We get it. Mowing your lawn is a chore. We’ve come a long way since the days of your grandfather’s push mowers like the one below. Now we have high speed riding lawn mowers that zip around your property, cutting your grass, and work time, down drastically. But. You still have to be out in the hot sun when you’d rather be spending your time doing something else. This is where a Robot Lawn Mower comes in.
What exactly is a Robot Lawn Mower?
If you’re anything like us, an image of the terminator popped into your head when you saw that headline. Unfortunately, that’s not quite what we mean. You know those automated vacuums that cruise around your house cleaning the dust and food crumbs from your floor when you’re too busy? (Check out the Roomba if you’re not familiar) It’s like that. But for your lawn. It cruises around on its own and cuts your grass for you, so you can do other things.
What makes them unique?
One of the big things that makes robotic lawn mowers different from traditional mowers is how they approach cutting your grass. Most of the time you let your grass grow to a certain length and then once or twice a week (or when you really can’t stand it anymore) you cut it back down to size. With robot lawn mowers, they only take about a 1/4 – 1/8 of an inch off at a time. But they mow more frequently. Cutting less of the blades off at one time, while cutting them more often will allow the grass to become healthier overall as it grows.
Can I still use one if I have a big lawn?
You bet you can. Most robotic lawn mowers have a set battery life and once that starts to run out, they’ll bring themselves back to the charging station you’ll install on your property. You can schedule times of day where the mower is set to run, and it will automatically return to the charging station when it’s not those scheduled times. If the battery runs out before the mower cuts your whole yard, it will automatically go back out and keep on cutting.
Will it mow in straight, satisfying lines?
Here’s a bit of a downfall. The Robotic Lawn mower doesn’t really follow a path. It just sort of zooms around your yard without any clear path or direction until it senses that the lawn is completely mowed. Because it’s only cutting a small piece of the blade of grass at a time, you don’t see zig zagging lines on our yard, but you also won’t get the straight lines that you do from a traditional lawn mower.
So, is a Robot lawn mower a good switch for you? It could be! There’s a lot to consider and we really didn’t touch on everything here. As with everything there are some great advantages and some downsides that you need to consider before you purchase. But if any of this sounds appealing, they’re definitely worth checking out.
One last thing… they do come equipped with a sensor so they can sense, and stop automatically, when something is in their way. So, there’s no need to worry about the family dog…
