Lawn Service Guys: Educate Me On Blowers & Trimmers

1. About the same, just depends on how much power you need

2. Lots of good brands, Stihl, Echo, Red Max, Shindaiwa

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Gas-powered blowers
Gas-powered string trimmers

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WHY?

If I wouldn't have a shite load of Dewalt tools and batteries I would have never bought battery. I had 8 Dewalt 60v 12Ah batteries go bad at the same time at beginning of the year, that is around $2500 worth of batteries if I had bought them from somewhere like home depot. I sent them to the service center anyways to see if they would cover them because they all had around the same date code. The sales rep comes back and says those must have been around the time we had a bad batch of 12Ah batteries because they replaced them all.

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Batteries need replacement, which costs way more than maintenance on a decent-quality gas blower/trimmer.

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I looked into it a little while back, pro-grade Stihl electric trimmer/edger setup vs a pro-grade gas setup and the difference in just the initial cost is amost 2:1. I figured how much 2-stroke mix it would take to make up the difference in cost (Amsoil Saber at 50:1 and QT non-E) and it was enough fuel to power my trimmer, edger, and blower for years. If just one of the Stihl batteries went out, I'd probably be dead before recovering the cost. One of my current Stihl trimmers is well over 10 years old and still running the original sparkplug and air filter, just clean them every season and they keep working. I removed the spark arrestors years ago and as long as I do the proper end-of-season maintenance my OPE fires right up even after months (or in one case years) of sitting in storage. I personally don't mind the extra maintenance when it comes to gas-powered OPE, I have an Echo cordless trimmer hanging up with my Stihls, hardly ever use it.

1. Get a backpack - stihl, echo or shindaiwa, best bet is to find a local shop that also does repairs to buy it from.

2. stihl, echo or shindaiwa. We've been using Shindaiwa blower, string trimmer and edgers for 20 years, they are top notch in my opinion.

For a small to moderate sized lot I would go 100% electric. I was all 4 stroke before I went with ego many years ago, those little Honda 4 stroke engines for trimmers, blowers, etc were nice but they still required more maintenance than electric.

Its really nice to not have mix on hand for my chainsaw, pole saw, cultivator, trimmer, edger, hedge trimmer etc, etc. and I got most of these add on options out of season on sale. The batteries while expensive on their own are in all practicality included with the purchase of the base tools, and often an extra free one on special.

Now my mower... my main mower... is a robot. It covers my entire front and side yards and most of my back yard. It can't handle my bank very well so I handle that with a trimmer or push mower (Battery) The past couple of months it has had ornamental peas growing, I plan to mulch and bag those for compost when they give up the ghost, but so far I have only been trimming the edges at the dock and the robot has kept their encroachment into the yard in check. It is an eclectic mix of flowers, fiddler crabs, lizards, geckos, birds and pollinators right now, all eating each other when they get the opportunity.

That is a lot of words for considering electric, and if you are wanting to stay with gas, the husqvarna 4 stroke trimmer was a beast with a honda engine, I am not sure if they are still available with honda's though.

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The biggest reason is you don't have to worry about charging the batteries, and if there's enough juice to finish the job. Batteries need replacement, which costs way more than maintenance on a decent-quality gas blower/trimmer.

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So much wrong in this post

For gas you can't beat stihl products. I switched to battery for blower and weedeater for my house, but I already have a lot of Dewalt batteries so it made sense.

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So much wrong in this post

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That's my experience with electric and gas. Please share yours.

We live on a heavily wooded lot about 2.5 acres and have driveway and concrete parking areas about 500' plus a lot of square feet of decks, porches and gravel and paver walkways.

Definitely need a gas trimmer and have been using the Echo PAS 225 as both a trimmer and brush cutter for 3 years and it has been great. It is super reliable and plenty of power.

For the blower, we always have lots of leaves and limbs to blow, especially after a storm. I was using a Hitachi commercial grade gas blower and it is outstanding and I still have it. However, for the last couple of years I have been using a Kobalt 24V blower and it is almost as powerful as the gas blower. The battery life is very good for the amount of blowing we have to do. The reason I like it is because it only weighs 5 lbs and is a good bit more quiet and my wife is also able to use it for those reasons. She would never use the gas blower because it was a little bit too heavy, too smelly and too noisy. So now if I am picking up limbs or doing any other time consuming outside work, if she's not too busy, she sometimes likes to use the Kobalt blower so that makes it faster for me to get my work done and that gives us more time to spend doing our hobbies like going fishing or for boat rides with our friends.