You Either Like the Earthwise 50120 Electric Lawn Mower or You Like Terrorists
Posted: Tuesday, May 10, 2011
by Bruce Horst
WryteStuff
This is my personal review of the Earthwise 50120 20-Inch 12 amp Electric Mulching Lawn Mower. For the past few years, Jean and I have been having our lawn mowed by a lawn maintenance crew. For only $25 per week these guys would mow and bag my lawn, edge and clean the sidewalks. What a deal! I told myself (and anyone who asked) that if I could do what they did to my lawn, I'd mow it myself. But I couldn't, so I happily paid them to mow it for me.
I decided that if I was going to start mowing the lawn myself, I was going to need to do it in a way that our old lawn crew wasn't doing it. I decided on buying an electric lawn mower. Houston often has periods of time in the Summer where smog is so thick that we are advised to not mow our lawns with gasoline mowers on certain days. Yuck!
I first started looking at lawn mowers which could hold a charge for 30 minutes. Because we don't have a very large lawn, this was all we needed. After reading a few consumer reviews, I realized that I could get a more powerful electric lawn mower for less money if I decided I could operate it with an extension cord.
The Earthwise electric mower seemed to fill the bill perfectly. It currently sells for $187 on Amazon, and with their Super Saver Shipping, shipping is free. Last year the governor of Texas Rick Perry tried to tax Amazon more than the law allows, and they pulled their warehouses out of Texas, so Amazon didn't even have to charge sales tax. Thank you, Governor Perry. I don't have a problem with paying my fair share of taxes, but sometimes incompetence of leadership means that not everyone has to pay their fair share.
The mower was delivered today, which is a good thing since I told the lawn crew last week that we didn't need them anymore, and the grass was getting pretty tall. I immediately unboxed it, put the handle together, connected it with an extension cord (you need a 12 gauge extension cord, which could cost as much as half the cost of the mower) and I started mowing.
The mower worked great! It cuts evenly, and is so quiet I could probably mow at midnight and not wake the neighbors. It has a 12 amp motor, so by my calculations, mowing the lawn for half an hour at 11 cents per kilowatt/hour costs less than 16 cents for electricity. Compare this to a gallon of gasoline that was needed before, at $4.00 per gallon, and as someone (also from Texas) once famously said, "if you're not for us, you're for the terrorists." I would much rather pay 16 cents to a U.S. electric company than $4.00 to an overseas oil company. Sorry, Shell and BP, these colors don't run!
With my previous mower, I couldn't turn it over to clean under the deck because it would cause it to leak gasoline and oil. This mower doesn't have such problems, so cleaning it is a snap. Overall, I couldn't be happier with this mower. Now I can hardly wait until I can afford that electric car.
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)Hi Bruce, I just read your article after getting off my 20 horsepower craftsman garden tractor that has been falling apart slowly but surely lately. I did not want to buy a new one and was going to try and fix it up instead of paying $2,000 for a new one. Well, today it caught on fire (20 minutes ago) and I realized it's time to buy a new one. I have about 3 acres mowable and electric just won't cut it, no pun intended--if you know of something electric that does my kind of area let me know--I might try it--maybe I should just buy some sheep---they like grass don't they?3 acres, and you don't want a push mower? Actually, I read that if you need more than a 75' extension cord, you don't want an electric mower. Funny thing is that 30+ years ago my oldest brother bought an all-electric riding mower at an auction. It was great, I remember being able to talk on the phone (cordless phones were cutting edge technology then) while mowing with it. The only problem was that every 2 years you needed to buy $600 worth of batteries to replace the worn out batteries. Still, for this was 30 years ago, you would think that we'd have something even better than this today.
Then again, I think sheep would be even less maintenance.Yeah, Bruce you'd think they would have come up with something great in that 30 year span that you mention...makes you wonder why no one ever modified that to work. Always nice to read product reviews. I actually use a smaller mower too and the next time I need to replace it, I'll seriously look at electric.Oh no! Not sheep. They're good for CLEARING land because they pull the grass (or whatever) up by the roots. You need grazers like donkeys or horses. Although, sheep ARE really cute and very picturesque.I'm sure Ive been called a donkey or thererabouts while mowing.
Hi Bruce.
Sounds like a good deal! And if I had a lawn, I'd buy one. But we don't have a lawn to maintain ... or water ... and that's the way ... a hunh, a hunh, we like it, a hunh, a hunh. :)
Hugs,
DianneCasey &The Sunshine band--I learned how to play drums listening to them!
» left by Wayne and Judy Bayliff
1 year 14 days ago.
8 fans. Follow Wayne and Judy Bayliff on twitter!Hi Bruce,
You may remember our little front lawn? Well, it is dispatched weekly under the auspices of our HOA, but your article almost makes me want to run out and get me a lawn mower. ;-)I'd love to have a HOA that ensured that all of our lawns were mowed the equitably. Right now we've got a house across the street which is about to be foreclosed on, and the owners haven't mowed the lawn for months. A few weeks ago I stitched together all the extension cords I could find and mowed it myself!
I enjoyed this article Bruce. But it got me thinking about my next mower purchase and that sent me on a series of google search diversions that included research into self powered push mowers.
Those things use neither gas nor electricity. And you get a free workout!Hi Steve. I looked into the self-powered mowers, too. I'd recommend looking at them on Amazon and reading the user reviews. Some seem to work great, and some not so great. Before I discovered Amazon I bought quite a few not-so-great lawn tools. I had a self-powered rotary mower years ago and it gave me a great workout. It just didn't cut grass, though.
I've been using this electric mower for almost two months and our lawn has never looked so good. I also purchased an electric trimmer/edger to replace the gas model that I have and can't get started. I've never enjoyed mowing the lawn so much in my life! In fact, I'm going to go mow the lawn now...
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