There is a lot of information out there about emissions from gardening equipment. Gardening equipment emissions were not regulated until 1995. According to the EPA, a standard gas mower emits the same amount of fumes in a year as a new card being driven 500,000 miles. Not to mention mowers are considerably noisier than a car let alone the alternative. This led me to looking into manual reel (spelled correctly) mowers. There are certainly drawbacks to a manual mower. You provide all the manpower. So they are not ideal for hilly terrain. Also, a very bumpy yard will make it more difficult for an even mow (although that is true for a gas mower too). Also, sticks, twigs, and pine cones can easily get caught in the blades causing you to have to stop and dislodge them.
Besides the environmental benefits, manual mowers are very quiet. They require very little maintenance; needing an annual minor adjustment and most only needing a blade sharpening every 5-8 years. They are fairly light and relatively inexpensive. Consequently, you get a nice little workout from mowing. Also, if you want to beat the heat, you can mow early in the morning or at night without upsetting the neighbors.
With the green movement becoming more of the "in thing" to do, manual reel mowers are making a small comeback. Websites such as www.ecomowers.com and www.peoplepoweredmachines.com have been very helpful in learning about options. I also found that Lowes keeps a couple different reel mowers in stock (although at the Fayetteville store there weren't any floor models set up). Little improvement had been made to reel mowers until recently. Through my "research" (read "web surfing") my favorite is the Fiskars Momentum. They can be bought brand new for $200 which is pretty reasonable for a mower. Especially when you consider that we won't ever have to buy gas or oil for it and won't have to change out filters, spark plugs, etc. I am going to wait to make a final decision until I actually set foot on our new yard (post about our house coming soon), but as of now I think I will go with the Fiskars. Lowes does carry it in stock so I can pick one up there in Virginia.
Here is a video on the mower. On a somewhat related note, "No Impact Man" is next on my green reading list.
I bought a sweet little reel mower at an estate sale the other day. Price quoted when I arrived at the sale: 15 dollars. Price as I was leaving....3 dollars. So I bought it. : ) We like it, but we are finding it tough to use on our tall grass that got away from us when it was raining for so many days in a row. We are going to try sharpening the blades and see if that helps. Come over and try it out! It certainly is much quieter and much less stinky than the gas mower, which incidentally, has some kind of wonky problem that is causing it to spew forth oil in nasty way.
ReplyDeleteThat Fiskar mower looks pretty cool...
Yeah, I would like to check it out. I think once you catch up from all the rain, the mower should work pretty well if you mow frequently... or at least that is what I have read. :)
ReplyDeleteI think there are some ball bearings in the mower. I wonder if there is a problem there and they are spewing oil. But really I have no idea.