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Comment by SnowingXIV | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone had decent results with these mowers (any brand)? I'm in the process of building a house that's going to have a pretty simple yard and I've considering picking one of these up.

They are also substantially more expensive than the typical electric mowers you push yourself but if it saves x hours per week/month could be worth it. I just don't want to end up with an expensive paperweight and end up having to buy another mower anyways.

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Go get one.

Used to own robo-vacuum cleaners of many brands, eventually sold them all, as each of them caused more work than they were supposed to spare me. After that I was reluctant to get a robomower but it is worth it.

Pros:

- you have to buy machinery anyways (if you're new to having a yard)

- less noise

- it will get mowed more often

- more mows -> healthier lawn

Setup cons:

- you have to bury/hammer a wire into the ground surrounding the area to-be-mowed

- you may have to expand/change your wifi-setup because mower/base-station need access as well

- like with robomowers, decoration is an obstacle. It will either get destoryed or destroy the bot

- because of this, need to have less decoration or need to surround them by wires as well

Recurrent cons:

- obstacles hit can (and will) cause blades to break free

- bc of this I have to replace the blades every 2-3 months (the only real maintenance to be done)

- at least try to find the lost blades (unless you're ok with guests/kids stepping into some unexpected, dirty, rusty, crooked blade

Exactly why I'm hesitant. The robo-vacuums have been highly disappointing and do a much worse job than taking the few moments to vacuum myself. I still have one that I run constantly because it's slightly better than nothing on a daily basis.

These cons don't seem terrible. Maybe in a few months we'll see some new ones on the market and see prices a bit more competitive. Appreciate all the input.

I had periodically thought about getting a robovac but:

- They're expensive, especially the high-end ones.

- They'd only do a portion of the house, albeit the part that gets the most traffic

- However, it's also the portion of the house that tends to have a pile or two of stuff that's being prepared for a trip or has just come back from a trip, various cords here and there, etc.

In the end, I ended up just getting a cordless vac that I can pull out in a few seconds if some vacuuming is needed. (I have a housekeeper who comes every month or so, so it's mostly about doing some light touchup between full cleanings.)

Found the exact opposite, although I was living in a carpeted flat when I bought mine. Vacuuming turned from something I'd have to put aside an afternoon for to something that just sorts itself out.

Probably my fave tech purchase this decade.

I used to design and build these - if you have a simple yard, you can use the inexpensive mowers, as long as you don't care about having striping in your lawn. I had one for two seasons, and it was awesome - your lawn looks like it freezes in time and is healthier to boot.

You just have to install an "invisible fence" style wire around the perimeter.

We have a small yard and a Landdroid mower we got 3 years ago. The yard is probably 1000sf It works quite well, though set up involves a perimieter wire which was a pain.

A critter eat through the wire this year, which means the mower stoped working. Figuring it out is was a perimeter wire break and where was a little tricky and involved using an am radio. Generally happy with the device.

Same problem here! Squirrels have gnawed through my perimeter wire dozens of times. I have the Husqvarna Automower 450x, which allows for three shortcut home wires. Repairing the broken wire is easy...finding the break, however, is extremely difficult and time consuming. I've had the mower for 2 years and it's been awesome in every other way. I'm thinking of pulling up my entire perimeter wire and installing a new wire deeper. No doubt this will make finding future breaks more difficult, but I hope that by being deeper, the squirrel problem will go away.

Those squirrels....I found the break by turning the base on and using an AM radio to follow the wire around (it made a kinda tone). When the tone stopped I found the break. The hardest part was finding the radio And getting the batteries... I would assume it would work for the husqvarna perimeter too.

The squirrel trying to get to bird feeder :

https://youtu.be/cnNqi1hnHY8

Man look at that little critter fly!! I think the principles for using an AM radio are sound. I found two radios, and used them, but I couldn't quite make sense of what I was hearing. Perhaps there was a ton of localized interference. I stepped up my approach by purchasing an underground wire locator from Amazon. This gizmo sends an amplified steady signal down the perimeter wire and a separate portable device listens for the signal as I walk along the perimeter. This didn't work as easily as I'd hoped. My guess is that due to the existence of one very large perimeter wire and three intersecting shortcut-to-home wires, there's some interference/signal degradation that complicates finding the break, especially since there's normally multiple breaks due to the relatively large population of squirrels. There's got to be an easier way to find a break! I think the conclusion here is that I should just keep a bunch of loaded bird feeders to occupy their time!

I look at it this way, if it is a waste of time to mow it then you have too much of it. I have nearly 12k sq feet and I still push mow it. Using an electric mower I find the time both relaxing and I can always use the exercise. plus I use the time to see what I need to fix, tweak, or just change out.

For reference, that's a quarter acre.

I switched to a reel mower when my last push mower died, and that's really relaxing without any of the noise or vibration of a gas mower.

It is more physically demanding, but like you said, I can always use the exercise.

Maybe mine was just shitty, but it seemed like I needed to take 3 passes with a reel to get an even cut.

It's probably less even than a gas mower, but doesn't especially bother me, my lawn isn't a golf green. I've found the real key point is not to let grass get too long between mowing - I have to cut the grass every 3-4 days in peak grass season.

It takes me an hour to mow my lawn. Sometimes I can go a month without cutting it, sometimes I have to cut it every 3 days. Depends on the season, amount of rain, etc.

I spend more time doing other crap like weeding, fertilizing, trimming, picking up sticks, etc

The benefit of the robot that cuts it all the time is a healthier lawn with fewer slugs, dandelions, ticks and other pests. I cut once a week but it only really looks good the first day or two after cutting. And it’s full of slugs and weeds most of the season. So the robot isn’t really just doing the job you do yourself (weekend cut when it’s too long), it’s maintaining it in a way that’s hard to do manually.

Consider instead something other than a lawn. They don't call it "green concrete" for nothing.

https://earther.gizmodo.com/lawns-are-an-ecological-disaster...

Depends on your climate. In the PNW for example you don't have to water really so having a nice lawn isn't an ecological disaster that the article would make out.

Watering, weeding and fertilizing is not the only problems -- there is also intentional lack of biodiversity. Plants native to the area will always support more.

Yep, people should use local grasses and clovers. I've let the clover here take over my back yard and it's been wonderful with attracting bees - plus I don't have to mow it very often.

Not an option. There is an association and this a new development. I'm just looking to for the most affordable and hands free maintenance aside from hiring out a company to do it which I still might do.

That was all based on a "green" news article being recycled on gizmodo. The original article was full of incorrect interpretations of data and so forth. E.g. lawns are not, contrary to the original article, the #1 crop by area.

Lawns in general are green by being carbon sinks. But as with all things, it depends. If you live in the midwest with plenty of summer rain, the lawn costs very little. If you're in Arizona or California, water use is an issue.

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