Electric Lawn Mowers

Electric Garden lawnmowers

Electric mowers were first made in 1926 by a company called Ransomes, almost a full hundred years after the first ‘push-along’ mowers were invented by cloth mill engineer, Edwin Beard Budding in the English county of Gloucestershire.

At first, electric mowers followed the same basic cylindrical design which had remained unchanged since their invention, until 1933 that is, when Power Specialities, a manufacturer of lawnmowers, as well as other specialised agricultural equipment, came up with the design of the first rotary blades, the kind that we see in the hover mower today.

Modern electrically powered lawnmowers are extremely popular with the average householder who has a small to medium sized garden. These sized gardens do not take a lot of maintenance, especially if they are lawned over. In the summer months a once weekly skim over will keep them under control and looking tidy.

For this purpose the electric mower is perfect. It is of light weight, and very easy to use, with a simple on/off switch. The only inconvenience of these are the cables which, if you are a bit unmethodical with the mowing, it can be only too easy to catch the cable in the blades without even realising.

This is particularly easy to do with hover mowers where you can swing them from side to side, and it is nigh on impossible to walk up and down in a straight line with them.

 Most of the newer mowers are fitted with an automatic ‘kill-switch’ as standard. This may not prevent you from getting a nasty shock still, but at least the severed end of the live wire, which is still plugged into the mains, will not be flapping about and shocking you again, as well as everyone else who tries to come to your aid.

For larger gardens, the electric mower of any variety is likely to be of little use. While they have ample power for the smaller gardens, the power which electricity provides them with, will just not have the capabilities to cope with a lot of work all in one go. It would end up being rather like trying to mow the lawn with a vacuum cleaner.

Of course the other disadvantage to trying to use an electric mower in a garden the size of a park, is that the cable will just not reach to where you need it to be, and using an extension lead in a garden with a load of damp newly cut grass flying around is not advisable.

The main feature that makes the electric mower so popular with the average household, is the fact that they are very reasonably priced. At half the price of petrol mowers they are extremely good value, and if you only have a small area to mow, it is just not necessary to spend such a lot of money on a big cumbersome machine that is far too powerful for the purpose for which it is needed.