Comments on: He ain’t heavy, he’s my mower

By: Sean

Sean — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:00:20 +0000

Yup, there’s a heckuva lot of “salesmanship” in that ad copy. With that said, I’m curious if a) the “total pollution footprint” over say 5 years is favorable or unfavorable against a “traditional push mower”? and b) how long the life expectancy is on one of their batteries and c) whether the company provides facilities and/or support for recycling/disposing of the batteries.

By: paco

paco — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:37:58 +0000

Two people now have pointed out my erroneous math. But that’s simply because I didn’t show the right math alongside my (known) erroneous math. I pointed out how the logarithmic scale makes it tricky, and so a marketing person is likely to be doing some funny math here. Half of 90 dB is about 87dB, which is why I’m annoyed at the ad. If you told someone it was “half the cost” or “half the weight” or “half the time” or any other linearly measured value, they’d understand what you were saying. If the scientific numbers are right (they probably are), 90 dB and 87dB don’t compare so well, but “half the noise” sounds great.

Why do I care that it is heavy if it is self-propelled? It’s not a Roomba. You still put your back into it (ok, maybe you pay someone else to put his back into it) to turn corners, go into tight spots, etc. Weight matters a lot in those situations.

By: Beckman

Beckman — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:22:16 +0000

Even if it is heavy, it’s usually self propelled, so who cares if it is heavy. Agreed that the Heavy vs 69 lbs is a silly argument.

Here’s where we part paths. Your noise level math sucks. The decibel scale is logarithmic, and thus less than half the noise of 90dB is more like 87dB. So maybe it is 85dB (less than half) of 90dB. Doubling the noise level as humans hear it is roughly +3dB.

In spite of your arguments, I’d still buy a Neuton, if I actually mowed my lawn. The fact that my electricity does come from less than clean sources, the pollution generated by the electricity I’d use is likely much less than the pollution generated by my gas mower, which are notorious polluters, for the same square footage of mowing. Additionally it is possible that in the next few years I could get my electricity from solar or wind at my own home, or from the grid, thus reducing my environmental impact while using an electric mower.

Even the EPA promotes the Neuton: http://blog.epa.gov/blog/tag/mowing-the-lawn/

Personally I realized a few years ago that my time is worth more than it costs for someone to mow, edge and whack my lawn, environmental costs excluded.