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robo mowers


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reviving this topic......in the event I decide to stay with ‘real’ grass (and make the decision between returf or try and rescue what is there) then the next thing to cover is mowing.

 

I bought a bosch battery mower last year...cost about £350 but is very good rotary mower with stripes just like the old petrol beast used to do.  All good but even with lighter weight mower I am finding it hard to manage so onto robots.....

 

those of you that have had them for a while any useful insights and/or recommendations?

 

Do they cover lumpyish ground or must it be billiard table smooth and level...I have a bit of a slope one side.

 

What about edges?  I hate doing edges more than mowing but do like neat edges!

 

Are they woofer friendly?

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Hi @lizzie, just a reminder of the discussion here...

Edges - not completely, you still need to strim. I get away with strimming 2-3 times per year.

 

Our ground is lumpy and sloped. Works OK. Check the spec for degree of slope.

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Thank you @ragg987 good stuff. I would be interested to see how peoples views are a year on. There does seem to be some limit to their usefulness, my friend who had one in last year has not bothered to set it up again this season and so their grass is now very long....they are not gardeners and really need to take the lawn up or get the astro turf!

 

I am now past the point of cost justification which was one of reasons last year.  Now I am struggling to keep on top of it, I so don't want a man in every week the whole ethos of this house was empowerment for me to be able to do most things without help.

 

I had a very large garden before and went from planting and maintaining acres of woodlands and putting in new water gardens on the banks of the stream as well as regular gardening to having to have a man in to help me every week as I just couldn't manage it alone any more.  I hated having to have help and want to avoid it here it is my little garden I want to do it, doing things myself is very important to me these days but sadly I have to accept my limitations.

 

The bit about the edges doesn't sound great...2 or 3 times a year would not be enough for my patch.  They need doing at least once a fortnight or month if pushed and strimming not an option for most of it, I took off chunks of render on the planters with the battery strimmer so back to the edging shears.  I need a mowing edge around the lawn side of the planters really but that ruins my vision of how I wanted it to be.  Sometimes visions have to be revised for practical reasons!

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This is our second year with the mower. I left the mower out all winter in early spring simply used the app to re-program it to mow on a schedule. It just got on with it.

 

It does occasionally get stuck, the app warns me. One new issue, this year, is we have a few tough weeds growing in the lawn and the (small) mower is not able to cope - it either bounces back off them or get stuck. I sprayed weed-killer last weekend - partially helping.

 

One way you could help with edge trimming is to have a course of paving blocks at edge of lawn - you can then let the mower overlap cutting above the blocks - in effect have the boundary wire closer to the lawn edge. While this controls the height of lawn you will still need to tidy up as the grass will grow over the edge on to the paving.

 

So no perfect solution, if you are requiring that perfect edge  you might be better off employing someone to provide that rather than invest in a mower. Or recalibrate your vision ;)

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Our Robomow Rx20u (£450) is cutting the grass of our rental as I sit inside and type this. I hate gardening with a passion which is why I bought it. I set it off manually a couple of times a week as it doesn’t have a rain sensor like the big expensive ones. Lawn is about 250 m2 and has a very complex edge pattern.

 

In terms of the cut it does miss the edges which is not ideal. I bought a cheap Makita strimmer which uses drill batteries and it takes me about 15mins once a month in summer to do the edges. Shame you can’t use a strimmer - edging shears would take ages. However, you could let the robot mower do the majority of the lawn and then just run the mower round the edges once a month.

 

Should say also you’re not going to get stripes with a robot. I believe most of them just make random passes across the lawn like mine rather than an up / down pattern you would make with a mower.

 

I love mine as it saves me from doing one of the jobs I most hate, money well spent.

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I presume these things need to cut the grass every few days? because they don't collect grass cuttings.  If ours was left much more than a week it would be impossible to cut without collecting the grass cuttings (or leaving clumps of thatch everywhere)

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Yeah they all mulch, so best not to have it too long I guess. A week is about the maximum on our lawn before I have to switch from mulching to bagging. But I find mulching is always preferable long term for the lawn, if you can.

Edited by gravelld
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1 hour ago, Ed Davies said:

Do these things get nicked? If not, why not?

 

I’m sure they do. Ours is hidden round the back but I do put it in the garage if we are going away. It has an alarm, which is of limited use, and a fob that can be removed to disable, although that’s mainly for safety.

 

If they knew it was there, there would be nothing to stop someone nicking ours whilst we were out. 

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14 minutes ago, Temp said:

I'm trying to cut the overgrown grass in the church yard next door... We need a robo powered scythe. 

 

Get the grim reaper to do it ? 

 

 

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90 mins with my Stihl today and I managed about a quarter of it ? Seriously thinking about hiring a power scythe if I can get one at a good price.

 

The bind weed keeps tangling around the strimmer head.

Edited by Temp
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