Lawn Mower, How to Choose the Right Petrol (Gas Powered) Lawnmower

Making sure you get the right petrol lawnmower for your garden will not only save you a great deal of frustration, it will also save you money on a costly mistake. Petrol lawnmowers (also called gas lawnmowers or gas powered lawnmowers in the US) are of three main types, Cylinder Mowers (often called Reel Mowers), Rotary Mowers (these can be wheeled mowers or Hover mowers) and finally, Ride on Mowers, the larger models of which are called Lawn Tractors.

Lawnmowers seem to be rated on the area of lawn they are designed to cope with in terms of the number of tennis courts they would cut. This may seem a rather old-fashioned way of doing things but it seems to work well. Basically the formula dictates that if your garden is of half an acre or less, a walk behind mower would be fine for your requirements.

You may still wish to consider a self-propelled mower though, particularly if your garden has sloping areas of lawn to cut (not so bad downhill, but a bit of a 'puff' going uphill!).

Assuming your garden is under the half an acre, so you will be going for a walk behind mower, Ask yourself the following two questions.

1.       Do you want to end up with something that looks like a professional green-keeper’s result, with neatly rolled stripes on a tennis court smooth lawn? 

2.       Do you have a family who all enjoy the lawn for playing and relaxing? 

If the former, you should choose a cylinder or reel mower.  If the latter, you should choose a rotary mower, either a wheeled mower or a hover mower.

1.       A grass collection box that you can empty on your compost heap or into your compost bin for composting.

2.       A mulching attachment that chops the grass up very fine and sprays it back out onto your lawn to feed every time you mow.

In addition, there are now some models available, that will allow you to do a little of both, i.e. collect some of the clippings and put some back on your lawn as mulch.

1. If your garden is towards the half acre size and you are finding the mowing becoming more of a chore, why not take a look at some of the smaller ride-on mowers? It is a luxury to be able to sit down to mow the grass but if it means you can carry on doing the job independently without having to get someone in to do it for you, I say ‘go for the ride on!’.

2. If you find a pull cord difficult this need not be a problem as there are now many models in all makes, types and price range that have an electric key start, make life easy for yourself and choose one of these.

3. If you suffer from a bad back or are very tall, you need to be looking for a model which has an adjustable handle height so that you can get it exactly right and comfortable for you to use.

If you are looking for a petrol ride on mower, you will probably want a lawn tractor if your area of grass is an acre or more. In addition to the points already mentioned, one thing to take into consideration with these is the width of the machine including the cutting deck. There can be access problems so you need to measure your gateways and access points to be sure of getting a mower of this type to where you want to mow.

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