Mow and Mow quiet please!

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Mow and Mow quiet please!

It's 8:30 a.m. on a sunny Sunday morning and the lawn needs mowing. The grass is already dry, but the neighbors are all still asleep. Is there any ruder awakening than a power mower starting up? With my lawn mower, however, I don't need to worry. I roll it out of the shed, insert the ignition key and circuit breaker, squeeze the padded handle, push the starter button. And the 19-inch blade begins to whir.

Whir? It's not a word commonly used to describe a power mower, but whir it does, spinning at 3,250 rpm and cutting the grass. A mulching model, it cuts the grass very fine, recutting each clipping many times. All this I could be telling you as I mow. You'd have no trouble hearing me, for this machine generates about as much noise as conversation. What makes this lawn mower's engine so quiet? It's battery powered.

It takes me on average 45 minutes to mow the lawn, which occupies about two-thirds of our 13,000-square-foot lot. When I'm done, I take out the ignition key and plug in an extension cord. After six to eight hours, a green light appears on the control panel, informing me that the battery is now fully charged and that I can put the mower away.

This is the fifth summer I've used this mower. After its initial recharge out of winter storage each year, it has started every time I pushed the button, and stopped every time I let go of the handle. Its electrical consumption is less than $10 per year. Fuel for a gasoline-powered machine would cost two or three times that much. The only servicing I've ever done is to sharpen the blade and periodically wipe down the underside of the deck. Compare this to oil changes, air filter cleanings, and the cost of periodic trips to the repair shop when the engine simply refuses to start, and you will understand why I tend to feel pretty smug on a Sunday morning.

Smugness, however, is never a virtue, especially on Sunday morning. And therefore I must confess that I have not found paradise quite yet. What could be wrong with all this? Well, for starters, my Ryobi cordless mulching mower is no longer made. I can't urge my neighbors to buy one just like it. And when my mower finally stops working (as it inevitably must), I may not be able to repair it. Parts typically cease to be available five years after a model stops being manufactured, and Ryobi quit making mine in 1998.

The opportunity to mow quietly wasn't the only reason I switched over to an electric lawn mower. I knew I'd be generating less air pollution as well. Gasoline-powered engines, especially older models, are egregious emitters of noxious fumes. Running a typical gasoline-powered lawn mower for a single hour has been calculated to emit as many hydrocarbons as a late-model passenger car driving 20,000 miles.

Electrically powered lawn mowers are not new. Corded models have been around for years and are still available. They are, however, best used to tend very small lawns since, even if you can manage to keep the cord out of the way of the blade, you have to take voltage drop into account: the longer the extension cord, the less power reaches the end (and most corded electric mowers are limited to 100 feet of extension cord).

This is why rechargeable batteries are such an attractive option. They free the mower from the umbilical cord of a power source. Black & Decker introduced the first battery-powered lawn mower to this country back in 1971. This was followed by new models in 1980, 1990, and most recently in 1996. Black & Decker was not alone. Both Briggs & Stratton and Tecumseh began to manufacture battery-powered motors that could be attached to lawn mower decks. Sears sold a battery-powered Craftsman mower. Toro offered two CareFree mower models. And of course there was Ryobi.

But none of these electric lawn mowers generated as much popular demand as I, or the manufacturers, expected. Toro discontinued their CareFree line in 2000, Sears no longer offers a battery mower, and Ryobi is out of the business. In fact, I know of only three currently available models of battery-powered push mowers. The most popular is the 19-inch Black & Decker CMM 1000 (www.blackanddecker.com). Joining it are a pair of new introductions. The 14-inch Neuton rotary mower from Country Home Products (www.countryhomeproducts.com), and a 15-inch Sunlawn Brill 380ASM reel mower from Sunlawn, Inc. (www.sunlawn.com), and Clean Air Gardening (www.cleanairgardening.com).

Some six million new gasoline-powered mowers will be purchased this year. Why is it that fewer than 50,000-not even one percent-of these will be battery powered? Clearly there is an interest in alternative technology. The fastest-growing sector of the lawn-mower market is old-fashioned push reel mowers. According to Terry Jarvis of Sunlawn, there's been a sixfold increase in sales in the last decade, with annual sales now over 300,000.

Given my own entirely favorable experience with a battery-powered machine, what's holding everyone else up? For starters, it may be the batteries themselves. The Brill uses a removable 24-volt nicad battery that weighs only 3.5 pounds. The others, however, use 25-pound lead-acid storage batteries. My Ryobi weighs 75 pounds total, as does the current Black & Decker. The Neuton is lighter at 48 pounds. Even the Brill weighs 29.

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It's 8:30 a.m. on a sunny Sunday morning and the lawn needs mowing. The grass is already dry, but the neighbors are all still asleep. Is there any ruder awakening than a power mower starting up? With my lawn mower, however, I don't need to worry. I roll it out of the shed, insert the ignition key and circuit breaker, squeeze the padded handle, push the starter button. And the 19-inch blade begins to whir.

Whir? It's not a word commonly used to describe a power mower, but whir it does, spinning at 3,250 rpm and cutting the grass. A mulching model, it cuts the grass very fine, recutting each clipping many times. All this I could be telling you as I mow. You'd have no trouble hearing me, for this machine generates about as much noise as conversation. What makes this lawn mower's engine so quiet? It's battery powered.

It takes me on average 45 minutes to mow the lawn, which occupies about two-thirds of our 13,000-square-foot lot. When I'm done, I take out the ignition key and plug in an extension cord. After six to eight hours, a green light appears on the control panel, informing me that the battery is now fully charged and that I can put the mower away.

This is the fifth summer I've used this mower. After its initial recharge out of winter storage each year, it has started every time I pushed the button, and stopped every time I let go of the handle. Its electrical consumption is less than $10 per year. Fuel for a gasoline-powered machine would cost two or three times that much. The only servicing I've ever done is to sharpen the blade and periodically wipe down the underside of the deck. Compare this to oil changes, air filter cleanings, and the cost of periodic trips to the repair shop when the engine simply refuses to start, and you will understand why I tend to feel pretty smug on a Sunday morning.

Smugness, however, is never a virtue, especially on Sunday morning. And therefore I must confess that I have not found paradise quite yet. What could be wrong with all this? Well, for starters, my Ryobi cordless mulching mower is no longer made. I can't urge my neighbors to buy one just like it. And when my mower finally stops working (as it inevitably must), I may not be able to repair it. Parts typically cease to be available five years after a model stops being manufactured, and Ryobi quit making mine in 1998.

The opportunity to mow quietly wasn't the only reason I switched over to an electric lawn mower. I knew I'd be generating less air pollution as well. Gasoline-powered engines, especially older models, are egregious emitters of noxious fumes. Running a typical gasoline-powered lawn mower for a single hour has been calculated to emit as many hydrocarbons as a late-model passenger car driving 20,000 miles.

Electrically powered lawn mowers are not new. Corded models have been around for years and are still available. They are, however, best used to tend very small lawns since, even if you can manage to keep the cord out of the way of the blade, you have to take voltage drop into account: the longer the extension cord, the less power reaches the end (and most corded electric mowers are limited to 100 feet of extension cord).

This is why rechargeable batteries are such an attractive option. They free the mower from the umbilical cord of a power source. Black & Decker introduced the first battery-powered lawn mower to this country back in 1971. This was followed by new models in 1980, 1990, and most recently in 1996. Black & Decker was not alone. Both Briggs & Stratton and Tecumseh began to manufacture battery-powered motors that could be attached to lawn mower decks. Sears sold a battery-powered Craftsman mower. Toro offered two CareFree mower models. And of course there was Ryobi.

But none of these electric lawn mowers generated as much popular demand as I, or the manufacturers, expected. Toro discontinued their CareFree line in 2000, Sears no longer offers a battery mower, and Ryobi is out of the business. In fact, I know of only three currently available models of battery-powered push mowers. The most popular is the 19-inch Black & Decker CMM 1000 (www.blackanddecker.com). Joining it are a pair of new introductions. The 14-inch Neuton rotary mower from Country Home Products (www.countryhomeproducts.com), and a 15-inch Sunlawn Brill 380ASM reel mower from Sunlawn, Inc. (www.sunlawn.com), and Clean Air Gardening (www.cleanairgardening.com).

Some six million new gasoline-powered mowers will be purchased this year. Why is it that fewer than 50,000-not even one percent-of these will be battery powered? Clearly there is an interest in alternative technology. The fastest-growing sector of the lawn-mower market is old-fashioned push reel mowers. According to Terry Jarvis of Sunlawn, there's been a sixfold increase in sales in the last decade, with annual sales now over 300,000.

Given my own entirely favorable experience with a battery-powered machine, what's holding everyone else up? For starters, it may be the batteries themselves. The Brill uses a removable 24-volt nicad battery that weighs only 3.5 pounds. The others, however, use 25-pound lead-acid storage batteries. My Ryobi weighs 75 pounds total, as does the current Black & Decker. The Neuton is lighter at 48 pounds. Even the Brill weighs 29.

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