Gas will become stale if you are storing your lawn mower or power equipment for more than 30 days. Stale fuel can cause engine damage from acid and gum deposits forming in the fuel system or carburetor. Damage to the carburetor or engine due to bad fuel will void the engine warranty. Keep lawn mower gas fresh by using Briggs & Stratton fuel stabilizer, specially designed for small engines.
You can find more information on our web, so please take a look.
With fuel treatment, you don’t need to drain costly gasoline from your small engine to safely store your equipment. Simply follow these steps for proper storage:
If gasoline in the small engine has not been treated with a fuel stabilizer, it must be drained into an approved container. Run the engine until it stops from lack of fuel.
The use of a fuel stabilizer in the storage container is recommended to maintain freshness. It is also recommended that fuel is purchased in quantities that can be used within 30 days. This will assure fuel freshness and volatility tailored to the season.
For the average lawn, a fully charged electric walk-behind mower will finish the job, same as a gas one.
That may come as a surprise to gas mower owners who’ve hesitated to switch based on fears that an electric mower can’t tackle their lawn without a time-out to recharge.
The fact is that in the real world of mowing in America, the average-sized lawn is just around a quarter acre, according to HomeAdvisor, a home-services marketplace. Consumer Reports’ recent expert tests found that the average electric walk-behind mower’s run time was 45 to 50 minutes per charge. So it could easily handle a quarter acre, even on somewhat sloped land. On flat, unobstructed ground, it might cut a half an acre. That means in many instances, you can take worries about staying power out of the equation.
But then, there’s performance. Which type of walk-behind lawn mower actually cuts grass better: electric or gas? We decided to look at our tests to find out.
Environmental and noise concerns: Many communities—plus the state of California—are effectively banning gas outdoor power tools to curb the air and noise pollution they generate. If you live in one of those communities, the decision to go electric has been made for you. If you’re simply sick of your gas mower’s smell and din—or your mowing noise disturbs nearby neighbors—an electric mower offers a solution. They do make considerable noise, but they handily beat out their gas competitors in those tests.
Cost: There’s a decent argument to be made that electric walk-behind mowers, both push and self-propelled, are cheaper to own in the long run than gas mowers when annual maintenance and gas prices are taken into account. We found that to be true when comparing lower- and average-cost electric and gas models. But electric models are still generally more pricey up front.
Batteries: Charging the power source before every use and replacing it every few years aren’t issues for gas mower and tractor owners. With an electric mower, you’ll need to do both. Charge times are improving to less than an hour and a half for most batteries in CR’s lawn mower and tractor ratings. That’s still not an insignificant time, so you need to factor that in when planning your mowing.
Batteries for electric mowers are getting better and lasting longer, but replacing them—at $100 to $300 and sometimes more—still adds to the cost of operation. “The added benefit, though, is that most manufacturers offer other tools that can share that battery,” says David Trezza, who heads CR’s mower and tractor testing. “You’re getting multiple benefits from the same battery.”
Most manufacturers sell those compatible tools on their own, without the batteries and chargers—and their associated costs.
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For this article, our engineers took years’ worth of lawn mower testing data to build a tool that allows us to compare performance scores from dozens of models, both gas and electric. We compared average scores for gas and electric walk-behind mowers in tests of cutting evenness, side discharging, mulching, bagging, and handling. The scores have a numeric value from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). We also looked at charge times and cut times for every electric model, and across electric models in general.
One thing to note: Averages can be misleading because they include outliers that are either exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. Bell curves show where a majority of models of each type fall in terms of performance. Keep in mind that we devised this head-to-head to compare models across categories. In your own yard, the only thing that matters is the performance of the specific mower you choose. For that reason, we’ve included some top-rated models of each type at the bottom of this article. Here’s how electric and gas models overall compared in our tests, and which came out on top:
Our evenness of cut score reflects how close a mower comes to leaving behind an even, carpetlike surface on your lawn.
Which is better? Gas mowers score very slightly ahead of electric for even cutting, with an average of 4.7 to electric’s 4.5. As a group, all gas mowers we tested scored in the top half of our scale. (The lowest evenness score for a gas mower was still a solid 3.5.) Electrics fell into a broader range (from 5 down to 3.8). The takeaway: There are plenty of electric mowers that match the best gas models when it comes to even cutting; though there were some underperforming electrics, all but two models scored very good or excellent. That said, no gas mower we tested scored below 3.5.
If you prefer to bag your clippings, you’ll want a mower that fills its bag to the max so that you don’t have to empty it as often. Our test measures how much the bag held before it was filled completely or the chute clogged.
Which is better? Both earn great scores, with a few gas models attaining a score of 4.6 against the electrics’ top score of 4.5. But for both types, the truth lies mostly in the middle: The bulk of models of both types settle in the area of “good,” ranging from 2.3 to 4.5 for electrics and 2.7 to 4.6 for gas.
We measure mower noise at the ear and at 25 feet away to represent a neighbor’s exposure. Models scoring fair or poor in our tests exceeded 85 decibels at the ear, a measure at which hearing protection is recommended. Unlike the other scores, the noise score runs from 0.5 to 5.5.
Which is better? If you value your hearing and neighborhood tranquility, you’ll switch to electric at the speed of sound. Here we find the biggest spread between average scores: 5.0 for electric against—wait for it—2.2 for gas when measured at the ear. The gas models that were noisiest scored 0.5 (poor) against the noisiest electric models, which scored 2.7 (good).
The story is even more compelling at a distance of 25 feet, with an average score of 5.3 for electrics and 2.8 for gas models. The quietest gas model scored 4.2 to the quietest electric’s 5.5, and the noisiest gas scored 1.1 to the noisiest electric’s score of 3.6. In other words, the noisiest electric mower was easier on the ears than the quietest gas model.
For mulching and side-discharging, both electric and gas walk-behind mowers are about even.
For cutting and bagging, gas walk-behind mowers slightly outmatch electrics. And pricewise, you’re more apt to find a great gas machine for a lower up-front cost.
When it comes to factors such as noise, smell, maneuverability, and ease of maintenance, electric mowers have the advantage. Over the long term, models at lower and average prices also can be more cost-effective than gas, even more so if fuel prices rise and batteries continue getting better and cheaper. And if the environment is important to you, this type of mower is the only way to go.
But because the choice remains with you, here are the best gas and electric walk-behind mowers from our exclusive ratings of over 160 models.
Every February our testers head down to Florida, where we put that year’s crop of new lawn mowers to the test on 500,000 square feet of grass at our testing grounds. We test each mower for how well it handles mulching, side discharging, and bagging (collecting 3,000 pounds of clippings in the process). We also see how each mower handles varied terrain by running it over slopes and ditches as well as level ground. And we assess its convenience features.
Then we combine the results of our field testing with CR members’ feedback on reliability and owner satisfaction from our annual member surveys. This data enables us to arrive at the Overall Score you’ll find in our ratings.
Want more information on gas powered products? Feel free to contact us.