Ultimate Screw-ups
Lawn mower catches some, misses some
Jon Titus
8/4/2010 11:00 PM EDT
This spring we bought a new lawnmower; one that catches grass clippings so we can use them for mulch or put them on a compost pile. Here's a picture of the lawnmower ready to go with the bag attached at the rear.
A hinged plastic flap at the rear of the mower body lifts so the bag can slide in and latch. Then the flap closes down onto the bag frame to form a chute that directs the cut grass into the bag. The flap has a built-in baffle to help direct the clippings into the bag, as shown here:
Note that the baffle has an open end, so when I pull up the flap to remove a full bag, the open baffle is full of grass, too. I can't hold the flap up and walk to the place where I dump the clippings at the same time!
So, letting go of the flap dumps clippings on the driveway, or back onto the lawn.
I wonder if any of the lawnmower designers or marketing people at Troy Bilt ever tested a prototype.
This design flaw has several solutions. First, use duct tape to cover the opening. Sounds messy and unsophisticated. Second, use a bungee cord to hold the flap open. That means something to carry around, and attach and unattach each time I want to remove the bag. Third, use some expanding polyurethane foam. I'll probably use the foam.
Jon Titus works from Utah's Salt Lake Valley as a grass mower, freelance technical writer, editor, and sometime designer. He has a BS from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an MS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a PhD from Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
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lcovey
8/6/2010 2:21 PM EDT
Maybe you need to empty the bag more often. You could also empty the bag on the lawn and the run over the dropped cuttings one more time to suck them into the bag.
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David Ashton
8/8/2010 4:08 AM EDT
Yeah, bad design. But next time, buy a mower with a rigid grass catcher, not a floppy bag. I'm not a fan of the floppy bags, they always manage to spill grass on the driveway. The rigid catchers have a lip that engages with the back of the mower and avoid the problem..... mostly.....
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phoenixdave
8/8/2010 6:34 PM EDT
Or Fourth Solution: Don't use a bag at all, and use the freshly cut grass as mulch for the lawn. Requires you cut the lawn twice (one to cut the individual grass blades to a first length and two to re-cut the blades into much smaller lengths) but prevents having to empty bags and is more environmentally friendly. Doing this also spreads the grass much more evenly across the lawn than you could ever do using other methods. As for the design, I've never seen a bagged lawn mower that picks up all of the clippings...
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skintigh
8/9/2010 12:10 PM EDT
Or use a mulching blade and skip the multiple mowings.
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WireMan
8/9/2010 5:42 PM EDT
Mulching is a good idea and we did that in Massachusetts where we had enough moisture to turn the clippings into compost-like material that the could nourish the grass. We also had a large compost pile. But Utah is too dry and hot to compost or mulch. Average humidity here is 50 to 55% and rainfall is about 13 inches/year. Not enough moisture to mulch grass clippings. I'd just have to have someone power rake them off the lawn next spring. Thankfully our area has a vegetation recycling program that accepts lawn and yard waste and can turn it into compost. But, we have to deliver our own waste to the center at $6 per load. Most clippings here go into the landfill until we have curb-side pickup of "green boxes."
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ReneCardenas
8/30/2010 12:53 PM EDT
“Mulching vs. bagging the eternal dilemma for suburbanites”, (includes me).
For me the Dallas weather barely provides enough moisture for my lawn to grow and get trimmed every other weekend. So mulching grass trimmings make more sense than to bag and contribute to landfills. No bag necessary for me.
However, my comment regarding the design bag issue. Sometimes it helps to think over the problem to determine if we really have a problem.
Say, if you remove the bag while on the lawn surface, the spill can be simply spread over the lawn and problem resolved.
I can see this logic as a reason that most manufacturers may not consider this “problem” a critical issue when designing the capture bag.
I would be more worried about safety issues, since I know of a first-hand account of a friend that would rather reattach his 3 missing middle fingers, than to collect any stray grass trimmings.
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Chinaeu
2/27/2011 9:23 AM EST
please find our robot lawn mower:
http://robotlanwmower.chinaeu.de/
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