Battery Power for Lawn equipment -- is it time?

Black and Decker quality has plummeted in the past few years. They now appear to be affecting their DeWalt brand too.

 

The ECHO brand is some quality stuff ( note...NOT Ego ). I love the brand.


ECHO-USA | Professional-Grade Handheld Outdoor Power Equipment

Edit..and BTW the battery warranty is pretty darn good...5 years! And great customer service.

Warranty Information | ECHOCordless.com

And no I'm not a rep...just really like the brand!

 

Right now we have some Greenworks that seem to be working well. Lawn mower, blower, small chain saws, weed trimmer.

 

ECHO is about to announce a battery driven riding mower.

 

That would be cool! I bet it ain't cheap though.

I only have one battery for my ECHO mower and need another 4AH one. The batteries are quite expensive....and they charge separately for the darn charger. Looks like a workaround is to get the cordless chainsaw which has the 4ah battery and charger included ( which bought separately would be almost $300! ). The chainsaw, 4ah battery, and charger is $350. I'm scouting for a deal on the set! BTW the cordless chainsaw looks like a beast and a fun toy.

 

Good! the Ryobi needs competition.

 

True, especially when you use them where you have a bunch of loblolly pines.....BUT the blades are generally of a better quality than the ones on gas mowers.
I got a $14 replacement blade and I rotate them, keeping the off-line blade sharpened.
If I want a portion of the yard to look like a golf course, I will drag out the corded mower.
However (comma!) I really don't have much of chance to use it.
I rescued a mower from the mid-80s that I use for ditches, and I fixed another gas mower that was a throw-away and have yet another identical gas engine as a replacement, and no fewer than 3 Honda GX series engines.

My CFO was side eyeing me at all of the junk that I've accumulated until we were driving home from the Commissary one night and she saw an old yellow Huffy bike that was being discarded......


(Not her actual bike ornament....)

 

Cool!
EGO is as well. Theirs should be out next year.
I actually had an Electric Ariens riding lawn mower years ago when we had a huge yard.
I believe they stopped making it though.

 

They ditched their entire "AMP" electric product line. They developed it before there were many buyers of electric outdoor power equipment, and their existing customers rejected the gear so they were caught in the middle.

I hope they eventually get back in. I'd love a chance to buy made-in-usa electric ope.

 

I can't be happier than with my Ryobi battery powered riding lawn mower.

Also, I could not turn down the 40v 5 Amp hour battery refurbished Ryobi push lawn mower that I saw at the entrance at a Home Depot in January. It came with a NEW battery and a NEW charger. I could not turn down less than $125 out the door, tax included.

 

I'm glad that image isn't of the actual one she requisitioned. In my region, those white "ghost" bikes are memorials to cyclists killed while riding, mostly from intoxicated / distracted / inattentive motor vehicle operators. Taking one would be a desecration.

 

Hmmmm....

We just use crosses.........but we do not have the bike culture that PNWs do.
In the Deep South people use them as lawn ornaments....so if you're ever down this way......NO.
We don't kill quite that many cyclists down here.

The Huffy she stuffed into our car without a shred of embarrassment- mud and all, was not a memorial to a fallen rider, but rather a discarded bike that didn't make the 'inside the garage' cut.....and it was leaning up against some garbage cans.

 

Sadly we have 20-25 of those bike memorials around our county as well. Lots of cyclists here including me.

 

Anyone seen cordless shop vac's in the 40V+ power range? There are several sub-20V items out there that are part of their common battery power-tool ecosystems, but nothing to be seen in the higher voltage lawn equipment class.

 

Not that I have ever seen. But for now, corded ones are fine. Even the really powerful ones with a 13A draw, a few good extension cords are good enough. What common shop-vac and portable use case is there for a battery powered shop vac?

I have a battery powered oldschool dustbuster that works well. Then I have a couple battery powered Dysons, one of which is garage/outside use only. I love that thing. It can't suck up water, but everything else is fine. Then my corded Toro leaf blower and vacuum with metal mulcher blade works for basically everything else. I just vacuumed all the mulch beds under trees last weekend. Sucked up all the leaves from the autumn and mulched them into tiny pea sized flakes.

 

Yeah that would be a nice one. The closest thing I've seen would be the Milwaukee 18 volt model.

I'm trying to get my hands on the Greenworks 40v air compressor myself. I think they stopped making them, but it isn't clear if this is a temporary shortage or a firm end to the product.

Good luck!

 

Menards still showing a price. ?

 

Thank you!

We don't have menards out here so I never think of them, but that's the first time I've seen it in stock anywhere in most of a year. I had hoped to buy the tool only, but at this point I'm willing to accept a 3rd charger and 5th battery into the fleet. Really could be worse.

I should have the thing next week.

 

Idea being to get away from cords. Similar benefits for high powered battery shop vac as with other high power cordless tools. Just grab and go. No hunting down and untangling cords, finding outlets to plug into if accessible, avoiding cord tangles as working through the yard, cord wind-up and stowing when done, etc...

Large quantities of damp leaves in further reaches and sometimes narrow recesses of yard that include some rocks and small sticks, not well accessible to cords. Leaf vacs don't seem up to the task. Also higher power of vac would be required for suction power comparable to corded units of large shop vacs. Smaller vacs are underpowered for such tasks and tank capacity is too small so need frequent re-emptying.

 

What's this "seem" stuff? try one before condemning it. The 40V one I use can pull a heck of a lot more than my shop vac. Granted, the pickup is a very different size and shape, maybe that wouldn't work, but I think you need to check one out.