Gas-powered lawn mower gone solar via 3-step mod

With the price of gas these days, it's no wonder people are skittish when it comes to mowing lawns. What's more, gas-powered mowers have been shown to pollute up to 7 times as much as vehicles. Sure, you could go get a manual mower and get some exercise, but why do that when you can convert your gas-powered mower into an electric one? This modification takes you through three steps to do just that, including: removing the engine and installing an electric replacement, converting the engine to one powered by solar panels, and installing the solar panel. Expect conversion costs to run around $1,500. Of course, you could always just buy a Huskvarna and skip all this tomfoolery.

[david @ May 29th 2008 5:29PM]

Moving a lawn is expensive I would imagine. Mowing not so much. Where does one purchash a HUSKvarna?

[ErrorBorn @ May 29th 2008 5:41PM]

Husqvarna damn Swedes...

[phanbouy @ May 29th 2008 6:24PM]

Husker Du not inlcuded

[iEye @ May 29th 2008 8:04PM]

FAIL!

of the highest order.

Just get a freaking COW! then when the cow is nice and plump you can get some Angus Burgers out of 'em...
you whale kissing tree kissing moon maiden!

[Abuzar @ May 29th 2008 10:41PM]

Yup and have the cow poop on your corn that's growin in your backyard and also use the poop to make electricity.

Poop is useful!

[CosterMonger @ May 29th 2008 5:30PM]

you could just buy a solar panel for your house and get an electric lawnmower.

[Smart People Play Tuba @ May 29th 2008 9:42PM]

Unless I'm wrong, that mower is an electric mower to start with, not gas.

[ddub @ May 29th 2008 5:38PM]

Yeah, electric lawnmowers have been readily available for years. Why use a gas mower as the base?

[ddub @ May 29th 2008 5:40PM]

Or u could get a mower from iRobot for a lot less as well. I think they might have solar charging stations, or maybe i just made that up.

[Chase @ May 29th 2008 5:41PM]

electric lawnmowers dont' do anything to solve the problem when that power is coming from plants that use coal and oil as their source of energy.

I agree w/ the idea of buying solar panels for your house though.. makes a helluva alot more sense. You can actually use the power more often than when you just mow, or move, your lawn

[ddub @ May 29th 2008 6:10PM]

@Chase

What I meant is, if your gonna make a solar powered lawnmower, why not start with an electric and not a gas powered mower.

And when your electricity is not produced 100% from fossil fuels, then yeah, electric motors help.

[TouchSky @ May 29th 2008 9:26PM]

Very little electricity in the US is generated using oil.

Coal is a great way to generate electricity and the US has lots of it. The new plants are nearly pollutant free (CO2 is plant food, not a pollutant).

[why not the LS2LS7? @ May 29th 2008 10:44PM]

Just like how I can kill my lawn by putting too much fertilizer on it, or you can die from drinking too much water, you can't rule out that high levels of CO2 can be a problem.

[TouchSky @ May 30th 2008 8:29AM]

Actually, we can. Do a little original research instead of listening to Al Gore. Start with www.junkscience.com.

Oh, btw, if CO2 is increasing, how to you explain that for the past 10 years, temp has been decreasing?

[dj-kenpo @ May 30th 2008 9:25AM]

wow tochsky, you absolute level of stupidty blows me away.

"THE INTERNETZ SAIDZ SO! SO SHUT UP HIPPY!"

[biomi @ May 30th 2008 10:36AM]

@ TouchSky
It's called global dimming. The particulates in the air reflect the sunlight.

[TouchSky @ May 30th 2008 11:54AM]

Right you are... if a major load of particulates were injected into the upper atmosphere - usually by a volcano or a nuclear - we would and do see a slight cooling effect for a couple of years.

HOWEVER.... there has been no such load injected into the upper troposphere that would account for the downturn in the global temperature. Especially the drop in the last 12 months.

On top of all this, the sun reached it's lowest output in the 11-yr solar cycle last year and still has not turned back on, but that is too recent to make much of a difference in the past 10 yrs and according to Al Gore and his friends, the sun does not have much influence on the global temperature

So, despite the increase in CO2, the planet is cooling. Amazing, huh?

[Chase @ May 29th 2008 5:39PM]

wow, that little solar panel can move an entire patch of land? You'd think it'd take a little more effort than that.

We also may not need to worry about mowing lawns anymore as we are slowly suffocating life from the planet with our emissions.

[Jonny2hats @ May 29th 2008 5:45PM]

does this site just look at http://www.instructables.com/ home page and post interesting things?

[iEye @ May 29th 2008 5:52PM]

This is stupid.

End of story.

[Tyler Welch @ May 29th 2008 6:11PM]

This looks like an electric motor that has been converted rather than a gas one.

[Jean @ May 30th 2008 1:05AM]

exactly... the plastic base is the give away... I've seen a lot of gas mowers in my life and they have never been made of plastic. The pic is clearly of an electric mower.

With that said... who in their right mind would pay this much to convert a mower to solar!? LAME!

[YoMomma @ May 29th 2008 6:13PM]

Who gives a damn????
I drive my 9-11mpg truck to every worthless place i go even to the local walgreens less than a mile away.

[phanbouy @ May 29th 2008 6:29PM]

congrats, you have the most consistently unintelligent, unoriginal, and offensive posts on engadget.

[YoMomma @ May 29th 2008 6:34PM]

WOW thanks, i feel honored!

[bartoron @ May 29th 2008 6:36PM]

While that is true, I am actually Jewish and I think it's kinda cool.

Anyways, how about just putting some solar panels on the roof of the house and having it on a dedicated electric line to power your lawnmower/computer?

[brownsunz @ May 29th 2008 6:38PM]

umm .. actually if you use power that comes from power plants it is still slightly more efficient than using a local gas engine for energy. Although yes you are still poluting . albeit a little less .. solar panels up your efficiency but even the creation of panels cost us some energy and its usually not clean. .. i guess we can't win.

byron

[bartoron @ May 29th 2008 6:43PM]

Well of course manufacturing the solar panels requires energy, but then again manufacturing anything requires energy. However, a solar panel will produce more than enough clean electricity in its lifetime to offset the manufacturing process, when compared to any fossil fuel based energy source.

We can win, but we can't be perfect.

[elliot.sawyer @ May 29th 2008 7:16PM]

You're emitting the same amount of pollution, but you're consolidating it into a central location where it's more likely to be filtered and sanitized before being released into the environment.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ May 29th 2008 9:56PM]

Electric mowers are far more efficient that gas ones. You're putting a lot less pollution into the environment.

[Joel @ May 30th 2008 8:12AM]

I've not looked at electric mowers for some time, but the last time I did I found that the available electric mowers were not as strong as gas mowers. It seems that because of the thickness of my grass i had to cut it a couple of times per week otherwise it would get too thick for the lawnmower to be able to reasonably cut it. I finally ended up paying some one to use a riding lawnmower since there didn't seems to be any push lawnmowers that were more powerful than 6hp.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ May 30th 2008 11:27AM]

Joel:
I use a cordless electric lawnmower (also a Black & Decker, about 5 years old now) There is no issue with strength. I regularly let a section of my lawn grow to over a foot high and mow it down in a single pass. Electric mowers are torquey.

The real issue is runtime. If your lawn is big enough, it can't cut it in one pass and it takes overnight to recharge, so that sucks. However, here in Northern California, lawns are so small that I have mowed my entire lawn, then handed my mower to a neighbor and he mowed his front yard and the unit still wasn't even into the yellow on the battery meter.

[Laron @ May 29th 2008 6:47PM]

Aside from the price, that's a really smart idea.

[kh @ May 29th 2008 7:10PM]

Get a manual push mower from Sears/HomeDepot!!! helps the environment, your body and your wallet. Doesn't get any easier than that...

[PGP-Protector @ May 29th 2008 7:20PM]

Yes it does.
Get your kids to do it :)

[TavisJohn @ May 29th 2008 8:03PM]

May be I can do this MOD to my electric mower and make it cordless.

[George @ May 29th 2008 8:12PM]

An electric lawnmower needs about 200-300W on average during a run, which I assume is way more than that panel can supply....

Cordless electric mowers are a worthwhile choice though, and even charging from fossil fuel derived electricity are going to produce a fraction of the pollution.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ May 29th 2008 9:59PM]

You mean continuous 200-300W? I don't think so. I wish I had an easy way to check, I have a cordless electric mower (and it's great), but no easy way to measure how much it uses during a mowing session.

You're right that solar panel won't do crap while mowing. If you set it outdoors for a week it might be able to charge your mower up though for your 20 mins of mowing.

[wjousts @ May 30th 2008 9:06AM]

My experience has been that cordless mowers are useless. The change isn't enough to get even a quarter of my lawn done. I use a corded B&D and it seems to work just fine. It's still a little tough to get into the furthest reaches of my lawn though.

[BB Sting @ May 29th 2008 9:26PM]

Actually, most coal plants filter their smoke stacks before the greenhouse gases are released.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ May 29th 2008 10:00PM]

Those filters don't remove greenhouse gases (CO2 or H2O vapor), they remove secondary emissions like NOx and such. They do a great job of making the air clean and cutting down on acid rain, but they don't cut down on global warming.

[TouchSky @ May 30th 2008 12:03PM]

So, now water vapor (H20) needs to be stopped? Dry up the oceans? Please....

Honestly, back to CO2. Did you know that the heat retention effect of CO2 decreases per unit of CO2 as the total concentration of CO2 increases? Or that at 430 ppmv CO2, we at top of the curve where further increases will only have a insignificant effect?

Oh yeah... what percentage of the total increase in CO2 is man-made?

[Chris Taylor @ May 30th 2008 12:53AM]

"Chase @ May 29th 2008 5:41PM

electric lawnmowers dont' do anything to solve the problem when that power is coming from plants that use coal and oil as their source of energy."

Chase this simply shows your lack of knowledge on this subject. Electric cars ARE the solution to almost all of our problems.

It would not matter if ALL our power plants are coal driven. It comes down to EFFICIENCY. How much "emissions" come from the power plant to generate the 3 cents in electricity you need to mow your lawn versus the half a gallon of gasoline burned in the mower engine to mow your lawn.

Do the math. The difference in pollution is night and day. $1 in electricity in an electric car is equivalent to 5 gallons of gasoline in the typical car in the USA for the same 100 miles driven.

Are you seriously telling me that a 100 watt bulb burning for just a hair over 72 hours generates even REMOTELY as much pollution into the environment as your car driving 100 miles burning 5 gallons of gasoline?

Efficiency Chase Efficiency. Also remember as we clean up and upgrade all our power stations we are already operating electrical devices so no change needs to be made to be cleaner on OUR ends.

[Jean @ May 30th 2008 1:07AM]

furthermore... who cares!? What a waste of time. Gas mowers FTW.

[dj-kenpo @ May 30th 2008 9:29AM]

exactly. what a waste of time. everyone should DO NOTHING in their spare time. except play xbox and watch the simpsons and get fan.

fuck all these people that DO things.

[uShak @ May 30th 2008 1:20AM]

Makes a lot of sense to me.
Who mows lawns when it's not sunny outside?

[foxfoobar @ May 30th 2008 3:15AM]

LAWL mover

[mase @ May 30th 2008 4:39AM]

For $1500, I could buy enough gas for my mower to mow for 125 years!

[S.P. Gass @ May 30th 2008 8:07AM]

Interesting idea, but way too expensive. Push reel lawnmower sales are much less expensive; with high gas prices, their sales are increasing:
http://lowtechtimes.com/2008/05/30/push-reel-lawn-mower-sales-increasing/

[wjousts @ May 30th 2008 9:08AM]

You should be able to pick up a corded electric mower for