Excellent! A few weeks ago, my poor lawnmower met the unfortunate fate of ramming a second tree stump in my backyard. It now puffs smoke like the aptly named dragon. Rather than immediately fix it, I decided to go green. This morning, I purchased a Brill Model 38 from Ingrid at Reed’s Sales in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Ingrid cut me a discount with the “Living Green Expo” pricing, so I bought in.
My first experiences with the mower are largely positive, but first a little background. My lawn is surrounded by very large maple and oak trees on all sides and my front lawn is a steep hill with a 7 foot drop. The backyard seems to be getting rather bumpy from a bunch of voles tunneling around (no, not moles). Other than that, its a smallish lot by American standards, about 50 feet by 200 feet.
Right, one of the first surprises I’ve found is dashing up and down the hill in the front yard with the 17 pound Brill is that it is definitely a relief over the lumbering Lawnboy. In addition, the lack of any ear damaging noise that emits from it, zero consumption of gasoline, and fewer planned blade sharpenings have me elated. It cuts grass quickly and effectively, particularly well when the grass is already fairly short and dry. My sweet spot for grass length seems to be 35 millimeters (hey, its German engineering so get use to metric). I think its fair to say I’m in decent shape and the Brill stresses my body no more than the gas powered mower it replaces.
The downsides are minimal, but I’d be negligent to not point them out. One is that it doesn’t doesn’t seem to cut the grass quite as neatly as a regular gas powered mower. I’ve managed to mitigate this problem by overlapping more with my mowing, but there are a few stubborn blades of grass that just resist the whir of the Brill. Despite my overlapping technique, I think the time to cut the yard is about the same, as you can walk much faster with the Brill versus a silly gas powered mower. A second drawback is that you cannot get as close to trees and other obstacles with the Brill, which is OK, because I use a gas powered trimmer (yeah, I’ll find an electric one later) to tidy things up. The last issue is something that I should have been doing with my gas powered mower too. Before you mow with the Brill, you better walk around the yard and pick up your dog’s excrement in addition to every little twig if possible. The Brill will easily get jammed on a small twig, but you just push the circular blade backwards an inch and it will dislodge. As I live in Minnesota, I live in the middle of the forest, and this hasn’t been a huge problem yet.
Overall, I’m very happy that I got it. When you first get it, don’t get down on it too fast. Spend some time learning the ins and outs and you’ll be happy with your purchase. Go Green!