The last time I bought a product this life-changing was the original IBM PC in 1983. RoboMower makes you feel like you've entered a new era, where those Jetsons episodes we watched as kids have finally come true. The first time your robot mows your lawn is like using your first dishwasher, microwave, etc. How did we ever live without this thing?
RoboMower erased all my fears. Would it take too long to mow since it would cut a random pattern? No, RoboMower methodically cut my almost-square front lawn row by row, just like I would have done. Would it lack enough power to cut front and back lawns, about 600 feet of perimeter? No, it can do both on one battery charge! Would I need the rapid charger? No, charging over night works OK since it cuts faster than I expected. Could it handle my still wet grass without clogging? Yes, it cut fine with no grass build-up under the blade areas. Could it handle the slope in my back yard? No problem!
Things the manual didn't tell me that I wish it had:
1)On sweeping curves the wire needs to be placed closer than the supplied ruler and instructions indicate. I moved it 3-4' closer to the edge, otherwise the RoboMower makes turns too wide. The tighter the turn the closer the wire needs to be. Plan on tweaking wires on curves a lot when testing!
2)When you place the wire down the first time, lightly place the stakes, as I found I moved about one in three. When you move one, at that point you'll have either too much slackor not enough. To adjust slack you'll need to pull the wire through many stakes. Don't expect to tug wire through several stakes at once ' the insulation will split on a snug stake and you'll have a bare spot! Carefully work slack under each stake. Be sure to leave enough spare wire at BOTH ends of your loop so you can provide slack on either side as needed. If only one side has extra wire, you may have to pull slack through almost all your stakes.
3)You want stakes loose when testing to adjust slack, but if you leave the wire too high off the ground and turn the blades on by mistake you'll cut the wire.
4)When I first tested, over a straight stretch of 30 feet I tried just one stake at each end, pulling the wire taught to the ground. That didn't work ' the mower can still swish the wire left or right an inch or two and not run the course you intended to test. You'll need the wire snug enough so the mower can't shift it. A stake every 10 feet or so solves that.
5)None of the literature or their website tells you RoboMower comes with only two perimeter wire connectors so you can create only two zones. If you need more you need to order the connector accessory kit.
6)You may need more wire than you think. I had carefully precalculated I would need only 450 feet, so I didn't buy extra wire from Amazon in advance. Turns out on mowing day the 500 foot roll wasn't enough (curves gobble up wire!) so I was running around town searching for more. I tried Sears who sells RoboMower but has no wire. Sears sent me to Home Depot saying any 18-22 gauge copper wire would work. Well, HD doesn't have wire that small!. I finally found it at the Hoover Store, since Hoover stores service RoboMower (and will soon sell the to-be-announced Friendly Robotics Vacuum.)
My front yard is 1800 feet, almost a rectangle with three sweeping curves. RoboMower cuts that in 35 minutes row-by-row from house to curb, like I would in one pass, in a methodical manor perpendicular to the street leaving no uncut areas between rows. But the mowing pattern it uses on my 3600-foot rear yard is quite different. First it cuts at a 45-degree angle leaving uncut areas between the rows it cuts. When done with this first pass, it shifts 90-degrees to cut across the first rows, catching some uncut spaces but not all. Then it shifts again, hoping to catch more uncut areas. This behavior means some areas are cut repeatedly so it needs about two hours to mow the rear yard.
Mowing efficiency has a lot to do with where you train it to leave the edge to start mowing inside. When it starts mowing, it seems to ponder about what kind of area it is within. If started in a small leg off your main lawn and it keeps bumping the wire time and again after a short distance, it does into a different behavior than if it starts within a very large area and encounters the wire infrequently. However it starts seems to be how it will continue to mow, seemingly choosing the pattern it thinks fits what it first encountered. So, I'm experimenting with the 'learn perimeter' function to teach it exactly how far to trim the edge before turning inside the lawn. My theory is if I start the mower in the same spot each time, and teach it to leave edge trimming in the correct place, it will always choose the better pattern for my lawn. If you start it in a different spot each time it may mow less efficiently at times. So, like a child, RoboMower needs a little advice.
I'd rate this among the most fabulous purchases of my lifetime. The biggest problems: feeling guilty because you're doing no work and dealing with your neighbors who stop to watch you watching your mower at work.
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RoboMower - RL850Product Description: The green colored Friendly Robotics Model RL850 Robomower - Fast is a fully automatic lawnmower designed to mow your lawn entirely by itself. Just press the button, and it begins circling your yard, cutting and mulching the grass. This can handle any lawn, regardless of shape, slope, and obstacles. The Robotic Lawn Mower mulches the grass as it mows and creates a more healthy lawn. It travels on the lawn in a systematic criss-cross pattern, covering the lawn several times from side to side to ensure that the entire yard is covered and the grass is cut from several angles. This safe, quiet, and environmentally friendly Robotic Lawn Mower does not require gas or oil and provides the highest quality of mowing. It features solid construction and comes with everything needed to set up safety features like sensor-equipped bumpers, mower lift detection, and child lock.
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bought it for crushing bulky leaves in the fall. then picked the small pieces up with my bagger.saved many trips to the dump. tf
