Battery Power for Lawn equipment -- is it time?

I keep amassing corded power tools while they're around. Peope have short memories: spending a grand for a battery powered weed eater, or $1500 for a similar lawn mower, ugh.

KInd of like the Cuban phenomena, keeping old 1950's cars rolling.

 

ours was $79.haven't spent anything since. batteries last a looooooooong time.

 

Moved

 

Has the looney collapsed? My battery electric weed eater is USD$110 on Amazon today, wasn't much more when I bought it.

I just added a brushcutter attachment to it for another $80.

 

are we in the right thread?

 

Wow, how'd that happen

 

Gary, go check your pill organizer. Today is Sunday. See if you missed one?

 

Today I set up the pole saw attachment on my Greenworks split-shaft driver.

I took limbs from 17 different trees in my yard, using a 4Ah battery we got secondhand in 2017. It started at 3/4 charge and I quit before it did.

So it very much depends on the task, but for limbing and pruning I'm going to declare that the thread title question goes true here: Yes, battery power is good enough for limbing and pruning on the scale of a 1.3 acre suburban lot.

 

Yea -the better ½ is on me more than usual. That's another clue
.

 

If you want to battery to last, when done for multiple months, keep it at 50% charge and it's best to keep it in a unheated shed than inside. The cold doesn't affect lithium battery, unlike heat.

 

In addition to a small collection of EGO lawn equipment, I have an older collection of corded power tools for making stuff (drills, Dremel, oscillating tool, jigsaw, and such), because corded was what power tools were during the amassing-tools phase of my life.

I've been a little envious of the cordless versions I've been getting to play with on Habitat jobs, but nothing delights me about the idea of re-buying a bunch of tools I already have.

It took until today for me to tumble to the idea that I don't really mind my tools having cords. The thing that makes me procrastinate about minor jobs outside the house is having to go grab an extension cord, and string it from somewhere, and then do the little minor job, and then put the extension cord away again.

And then to realize all of my smaller hand tools could be run (one at a time!) using this:

POWER+ Nexus Escape 400W Inverter | EGO (PAD5000)

I'm sure none of them will run as efficiently as purpose-built cordless tools with modern brushless motors and such.

But as long as the main problem I face isn't getting maximum efficiency or run time, but just procrastinating simple go-do-this jobs where dealing with the extension cord takes as long as the job, I expect I'll be very happy now that I have a collection of newly extension-cord-free tools.

 

There are plenty of battery power supplies available these days, in a range of sizes. One small enough backpack with a 3ft cord would make most corded lawn tools cordless.

 

I already started buying into the EGO Power+ ecosystem for lawn tools maybe a dozen years ago. (I guess I'm pretty happy, given the usual pace of things in tech, that all their batteries still work in all their tools.) I think that, at that time, they were innovating as hard in the tools themselves as in batteries; I suspect the advanced brushless motor in the lawnmower is a significant part of the magic, and it wouldn't have been very practical at the time to try running a hand-me-down corded lawnmower off an EGO battery through an inverter.

But it's funny it didn't occur to me till yesterday that I could just add that little $169 inverter piece to the EGO collection I already have, and that is sufficient and practical for making most of my construction hand tools cordless. At least given that I am generally not using them hard all day, but more often for small projects and minor chores.

Now to redavinate some kind of shoulder sling or belt hanger for it.