. My mower is gas, and it would be hard to cut the yard some of the time with an electric or battery.

I did see that a city in Cali was working on preventing natural gas from being installed in new homes. I really like having natural gas though.
 
J_Wisdom said:
My mower is gas, and it would be hard to cut the yard some of the time with an electric or battery.
Click to expand...

Why do you think it would be too hard? We moved in to a new place this summer and couldn't be bothered to cut the extremely long grass, so it ended up being like 10''-12'' long when we went to cut it. Our battery powered electric mower just .... well .... mowed right through it. Ours isn't super fancy or anything.. maybe $300. Just curious, since I've never felt the need for more power.
 
Gas lawnmowers are comically bad emissions wise because they don't have a catalytic converter. Google says 11x per hour. Yikes. I guess they could mandate a cat on them but that's effectively the same thing with the price of those
 
My electric blower has more than enough power it's a GO 56V.

I was all electric with a Ryobi mower & line trimmer. 40V. Had them almost 6 years. Was doing just my yard but couldn't let grass get too high. Early on needed a gas trimmer esp. for thick stuff. The batteries also don't last as long.
With mower have to start high than go over again at lower setting needed two fully charged batteries just to do my yard.

The neighbors & other yards I do are very large.
My SP Honda mower is huge improvement.
Think of professional yard men who have 15-20 yards. They could make more powerful battery SP mowers. Trimmers too able to carry heavy duty line with at least 56V.
 
That gal in the video has one sided agenda.

Than again what is more important than fresh water? Much of population of Hawaii uses the Southern shore aquifer. Water here is very good
Underground replenished with rain filtered through lava rock. Board of water supply land high up in mountain rainforest make sure no concrete covers where it rains the most.

A water tunnel was carved through the Koolau mountain range joining under ground natural dikes that store water. 1913-1915. It was used to irrigate sugarcane & pineapple fields. The board of water supply is a complex system using natural geological formation to store water. I won't bore you with details I love geology. Water & air to fill our lungs are most important to animals & the bipedal breed.
And that's no exaggeration.😁
 
@ian In the summer, the grass is pretty thick even with my 6.5 HP mower. While it can always cut it, if I go 2 weeks, my front yard is thick. I know some people with electric that find it pretty challenging if they go 2+ weeks. I'm not opposed to going electric in any way, and I know it will improve. Fortunately, the grass is slow growing time of year.
 
I have no problem with preventing sales of gas powered lawnmowers and leaf blowers*; anything to encourage corporations to accelerate development of better electric solutions (e.g., better battery storage, more powerful motors, cleaner energy generation) is fine in my book. I worry about the world we're leaving behind for my kids and grandkids...

*Actually, I wouldn't mind a total ban on leafblowers; to me, those are the most obnoxious sounding things ever invented.
 
For leaves in the yard, I suck them up with the lawnmower with the bagger. Works great! We haven't hit peak leaf season yet, though. I use my battery leaf blower to blow the leaves off of my deck, and it's handy to have. While I have a gas leaf blower, I hate it, and rarely used it. For one thing, you smell like it even after a short bit.
 
I rake leaves. Where use electric blower is grass from trimmer along side walks. One place has long strips of concrete for tires with grass in between & on both sides. Also walk ways around houses & against lava rock walls.
Up here you have drainage ditches bordering properties because of heavy rain.

We had heavy rain this week 9 inches in one day. Maui got hit the worst lots of flooding.
When it rains hard I go out in it to see how everything is draining the street is a down hill river.
 
Nine inches in one day is quite a bit. We get very little rain this time of year in Central Florida, but almost every day in the summer, and often pretty hard rain. Since you're from Hawaii, I have to tell you that I'm working around my plumeria today. Since it rarely ever freezes here, we can have them in the ground. I had some kind of little palm/fern around it that was overtaking the area. Getting rid of it has been more work than I realized it would be. It did pretty well with our last hurricane, but a little freeze in 2018 damaged it. I'll use my rake to spread the dirt and mulch around.
 
Nemo said:
Just bought a Honda SP to replace our 15yo Briggs-engined push mower. Wife does most of the mowing and is very happy with it so far.

Have had Honda 35cc line trimmer for almost 15 years. Recently replaced the line holder but otherwise no problems. Plenty of power but if I had my time over, I'd get the 25cc as the 35cc is a bit heavy for my wife.

Also have a Honda blower. Replaced a 2 stroke one maybe 7 or 8 years ago. It's a bit heavier but much less smelly and doesn't surge as much as the 2 stroke one. A bit more airflow too.
Click to expand...

Years ago we did a very unaustralian thing and replaced our Victa with a Masport 😋. The Masport had an aluminium chassis - a smart move given that our Victa was rusting out. It has a newer Briggs & Stratton - slightly different sound to the older model. It is simultaneously overpowered and only 'just' powerful enough. We dont need that much power to cut our short Buffalo/Kikuyu grass - encounter a fallen stick though and you need the power and inertia to punch through it.

The Honda four strokes are pretty great. We have a Husqvarna body for line trimming and hedge trimming. Super useful. While I can easily imagine putting lots of batteries on a lawn mower, i think it would be too heavy for hedge trimming. For now... if I had to go electric... I'd probably choose chorded instead.

J_Wisdom said:
For leaves in the yard, I suck them up with the lawnmower with the bagger
Click to expand...

Same. It is really effective... you can then dump the mulch on a garden bed.



JASinIL2006 said:
*Actually, I wouldn't mind a total ban on leafblowers; to me, those are the most obnoxious sounding things ever invented.
Click to expand...
bahamaroot said:
Leaf blowers are just another sign of how lazy society has gotten over the years.
Click to expand...

I absolutely hate it when people just blow their leaves into the middle of the street. That seems rude to me. But I really like the electric blower/vacs... again, you can suck up all the leaves and mulch them on a garden bed. Labour saving devices arent lazy... they just save labour!
 
After heavy rain finally a sunny day all the stems, leaves, etc. washed into the street drains, street like a river. Used my GO 56V to blow to the curbs where I sweep it up. Neighbors don't mind clean street around their houses too.
 
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