Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry
LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.
For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
Replies
Tom. Assume you're looking at 21 inch ? Unfortunately perfection isn't available. We mow very large areas with roller mowers and have tried on demo numerous brands, we settled on Hayter 56 pro,s and have run these for 4 years, yes in saturated conditions particularly on fed grass not brilliant collection but providing you keep the box clean in most cases very acceptable ( we do speed the revs up from factory settings). Yesterday we were mowing at 7am fed grass soaked with dew and no problems.
As to your choices, if you're stuck with these? Weibang ,very heavy no bbc on the 56, Lawnflite you need to go for the high speed model but at £2000 ! The Stihl ,odd handle arrangement, very slow, the roller is very small our dealer reports build quality issues but with the plastic box good in challenging conditions . We've stuck with Hayters as they have been utterly reliable and apart from routine servicing cost us nothing in repairs the reliability is the most important factor for us due to the nature of our work and clients.
Not an easy decision.
Thanks Peter,
I was thinking 21 inch but maybe my best bet is the Weibang 48 BBC. they look well built and a 3 year commercial warranty, can't be bad. The sales outlets are small here so no demo machines to try. A case of paying up and take a chance. I'm just not too sure how it would perform on generally mossy lawns.
65.5 KG though ! heavy beast! the thing is none of my customers have requested a stripped finish, its me that thinks it'll look good and maybe set my business apart from the rest. I'd only use it on some of my suitible/nice/worthy customer lawns....
i'll keep pondering for a while longer and maybe Ill go off the idea! cheers.
Tom, yes 65.5 kg and that'swithout fuel ,oil and grass in the box you'll easily be up to 75 kg plus in use. Do you really want to be mauling that around? Not too bad on big square lawns but on smaller lawns with twists and turns and obstacles like trees etc it'll be hard work. We use the domestic Hayter 48 vs bbc on smaller areas and it's just so much easier than a 56 pro.
You've touched on a good point about setting your business apart , we stopped using 4 wheel mowers on the majority of lawns sometime ago due to issues with tramlines and wanted to add value and quality to the service we supply. It's paid off in the retention of existing clients along with attracting new ones, definitely the way to go.
If you buy the Weibang they have an option of a high lift blade which for the cost is well worth it, but do factor in the weight training for a few months before using !
Well, i've ordered a Lawnflite hrs553 proHS. local dealer support and seems more widly used than the Weibang (which is soooo heavy!) also found a lot of maitenance videos on youtube which will help when the time come to keep thing working as they should. looking forward to laying some stripes!
Wonder if they've improved the gearbox on these.... it does say the gearbox is "heavy duty" now I've had theKaaz version for nearly 20 years.......... not particularly heavy use... couple of hours a week........... and must have replaced the clutch/pinions (less than £100 if you do it yourself, mornings work)) at least 3 times Still, a good reliable machine with a great engine that invariably starts first pull. Don't think you'll be disapointed.
I used a four wheel mulch mower on lawns for the whole of last year and the tramlines that it produced are a real pain. Best seen when scarifying. Gone back to the roller mower now and done a lot of top dressing.
I'm still using a Honda Pro roller mower but my next one will most likely be battery and battery powered roller mowers are thin on the ground. Stiga twinclip 950E VR would probably be my choice. I have no idea how it performs though.
I'm Cumbria so like you plenty of wet weather. I use etesia pro 51 and pro 53 when wet then I have an old honda hrd and a weibang pro the weibang is 3yrs old and no issues so far the lawnflite, cobra etc etc are all pretty crap had 2 both failed after 18months needing new gearboxs so weibang is the longer lived. I have had it turned up though as it needed more power (as they all do) gotta love the EU regs
They obviously haven't improved thoseLawnflite gearboxes then!! Poor design but as I said, cheap to fix if you're into DIY.