Our old lawn tractor has issues. It was second hand when we got it, though the previous owners clearly kept up maintenance. And we did too. But the issue became my Husband’s driving. I know, sounds like a joke right? But the man insists on mowing as close as possible to immovable objects. Why I don’t know, we have a weed whacker for a reason, and a good quality 4-cycle one at that, but he does. And since he also insists on doing so at full speed the end result was a mower deck that was in seriously bad shape. He’s been banging it back “into shape” at least twice a summer for a couple years now. And the wear and tear is showing.
We’ve been wanting a zero turn mower for a while now. With two acres to mow the old lawn tractor was slow as heck, and mowing the entire yard was a 4-5hr job. We usually did it in pieces, but it still ate up a huge chunk of the day. But we also figured we’d be saving our pennies for a while before that happened.
Last summer my work got in a new Ariens IKON zero turn. Sweet peice, msrp $3700. Never happening, no matter how much we drooled. But there was an issue, the Ariens came in missing the bolts needed to attach the tow hitch. Supposedly the bolts were ordered from Ariens, and the mower sat, and sat, and sat……
Apparently the woman who was the dept head last summer never ordered the parts. She also apparently never ordered the parts for a couple other things we’d been holding onto (like, the keys to the two Toro zero turn mowers). The guy who replaced her came in just late enough in the year last year that he never even had to look at the mowers, and never even realized we had a high dollar value mower sitting there for essentially no reason (actually, three, but this is about the one). Back in mid February management finally got a clue, and the new dept head was swapped for the guy who was running the paint dept (this was right in the middle of me being sick as a dog and so I never posted about it). This was a good thing, the new new dept head worked in the garden dept for over 10yrs before he was promoted and took over paint (paint being the easiest to manage dept in the store). They should have just done that in the first place….anyway!
Our new dept head was more than a bit horrified and frustrated by the undone work sitting in the dept. And has been playing catchup since (poor guy). Last week he finally got to the Ariens and looked it over, realized the only things missing were the nuts and bolts to hold the tow hitch on, walked down to the hardware dept, marked down the appropriate bits and pieces, and attached the hitch. Then he went to put it on the sales floor, at which point he discovered that Ariens had made model changes between last year and this year. The $3700 mower, that had sat around for a year because no one in charge could be bothered to figure out how to handle it, was now clearanced. 30% off. (yes, the ASM over garden should have helped keeping the mess from being so bad, however right at the same time they changed our dept head at the end of last summer they changed also our ASM, and the new lady is much less organized….can anyone else see the pending problem or is it just me?? Apparently management can’t!)
I (im)patiently waited the 24hrs that corporate requires employees to wait before buying marked down products, and then dug out the credit card and had our new Ariens IKON zero turn delivered to the house. No, we didn’t need to spend the money, not even a little bit, but the chance to get that kind of deal was totally worth it.
After having sat unused for so long it needed a good lubing in various spots, had to detach and reattach the spark plugs and what not, but the battery was still holding a charge, and it started right up after that little bit of maintenance.
Husband and I had a discussion about his tendency to run into immovable objects, along with a very pointed reminder about the fact that we bought a weed whacker for a reason. And he had fun mowing the lawn Sunday. He didn’t get the whole thing done, it’s still too wet and mucky in areas, but it took him barely an hour to do over half the yard. Totally awesome.
Our other new piece of equipment is a woodchipper. I forgot to get a picture, but its last years model from Cub Cadet, rated to handle branches up to 3″ in diameter.
Why a wood chipper? Well, remember back in march when I posted about this tree that came down? Our original intention was to rent a wood chipper, turn as much of it into mulch as possible, and maybe have a bonfire or something with the rest of it, since pine isn’t considered quality firewood (and this stuff has some serious sap too).
Then I started pricing rentals. $180+gas+tax for a day’s rental on a woodchipper that’d handle branches up to 6″ in diameter. And no guarantee that we’d finish the tree in a day. Not to mention that we have a growing brush pile that we keep meaning to chip up and get rid of. Not to mention that the big pine in the front yard is definitely dead and will need to come down and be dealt with before it comes down on the wires to the house.
So I started pricing buying chippers. The one we bought was $700. Or equivalent to 3.5 days rental, though it won’t handle quite as large branches.
It also arrived this week, and we ran some branches through it Sunday as well, nice fine chips for the most part. We can now work on the tree in pieces (my FIL already helped us do the initial breakdown of the tree).
We also just pretty much blew our household budget for the summer. But I think its worth it!
S-W-E-E-T deal on that mower. Sometimes, even when you don’t plan on it, you just can’t turn down a deal like that. Hope hubby remembers your talks about using the weed wacker and not the mower.
Not that I can blame him. I hate weed wacking and got by the first two summers without one; Using the mower as close as I could and either pulling out or just leaving stuff I absolutely could not get to. Last summer I finally gave in so I could get the grass growing along the chainlink fencing; I actually bought grass shears first, and after a couple of rounds with them, decided that wasn’t, ummm, cutting it :D. Only used the wacker twice just to keep things down to what I could live with visually.
Hell yeah on the chipper. If you can get one that will be used as much as it will be, for less than 4 day’s rent, can’t pass that up at all.
Not a fan of weed whacking either, though adding a sling to help carry the weight of the thing helps ALOT. We’re not huge on keeping things neat, but trimming the grass and weeds around the garden is useful with keeping the weeds down IN the garden, plus the ticks here are bad enough with things short.
It helps though that the zero turn is easier to slow down than the old lawn tractor too, so he’s able to get close, slower, already just after driving it twice. I’ve not done much with it, just a quick turn around the yard the day it was delivered after I got it running. My arm isn’t thrilled with the controls yet, though its getting better for sure!