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[jsmo]

If you had 10k to spend and these property details what mower would you buy. We're selling the Kubota bx23s and buying a real mower and larger back hoe.

- 3 acres of BUMPY winding lawn with flower beds and trees throughout.
- Several hills and off camber mowing areas.
- Portions of the yard are wet in spring
- Really need some seat suspension for bumps as I'm pushing 50 and spend a lot of time in front of a computer and the yard is bumpy as hell.
- 6'1" 190lbs long legs - but something the wife or 10 yr old can drive.
- Would be nice to have easy access to the blades for sharpening as there are a fair amount of ledge and boulder tips hidden in the grass.
- Lots of trees to circle, sometimes in the middle of the hill.
- Lots of flower beds and stone walls to edge
- Low hanging trees to mow under, bottom branches at 5ft.
- Beds are well established with large bushes, trees that overhang the lawn. Thinking 60" deck to get under them to the edge of the beds.
- Mow at 4" most of the time to avoid ledge and boulder tips in the lawn
- I'm going to hit sticks and some rocks.
- Don't want to bag but need some sort of leaf collection option for fall. To many leaves and too far to blow for the stihl BR700.
- Grass is 19 zones of irrigated fescue with some field grass.

Mowing quality and comfort are a priority.

Leaning towards gravely and a commercial friend of ours is pushing scag stand on. I got the impression scag reliability has declined with their success?
What would you buy and why?

 

[beddy85]

Front mount grasshopper imo. You mentioned low hanging trees and bagging, the front mount grasshoppers are great for those. They also are very comfortable and leave a good cut. Everyone has their own opinion but I have tried several mowers in my time and this is what I have ended up with. Oh yeah, did I mention the blades are very easy to access?

 

[jsmo]

Interesting. I hadn't checked them out. Unfortunately the nearest dealer is 55 miles away. That's too far when I factor in New England traffic. In another state I wouldn't mind so much.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Interesting. I hadn't checked them out. Unfortunately the nearest dealer is 55 miles away. That's too far when I factor in New England traffic. In another state I wouldn't mind so much.

So you want a great long list of things that are difficult to get at your price level and the dealer has to be no more than 5 minutes away ?
Really ?
If driving 55 miles in order to get exactly what you want in a mower that will probably last 20 + years is too onerous for you then I rather feel the people here are wasting their time trying to proffer you advice .
FWIW the landlord & I just drove 250 miles each way to pick up a pair of Kubota F2400's with loading , a 10 hour round trip .
If you are unwilling to make the effort then go to the nearest shop & get what ever colour your wife thinks is pretty.
To tick all of your boxes I too would have recommended an out front mower with a flip up deck , diesel engine & 4 WD and that would be well over your budget new .
Even then the leaves would need a tow behind vacuum as once you go over 50" on a deck, you need a blower to get the clippings / leaves into the bag.
Adding a blower makes the decks even more cumbersome to use than just the bagger tube alone.
You want a commercial grade mower, that a child can drive, not going to happen. Commercial mowers are designed for strong labourers to use & assume a 6' male is at the controls.
To enable a child to change a big fabricated deck height you will need a deck that has a hydraulic / electric lift and that blows your budget to pieces.

A Walker with a rear throw or bag option would come close but they do not handle rough grounds particularly well and there is probably not a dealer within walking distance from your front door.
Grass Hopper do similar rear discharge out front decks but not 4 wd ( depending just how boggy & off camber the ground is ) .

 

[jsmo]

So you want a great long list of things that are difficult to get at your price level and the dealer has to be no more than 5 minutes away ?
Really ?
If driving 55 miles in order to get exactly what you want in a mower that will probably last 20 + years is too onerous for you then I rather feel the people here are wasting their time trying to proffer you advice .
FWIW the landlord & I just drove 250 miles each way to pick up a pair of Kubota F2400's with loading , a 10 hour round trip .
If you are unwilling to make the effort then go to the nearest shop & get what ever colour your wife thinks is pretty.
To tick all of your boxes I too would have recommended an out front mower with a flip up deck , diesel engine & 4 WD and that would be well over your budget new .
Even then the leaves would need a tow behind vacuum as once you go over 50" on a deck, you need a blower to get the clippings / leaves into the bag.
Adding a blower makes the decks even more cumbersome to use than just the bagger tube alone.
You want a commercial grade mower, that a child can drive, not going to happen. Commercial mowers are designed for strong labourers to use & assume a 6' male is at the controls.
To enable a child to change a big fabricated deck height you will need a deck that has a hydraulic / electric lift and that blows your budget to pieces.

A Walker with a rear throw or bag option would come close but they do not handle rough grounds particularly well and there is probably not a dealer within walking distance from your front door.
Grass Hopper do similar rear discharge out front decks but not 4 wd ( depending just how boggy & off camber the ground is ) .

You're cute with all your dickery and condescension. The grasshopper recommendation was appreciated, and if Grasshopper had a presence closer I would chase it down. Truth is, I just don't have time to run 55 miles for parts and service. It's not a choice. It's my demanding full time job, landlording my other properties, children, dogs, chickens, taking care of the acreage, flipping houses in between it all, and living in an area that has horrible traffic so those 55 miles could end up taking 3 hours each way. I used to have 10 hours to go with the landlord and pick something up. Unfortunately those times are gone.

Grasshopper looks like a good fit. It's weird they don't have a dealer near me, usually I put in my zip code and have a choice of 5-6 places to go. I have 6 gravely dealers within 15 miles, 4 Kubota dealers within 20 miles, 5 Exmark dealers within 15 miles, and 4 Walker dealers within 15 miles. Perhaps I should have added that there will be times when I won't be servicing myself. One more item in my "great long list of things that are difficult to get at my price level". The walkers also have front decks and I've spoken to my dealer in the past but he felt like it's a bad fit due to inclines and potential spring wetness.

I'm avoiding going into the dealerships due to covid-19 so trying to get a bit more info online first. However, search engines are cluttered with bad recommendations that only include affiliate links.

As far as budget goes I felt 10k for a personal mower would be ample but maybe I need to be persuaded to reach deeper into my pockets.

 

[slomo]

So you want a great long list of things that are difficult to get at your price level and the dealer has to be no more than 5 minutes away ?
Really ?
If driving 55 miles in order to get exactly what you want in a mower that will probably last 20 + years is too onerous for you then I rather feel the people here are wasting their time trying to proffer you advice .
FWIW the landlord & I just drove 250 miles each way to pick up a pair of Kubota F2400's with loading , a 10 hour round trip .
If you are unwilling to make the effort then go to the nearest shop & get what ever colour your wife thinks is pretty.
To tick all of your boxes I too would have recommended an out front mower with a flip up deck , diesel engine & 4 WD and that would be well over your budget new .
Even then the leaves would need a tow behind vacuum as once you go over 50" on a deck, you need a blower to get the clippings / leaves into the bag.
Adding a blower makes the decks even more cumbersome to use than just the bagger tube alone.
You want a commercial grade mower, that a child can drive, not going to happen. Commercial mowers are designed for strong labourers to use & assume a 6' male is at the controls.
To enable a child to change a big fabricated deck height you will need a deck that has a hydraulic / electric lift and that blows your budget to pieces.

A Walker with a rear throw or bag option would come close but they do not handle rough grounds particularly well and there is probably not a dealer within walking distance from your front door.
Grass Hopper do similar rear discharge out front decks but not 4 wd ( depending just how boggy & off camber the ground is ) .

"Walking distance from your front door". LOL

slomo

 

[slomo]

You're cute with all your dickery and condescension. The grasshopper recommendation was appreciated, and if Grasshopper had a presence closer I would chase it down. Truth is, I just don't have time to run 55 miles for parts and service. It's not a choice. It's my demanding full time job, landlording my other properties, children, dogs, chickens, taking care of the acreage, flipping houses in between it all, and living in an area that has horrible traffic so those 55 miles could end up taking 3 hours each way. I used to have 10 hours to go with the landlord and pick something up. Unfortunately those times are gone.

Grasshopper looks like a good fit. It's weird they don't have a dealer near me, usually I put in my zip code and have a choice of 5-6 places to go. I have 6 gravely dealers within 15 miles, 4 Kubota dealers within 20 miles, 5 Exmark dealers within 15 miles, and 4 Walker dealers within 15 miles. Perhaps I should have added that there will be times when I won't be servicing myself. One more item in my "great long list of things that are difficult to get at my price level". The walkers also have front decks and I've spoken to my dealer in the past but he felt like it's a bad fit due to inclines and potential spring wetness.

I'm avoiding going into the dealerships due to covid-19 so trying to get a bit more info online first. However, search engines are cluttered with bad recommendations that only include affiliate links.

As far as budget goes I felt 10k for a personal mower would be ample but maybe I need to be persuaded to reach deeper into my pockets.

So from what you are saying, you need a lawn crew. You can call one from the comfort of your own couch.

So you just bought some shiny new mower. You dumped 10 grand on something you have NO time to keep running. So how........ Guess in between the soccer games and talking to the chickens, you could change the oil.

Get a Scag or Snapper Pro. I'm hoping you have one of those dealers next door to your house? LOL Shoot this was the "post of the day" for me.

slomo

 

[bertsmobile1]

You're cute with all your dickery and condescension. The grasshopper recommendation was appreciated, and if Grasshopper had a presence closer I would chase it down. Truth is, I just don't have time to run 55 miles for parts and service. It's not a choice. It's my demanding full time job, landlording my other properties, children, dogs, chickens, taking care of the acreage, flipping houses in between it all, and living in an area that has horrible traffic so those 55 miles could end up taking 3 hours each way. I used to have 10 hours to go with the landlord and pick something up. Unfortunately those times are gone.

Grasshopper looks like a good fit. It's weird they don't have a dealer near me, usually I put in my zip code and have a choice of 5-6 places to go. I have 6 gravely dealers within 15 miles, 4 Kubota dealers within 20 miles, 5 Exmark dealers within 15 miles, and 4 Walker dealers within 15 miles. Perhaps I should have added that there will be times when I won't be servicing myself. One more item in my "great long list of things that are difficult to get at my price level". The walkers also have front decks and I've spoken to my dealer in the past but he felt like it's a bad fit due to inclines and potential spring wetness.

I'm avoiding going into the dealerships due to covid-19 so trying to get a bit more info online first. However, search engines are cluttered with bad recommendations that only include affiliate links.

As far as budget goes I felt 10k for a personal mower would be ample but maybe I need to be persuaded to reach deeper into my pockets.

I think it is called life.
One of the things Americans have a big trouble with down here is our plain talking, so if you found my tone offensive it was not meant to be but we don't tippy toe around things here.
Sydney is 55 miles north to south
A trip from Cronulla to Palm Beach will take around 10 hours so don't use traffic as an excuse.
I am 50 miles from the center of Sydney and it can easy be a 3 to 4 hour drive both ways, I know what heavy traffic is like.
There is a funny sort of mentality I see here a lot that because a person wants something it has to be available locally easily & cheaply and that is rarely true anywhere.
Getting a single mower to do what you want to do efficiently & quickly is a really big ask.
For starters vertical shaft engine are not supposed to be used on slopes.
This is because the sumps are wide & shallow so it is very easy to end up with the oil pump intake screen out of the oil.
You have 2 to 3 minutes of that before the engine goes bang big time.
The most common engine rebuilds I do is for this reason.
There are 3 of them in the shop right now waiting for me to feel well enough to pull them apart.
However we don't know how steep your hills are and how big they are so a mower with a horizontal engine would be my number 1 priority .
Then there is the soft ride requirement
The most common ask of ZTR customers is to bypass the seat switch because they bounce around so much the engine is forever cutting out.
This is an inherient design problem because of the way the weight is distributed so the better brands fit a seat switch delay and having one of those would be the number 1 criteria if you go for a normal ZTR
Out front ZTR's have a better weight distribution and do not bounce around as much .

As you state you have a shinny bum type of job, I would suggest a stander so you are using a different set of muscles when mowing and relieving the pressure on your lower back
Standers are also much more agile than sitters so there is a double bonus there getting around the tight garden beds .
Keep your old mower and get a tow behind vacuum for it to remove the leaves .
FWISW I am on a small corner of a 1000 acre farm, in the old farm house.
The landlord has 5 old tractors ( inters ) each one is set up to do a single job and do that job well.
For the past 15 years we have been mowing the entire farm three times a year using Cub Cadets ( the good ones with horizontal Kohlers ) and would be continuing to do this except most deck parts are NLA and they are all well over 10,000 hours so are getting a bit worn out.
Thus the 2 Kubotas
An up front diesel Kubota would also do the job you want but again adding a bagger for the leaves will defeat the benefits.
As you mow probably 20 to 30 times a year concentrate on making that as quick as possible & accept that the leaf clean up in fall will just take longer. or just get some one else to come in 2 or 3 times a year to clean them up

 

[slomo]

Crickets...........

slomo

 

[jsmo]

Crickets...........

Yeah, had to find the time to get back around to this post. What is there to respond to? Ripping on a person who doesn't have time to change his oil? Judging, antagonizing. Not sure how I offended you...

I think it is called life..... <----- That'd be that condescension again. In any language or region.

For the helpful information... I sincerely thank you for taking the time to respond and share you knowledge.

And with that, have a nice life fellas. This forum is not for me.