An article from the British Hedgehog Preservation Society
So it is suggesting the possibility rather than definite proof. But would seem sensible to not use them at night
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Had an Husqvarna 315 for a couple of years…wire buried…large lawn…
Runs for approx 1 hr, charges for 1 hr…App controlled from anywhere…
Needs a 2 mtr width I believe…
I store it in winter as grass doesn’t grow much and too many leaves…
Does a pretty good job, occasionally overwhelmed needing a manual mower cut to re-establish a shortish starting cut length…and have to manually cut the lawn edges where it meets the borders, approx 6” depth (so robot doesn’t’ fall off the lawn)…but only every couple weeks.
Very pleased with it, it has also become a tourist attraction in the village, folks/visitors watch it for 20/30 mins trying to guess which way it will go next…
Saves me lots of time, and the grass is ‘mulched’ rather than having to collect 2 wheelie bins full each week…
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I have a Husqvarna 305 named Sven. WE rent it from the lawn service company, they service it each winter and fix any issues (there has not been any).
There are some excellent YouTube videos of the various mowers operating in quite large gardens. Mostly US but a few UK based videos. The videos are quite hypnotic/addictive.
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Indeed, killing whatever small buggers in its path is a common problem in real gardens. @Innocent_Bystander: don’t use at night. Luckily my lawn is on a raised, artificial terrace and the only wildlife are earthworms and insects
Don’t run ours at night (common sense)…as far as I know it hasn’t ‘killed any small buggers’…
We are pretty rural and have much wildlife, inc Hedgehogs (they tend to stick to the borders when trotting around the garden)…we ‘naturally’ encourage as many wildlife/birds (and insects) as possible…pity the neighbours cats seem to think its for their advantage…
Thanks for the further contributions.
Certainly when I learned of the risk to animals like hedgehogs I immediately determined that when I get one it will only be operating during the day.
Which magazine’s top rating is for a Bosch, so I will look at that one in detail, and study its perimeter and guide wire requirements and any programmability, and thence the best way of delineating the area to be cut, and from that determining its kennel requirements and the best way to lay the wires under paths.
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We looked into buying a robotic mower, you first question should be has your next door neighbour already got one, if yes how close will the boundary wires be to each other, they can be a problem if they are to close to one another. Some of the newer ones have settings to overcome this problem, I was advised by a robomow supplier that my neighbours old robomow would be a problem if I had robotic mower.
Most robotic mowers have the installation manuals available on line giving details about how they should be setup and detail about guide wire requirements.
I believe installers lay the guide wire, stake onto the lawn, they say it will cover over in time, we have hedges around our lawn and rake up hedge cuttings I suspect the guide wire could be damaged with a rake.
Next doors robomow was a bit noisy, an irritating background drone the Husqvarna that they have now is much quieter.
Having been able to watch the mower in action it does seem to need regular human intervention to keep it on the lawn.
In the end we decided a robotic mower was not the answer to our grass cutting, instead we bought a small mulching ride on mower no grass box to empty.
Our experience with our ‘Robocrop’ has been positive…
guide wire was installed by Dealer with a little machine that buries it about 2’’ deep in the grass…
prob no more noise than a 555PS-DR…
limited intervention…never goes off the lawn…we do clean blades occasionally…we use it ‘remotely’ when we are on holiday (by App control) so when we come back the grass is not overgrown…it also sends you a message if it needs help…
sit-on lawn mowers can be fun…we had a couple before ‘upgrading’ (always a very subjective topic…), however 2-4 hrs a week in our case stopped being fun…
Our dealer gave us a home demo before purchase…
YMMV
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Thanks for contribution - which machine did you try?
Why not just leave it on, x hours per day (or week)?
I told my wife about this thread - now we have to get ( apparently) a robot vacuum cleaner!
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We have it set on a timer for x hrs a day, each day as standard, then may modify it dependant on weather conditions…e.g. too dry or too wet…or thunderstorms…
(it also has SMS capability to receive the weather conditions and may vary the std schedule itself…)
I must confess that I do like ‘playing’ with the technology…
That would make a good comoanion thread!
There are some obvious parallels, though I wouldn’t even consider for my house: multiple rooms with doors often shut, and they can’t move the furniture so areas most in need are inaccessible, while it takes just a few minutes to run a lightweight cordless handheld vac over the open visible areas that a robot could do, while two of the key attracting benefits of a robot lawnmower simply don’t apply or have parallels (grass length and resultant hard work and poor finish after a hol in growing season, and dealing with the grass cuttings).
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I have a husqvarna - bottom of the range cos we only have a tiny lawn. Just need to trim the edges now and again. It does keep the lawn in good condition.
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Have an overwhelming desire to play Gardening At Night by R.E.M. now.
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I did notice on the Husqvarna site they have a lawn size calculator. Enter your post code and a satellite image pops up, select your lawn area boundary with the tools, it gives the size and recommends a suitable mower.
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Having looked onto it in more detail, I eventually bought one and installed it a couple of weeks ago. It is a Bosch Indego S600+, picked from the Which? magazine reviews.
It has an ‘intelligent’ mode whereby it accesses local weather info to ovoid cutting during or soon after rain, and it can adjust mowing frequency based on temperature and rainfall. So far we haven’t invoked the latter function, just setting for a target of 3 mows a week, weather permitting, that being our initial guess as to correct frequency this time of year, for cuttings short enough to drop down and become mulch. It takes about 3 hours - in 3 stints with a recharge between - to complete the cut. I’ve set time limits to ensure only daylight cutting. Area is a little over 200m3, however the curved lawn edges and dual area making a little more complicated than some lawns.
First impression is good - and hopefully will continue that way! It’s not that cutting the lawn was a particularly heavy chore, just an hour and a half per week this time of year, but we want to be able to travel a lot more, and this will keep the lawn tidy however long we are away.
I’ve yet to build a kennel for ‘him’ to live in - the ‘bot apparently is weatherproof, but it makes sense to minimise exposure to the amount of heavy rain we get here. I also fancy giving ‘him’ a paint job some time, perhaps something animal-like, or maybe just abstract colours, instead of the stock Bosch green.
Cost was £850 and installation took an afternoon with two of us. The model a local garden centre recommended, a Honda, would have cost us £1850 for supply and install, and they’d have simply pegged the perimeter wire to the ground not bury it, and for that cost would have positioned the docking station on the lawn, not making a neat off-lawn location as we have, which would have been ugly and would have necessitated us regularly strimming around it.
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