LAWNMOWING FOR A HEALTHY LAWN
Having to cut your own grass is a chore that only the most dedicated gardeners remotely enjoy. Struggling with wires, pulling a muscle with an unruly starter cable, realising you are out of petrol and having to go to the garage… all of these are just the beginning of potential problems you might encounter during this household chore. Not to mention dealing with clippings or the time spent walking endlessly up and down your lawn when you could be relaxing or doing other things. More often than not, mowing the lawn is a dirty job that results in sweat, and sometimes even blood and tears.
Enter the robotic lawn mower. Clean, simple and leaving you with a healthier lawn, you can now sit back and relax while a robot does your job for you. This might sound a bit out there. But before you panic about robots taking over the universe in some kind apocalyptic movie fashion, once you understand how they work, you will realise that robotic lawn mowers are not as space age as you might think.
How?
Our mowers are all battery powered and are fitted with a charging station where the mower “lives”. He sits there happily charging his batteries until the time when he (or she)* must go out to work. On certain makes and models, this time can be scheduled by you using a smartphone app or control panel. When the time comes, he glides off his charging station, mowing the lawn in a random pattern (experts agree that the random pattern is the healthiest for all types of lawn), leaving you with a beautifully mowed lawn. Afterwards, he will return to his station, satisfied with another good job done. (*Please note, as the lawn mowers owner is it up to you to decide on the gender of and name your mower, this is not part of the service).
But how does he know where to mow? What if it goes mad and runs amok?
There is no chance of the mower going off course because the installation process involves wire being laid around the perimeter of your lawn. This is a very precise process, the wire will be installed around any flowerbeds, trees or obstacles over 4 inches high. The wire is then buried or pegged down so it is invisible once it has been installed and a few weeks have passed.
The wire connects to the charging base which transmits a low voltage signal around the wire. The mower can “see” this signal and it tells him where to go. The signal can be picked up by the mower at any time, night or day, rain or shine, and with meticulous accuracy. The mower follows the signal and mows the entire area within the wire. Once it has finished, or realises the batteries are low, it follows the wire back to its charging base. The mower is unable to go past the wire, it’s like an invisible force field keeping the mower in check.
But what about the clippings?
All robotic lawn mowers are mulchers, which means that the 3000-4000rpm blade cuts the clippings into tiny pieces and sends them back to the lawn, so that they virtually disappear. Within a matter of days, the clippings have rotted down to provide the prefect fertiliser, leaving your lawn not only perfectly mowed but enriched with nutrients.
BENEFITS OF A ROBOTIC LAWN MOWER
– No work on your part
Thereby removing at least one household chore from your busy life, and giving you more time to actually enjoy your garden.
– Environmentally friendly
Being battery powered, the mower emits no pollution (unlike traditional mowers which pollute 10 times more than cars)
– Good for your lawn
The mulching process provides important nutrients for your lawn, and grass clippings are universally known to be the best fertiliser for grass. Plus, a robotic mower maintains a consistent lawn height using the 1/3 rule (only 1/3 of the grass height should be cut at each mowing) and the random pattern used by a robotic lawn mower is agreed by experts to be most beneficial for the health of your lawn.
– Easy to program
The controls are simple and easy to understand and require no technical knowledge on your part.
– No waste
Using a conventional mower results in a lot of grass clippings (reportedly up to 4.5 tonnes every season for the average half acre garden, that’s a lot of waste) but a robotic lawn mower mulches the clippings and recycles them into an organic fertiliser better than any chemical compound you might buy in the shops. A robotic lawn mower does three jobs in one, cuts your grass, deals with the clippings and fertilises your lawn.
– No cables, petrol or additional accessories required
We live in a world that is being taken over by “stuff” and many of us are battling clutter. Using a conventional mower can involve a lot of extra pieces and require additional things to run. A grass box, a Gerry can and petrol, wires to get tangled up in and move out of the way while mowing. All of these things can be inconvenient to acquire and store. A robotic lawn mower is comprised of two pieces, the mower itself and a charging station, meaning that your garden looks good all the time with the minimum of additional “stuff”.
Hopefully this has provided you with all your need to know about how a robotic lawn mower works (consider yourself an expert, congratulations) but if you need more information we are always on hand to answer your queries. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
