I make a living out of doing people's gardens; I don't think they'd be very happy to see me on my hands and knees with a pair of nail scissors! And those women in India were probably being paid about one rupee a day. Same principle applies to shears and push mowers. (My granddad used to cut lawns with a scythe back in 1910, but that was because (a) the landowner was filthy rich and could afford an army of serfs and (b) lawn-mowers weren't that good.)
I agree that noise from machines is bad - it's even worse when you spend quite a lot of the week causing it! Unfortunately, we have got to the position where people demand neatness and tidiness and there is no alternative to doing that by machine. Your plane to India was much quieter than 50 years ago, but it's still very noisy, polluting and irritating to people near airports.
Two-stroke engines, essential for hedge-cutters, strimmers and blowers, are naturally noisy and silencing them would make them heavier (try waving a 7kg hedgecutter around all day) and more unwieldy.
Mowers could be made quieter, but again at a price that people may not be willing to pay, because they only use it for 30 or 40 hours a year. Most people buy the cheapest mower they can get away with, which is a good approach if you've only got 20 sq m of lawn.
I've no problem with Luke wanting to look for innovative ideas, but he did invite comments, so don't shoot the messenger.
I have to mow in the wet or I wouldn't get round all the jobs, and two of my lawns are almost permanently wet, so if I left the cut material the lawn would be impossible to deal with after a month.
I always have trouble changing the height of the cutting blade - the lever is stiff and then all of a sudden it moves - not always to the right position.
I don't mind about mowers making a noise! However, what I'd like would be as follows:-
easy to attach/detach the battery charger plug. (mine has electric/key as well as "pull" start facility)
fuel tank designed so that it was easy to refill from the normal type of plastic fuel containers.
grass box easy to detach from the mower with one hand.
mulch facility (which mine already has)
some means of using the mower to trim lawn edges - additional blade which could be engaged as required, maybe? - plus I find it quite difficult to mow close/parallel to lawn eges without the machine (Hayter) falling off into the flower beds because the wheels are rather narrow & there's no rear roller. Wider front wheels would help a bit, I suppose.
grass chute which didn't clog up when the grass is damp.
rear rollers + some weight - not just because of "lawn stripes" but also because it would help keep the lawn surface more level and even. Problems arise in my garden because of mole tunnels, rabbit latrines etc. My old Atco used to deal with this really well, but the Hayter doesn't.
I am still reading all of your comments and this is the exact research I need to justify my re-design. Your comments are helping me to think about soloutions and features which have never crossd my mind.
I've only ever used one Hayter and it was a bit of a pig. The 'skirt' round the blade was too low and the grass box was very low-slung, so these two things meant it scraped or jammed on any ground that was even slightly uneven. And it was a bit difficult to get the grass box in and out compared with other mowers. (By the way, I wouldn't recommend your elastic loop round the dead man's handle to keep the engine running. I see people doing it and pray that they never have an accident.) There's obviously a need there for a better design of electric starter.
I've never had any trouble fuelling a mower; surely, provided you use the nozzle pipe that is supplied with the petrol container, there's no problem?
I don't know how keen manufacturers would be to put a side blade on a mower - I can see there might be some nasty accidents. I use edging shears, which seems perfectly easy.
Rollers are probably a personal preference. Unless they actually drive the machine, there will always be conflict between the setting height of the roller and that of the driving wheel. Driving off the edge of the lawn occasionally is an occupational hazard and I find I just have to take extra care. A wider front wheel would have to be so wide that it would flatten a lot of grass in front of the blade and it would become less effective going round a curved lawn edge.
Was your Atco a cylinder or a rotary? I'll bet it had an engine with really good torque and weighed a fair bit. The other problem with rollers, which can weigh a heck of a lot, is that they can compress the ground over time, depending on the soil type.
Clogging is quite a problem and it would need a lot wind tunnel experiments to design the optimum profile for the chute. I suspect that most of the better mowers have already come to somewhere near to the optimum by an iterative process. Cleaning after every mow obviously helps a lot, but I'm not sure that using, say, Teflon for the surfaces would help, because it would be easily damaged. Otherwise, if I'm mowing wet grass and the mower keeps clogging, I just resort to inaudible swearing.
thanks for the response, Joe - I did admit to being "dangerous" ref the elastic loop..........& no nozzle with the fuel can (I must have lost it). I have to empty the grass box far too often, perhaps because I can't always manage to mow when the grass is dry & the chute/boox seem to clog up faster than I'd like. The Hayter is, as you say, rather low and I don't find it nearly as good as the Atco, which was a rotary with a roller. Lasted for 27 years & eventually they couldn't get spare parts for it. The ground/soil here is very light, so compaction not much of a problem really & I spend so much time repairing rabbit damage that the Atco's roller was very useful. Ref edges - maybe a retractable wider front wheel would work? I used to have a battery driven lawn edger which was quite heavy - you rolled/dragged it along. Worked a treat - but it disappeared some time ago - house move I think, when some stuff was accidentally left behind.
I know what you mean about swearing............... my garden's far from immaculate - rabbits & dogs to thank for that!
Posts
Yes curlycarly silent !!! Lovely .
CurlyCarly, I agree about the need for silent tools; the same technology could be used for vacuum cleaners.
Carly,
I make a living out of doing people's gardens; I don't think they'd be very happy to see me on my hands and knees with a pair of nail scissors! And those women in India were probably being paid about one rupee a day. Same principle applies to shears and push mowers. (My granddad used to cut lawns with a scythe back in 1910, but that was because (a) the landowner was filthy rich and could afford an army of serfs and (b) lawn-mowers weren't that good.)
I agree that noise from machines is bad - it's even worse when you spend quite a lot of the week causing it! Unfortunately, we have got to the position where people demand neatness and tidiness and there is no alternative to doing that by machine. Your plane to India was much quieter than 50 years ago, but it's still very noisy, polluting and irritating to people near airports.
Two-stroke engines, essential for hedge-cutters, strimmers and blowers, are naturally noisy and silencing them would make them heavier (try waving a 7kg hedgecutter around all day) and more unwieldy.
Mowers could be made quieter, but again at a price that people may not be willing to pay, because they only use it for 30 or 40 hours a year. Most people buy the cheapest mower they can get away with, which is a good approach if you've only got 20 sq m of lawn.
I've no problem with Luke wanting to look for innovative ideas, but he did invite comments, so don't shoot the messenger.
bunnysgarden,
I have to mow in the wet or I wouldn't get round all the jobs, and two of my lawns are almost permanently wet, so if I left the cut material the lawn would be impossible to deal with after a month.
I always have trouble changing the height of the cutting blade - the lever is stiff and then all of a sudden it moves - not always to the right position.
I don't mind about mowers making a noise! However, what I'd like would be as follows:-
easy to attach/detach the battery charger plug. (mine has electric/key as well as "pull" start facility)
fuel tank designed so that it was easy to refill from the normal type of plastic fuel containers.
grass box easy to detach from the mower with one hand.
mulch facility (which mine already has)
some means of using the mower to trim lawn edges - additional blade which could be engaged as required, maybe? - plus I find it quite difficult to mow close/parallel to lawn eges without the machine (Hayter) falling off into the flower beds because the wheels are rather narrow & there's no rear roller. Wider front wheels would help a bit, I suppose.
grass chute which didn't clog up when the grass is damp.
rear rollers + some weight - not just because of "lawn stripes" but also because it would help keep the lawn surface more level and even. Problems arise in my garden because of mole tunnels, rabbit latrines etc. My old Atco used to deal with this really well, but the Hayter doesn't.
I am still reading all of your comments and this is the exact research I need to justify my re-design. Your comments are helping me to think about soloutions and features which have never crossd my mind.
Thanks
Luke
Hypercharleyfarley,
I've only ever used one Hayter and it was a bit of a pig. The 'skirt' round the blade was too low and the grass box was very low-slung, so these two things meant it scraped or jammed on any ground that was even slightly uneven. And it was a bit difficult to get the grass box in and out compared with other mowers. (By the way, I wouldn't recommend your elastic loop round the dead man's handle to keep the engine running. I see people doing it and pray that they never have an accident.) There's obviously a need there for a better design of electric starter.
I've never had any trouble fuelling a mower; surely, provided you use the nozzle pipe that is supplied with the petrol container, there's no problem?
I don't know how keen manufacturers would be to put a side blade on a mower - I can see there might be some nasty accidents. I use edging shears, which seems perfectly easy.
Rollers are probably a personal preference. Unless they actually drive the machine, there will always be conflict between the setting height of the roller and that of the driving wheel. Driving off the edge of the lawn occasionally is an occupational hazard and I find I just have to take extra care. A wider front wheel would have to be so wide that it would flatten a lot of grass in front of the blade and it would become less effective going round a curved lawn edge.
Was your Atco a cylinder or a rotary? I'll bet it had an engine with really good torque and weighed a fair bit. The other problem with rollers, which can weigh a heck of a lot, is that they can compress the ground over time, depending on the soil type.
Clogging is quite a problem and it would need a lot wind tunnel experiments to design the optimum profile for the chute. I suspect that most of the better mowers have already come to somewhere near to the optimum by an iterative process. Cleaning after every mow obviously helps a lot, but I'm not sure that using, say, Teflon for the surfaces would help, because it would be easily damaged. Otherwise, if I'm mowing wet grass and the mower keeps clogging, I just resort to inaudible swearing.
thanks for the response, Joe - I did admit to being "dangerous" ref the elastic loop..........& no nozzle with the fuel can (I must have lost it). I have to empty the grass box far too often, perhaps because I can't always manage to mow when the grass is dry & the chute/boox seem to clog up faster than I'd like. The Hayter is, as you say, rather low and I don't find it nearly as good as the Atco, which was a rotary with a roller. Lasted for 27 years & eventually they couldn't get spare parts for it. The ground/soil here is very light, so compaction not much of a problem really & I spend so much time repairing rabbit damage that the Atco's roller was very useful. Ref edges - maybe a retractable wider front wheel would work? I used to have a battery driven lawn edger which was quite heavy - you rolled/dragged it along. Worked a treat - but it disappeared some time ago - house move I think, when some stuff was accidentally left behind.
I know what you mean about swearing............... my garden's far from immaculate - rabbits & dogs to thank for that!