Need some advice in purchasing a riding lawnmower

[DrPizza]

I rider is certainly not too big for just shy of an acre... The OP doesn't need a 60" $7,500 professional rider.

Besides, the rider can handle other duties, like pulling a garden trailer.

The pictures provided are perfect. .7 acre lot, which INCLUDES the house, driveway, landscaping, etc. There's not a lot of lawn there.

 

[mizzou]

It takes me 30 min to push mow .24 acres (including my small house), and it's rectangular.

I can see why you would want a riding lawn mower....but it's not absolutely necessary for what you have.

Depending on how long your mowing season is, maybe you can get away with a high performance push mower.

 

[CaptnKirk]

That's kinda funny - I've only mowed twice this year. The rest of the time I've just let the goats out. In fact tonight, along the side of my driveway it was getting a little tall & weedy, so I let two of the boys have a snack.


eh, I thought about it for a few minutes. I wasn't thinking. Maybe you do need a little more goatpower.
A Fainting 9N or 2N will easily pull a 2 inch lawn.
Hook that up with 25 others along with a Border Collie, and that will keep it moving.

More Goats !

 

[velillen]

Well, first of all velillen, I'd recommend getting that small gap under the porch blocked off. Else, you're going to have a family of skunks/feral cats/etc. moving in.

I think most of the stuff was covered - you want the mowing deck to be HEAVY. Otherwise, the thing is going to rust through eventually. (my mowing deck is around 40 years old & solid.)

One thing I dispute that was mentioned in the thread - someone said the more horsepower, the better. WTF for? Mine is 12HP and is capable of operating a plow, a rototiller attachment, a snowblower attachment, etc. Higher horsepower models of riding mowers are like megapixels in cameras. People believe that higher is necessarily better. What they're overlooking is that they're making a lot of the other components cheaper to compensate on the total cost. "Well, brand A has a 20HP for $1999, and brand B has a 24HP for $1989. Brand B is clearly the better bargain." Wrong, but that's how people shop. 12HP is plenty for a 48" deck. A real tractor, one capable of operating a brush hog and doing multiple acres in very little time, can be as low as 24HP. 24 in a riding mower is overkill.

O the front porch and back deck need a bit of work. or more just some covering to prevent exactly that. The house was built in 2003 and theres no evidence of anything living there and the owner doesnt remember anything every getting under there but i do plan to just block it off anyways.

So basically go for something with a nice steelish deck. Gotcha there. And yeah its flats o im not to worried on the HP end of things. Pulling a trailer is something thats a nice option but also a meh thing as well. i have access to the back via a rv parking slot on the side so the pickup can go plenty far back.

Ever considered one of the larger walk behind models?
http://www.google.com/products/cata...t0k7TsinBsaRgQetvejPBg&sqi=2&ved=0CJ0BEPMCMAI#

At 34" that's a decent sized mowing deck. .7 acre is just to the point where traditional push mower is undersized but a rider is too big. Walk behind is a good compromise.

O i know it is. Which makes it sorta annoying lol. That does seem like a decent option. I was leaning to get away from the walk behinds since i've been using one to mow about the same size (but split into two "fields" and just started hating all the safety features in the mowers. Like it auto turning off if you let go of the blade power or having to push up on the handle to make it move. The first mower we had 15 years ago was the best but alas it rusted through.


The John Deere D110 seems like a decent choice? 14 gauge steel cutting deck. "automatic" (vs the "manual of the d100) Just trying to learn ebfore i go to a store so i know what to actually look for!

of course at the price the one Vi linked doesnt seem to bad either.

Lol just seems like an inbetween sized yard for me. I grew up with it taking ~1.5 hours to mow all the grass so thinking the riding would be more fun/quicker