Whether you love or hate schedules, you have to live with them. And what if you are to mow your lawn – with an electric mower on wet grass?
Word of caution: Do not mow wet grass with electric mowers. It’s so risky, and it’s worth the wait for a dry day.
The risks involved include harming yourself and your mower.
What Are The Risks With Mowing A Wet Lawn?
First, wet lawns increase the risk with electrical shocks, more to this are the unwanted fires that may sparkle from your mowing.
Tall and wet grass strains the mower immensely. Eventually, the mower ends up overheating beyond what it can withstand. Commercial lawn mowers can withstand the strain, unlike the ordinary ones for light mowing in small homestead lawns. Wet grass clumps onto the blades and the aeration system – a potential cause of blockages, overheating, and shutdown.
Heavily wet grass is hard to cut. The mower blades bundle it up, creating more strain while cutting. The strain is compounded if the blades are blunt.
Wet grass is not light, and it does not shred well. It forms clumps under the mower, and it’s hard to spread evenly.
Another risk with working on wet grass is uprooting it. You end up forming bare patches that are more ugly when you compare them to the even cut you achieve on dry lawns.
The other risk with mowing wet grass is tripping and falling. The situation is riskier with soils that hold heavy moisture like clays.
Excessive moisture is a catalyst to rusting of the mower’s metallic parts – reducing the lifespan, and that is aside from the frequent repairs you’ll require to keep it in great shape.
How Wet Is The Lawn For A Mower?
When it comes to using electric mowers, both wet and damp are adverse conditions. The best condition should be dry.
Here are very helpful tips to see if you should mow or not with an electric mower.
There’s a very simple test to check how wet your lawn is. First, take a walk across the yard, ideally walking along a flat area. Take keen looks at the appearance of the grass as you walk.
Check if the grass springs back. If not, it’s too wet. Also, if you could feel and see the wetness on your toes, still, that’s too wet for an electric mower.
Another helpful tip is to look at shady areas as wetness disappears from them at much slower rates.
There Are No Water Resistant Mowers
All mowers are meant to work on dry conditions. Therefore, pushing them to work on wet grass not only endangers your health but also reduces their efficiency and eventual lifespan.
There are options to help you. The model – Robomow is a far more automated gadget. It has humidity sensors and self-operated when ample conditions are present.
Luckily for you, there are some options out there. We will focus on one in particular that will help you maintain your lawn and keep yourself safe. Robomow detaches itself from the charging place and completes mowing before it returns to its initial charging area. Other advanced models also sense rainy conditions.
Apart from the pricing, it’s a great option to ward off your worries with mowing wet lawns.
Using Gas Mower Instead Of Electric Mowers
Generally, electric mowers are far more beneficial than gas mowers. And this also applies to the electric ones that are cordless.
Using gas mowers is more expensive than electric ones on your lawns. With gas, you’ve to replenish the cylinders more frequently. For the electric mowers, lithium-ion batteries are the medium that provides the power and are far much easier to contain, unlike those for gas.
If you consider gas-powered mowers, there are other hidden costs with their maintenance, and those are aside from the gas replenishments. Consider the following:
- Changing of oils for the engine
- Cleaning and replacements or the spark plugs
- Replacements for the fuel and air filters
- Need for technicians to fine-tune
The list above comprises costs that you may not face when you use an electric mower. There’s also another huge gain with electric mowers – great at the maintenance of the environment. Gasoline mowers are a mess with the smoke emissions.
Under the instances when oil changes are mishandled, it adds on to the environmental hazards. Old used oils are a disaster with fishponds, and improper disposals continue the harmful remains into rivers, lakes, and eventually into oceans.
If you compare electric and gas mowers, gasoline one’s score is pathetic for high noise. Electric ones are great at more comfortable handling the noise they produce. Consider the unnecessary noise released over many years – that can be very harmful to your ears, especially if you’ve never taken the caution to put on ear protection equipment.
Other Helpful Tips For Using The Electric Mowers
1. Take Adequate Care Of Batteries For Cordless Electric Mowers
A cordless electric mower relies on batteries made up of lithium ions. Your mower will serve you for a long time, and the batteries can give you superb service for periods ranging from as low as three and as high as five years.
The best tip for you to get maximum service is to keep the batteries away from excessive overheating while not in use. In winter, when the batteries are not in use, you should keep them safe with a charge ranging from 30 to 50%. Therefore, while charging them for storage, please do not allow them to hit 100% capacity.
2. Keeping Mower’s Blade Sharp Enough
Electric mowers – both corded and cordless are great while the blades are sharp. Sharp blades efficiently distribute the cutting power with ease – ensuring optimum use of the entire equipment. The mowers require a thorough cleanup, and it helps unclog the engine’s aeration system and reduce the instances with rusting and need for replacements.
3. Inspection Of Mower’s Wheels
Wheels on the lawnmowers are pretty easy to maintain. Once per month, check their condition and inspect the fasteners. Besides keeping them clean, ensure they are replacements in good time to help keep the cutting heights well checked.
4. Parting Notes – On Whether To Cut Wet Grass with Electric Mowers
Rule of thumb – keep off from mowing wet grass. There’s more harm than good if you take on mowing wet grass. Apart from risks with electric shocks and fires, you end up overstraining the mowing equipment.
Wet grass is hard to mow to a smart cut, and it will overstrain the mowers, and you’ll end up with a poorly mowed lawn besides. The overstrain on equipment will result in a more frequent need for replacements or overall halting of the entire mower within far reduced lifespans.
Dry grass is easy to mow, and you have a low risk of uprooting it. Electric mowers and others powered by gasoline or lithium-ion batteries are designed to work on dry grass, not on wet grass.
Although it’s a great tip to clean and maintain mowers, wet grass will clog under the mower, increase the rusting of metallic parts, and interfere with the air filters. If your budgets allow, you can get the robo-mower to help you out with keeping a lawn smart without your need to ever look for dry conditions.
