Battery Products

[Pies23]

Good Morning all,
I'm looking at starting up a small gardening business and I'm thinking of using battery equipment rather than fuel. Does anyone have any opinions on what brand I should consider? Obviously it would need to be robust enough for commercial standard. I'm currently weighing up between Stihl and Husqvarna but unsure...TIA

 

[zigs]

Hi there

I have several battery powered tools. They are fine for small scale home gardening, i'm quite impressed with the hedge cutter and chain saw, but if you're going into business, get petrol ones.

The chainsaw (45 volt) goes on for a fair time but it's so slow compared to a petrol one it'll take 5 times longer. The customer isn't going to pay for that.

The lawn mowers (GTech) only last about 20 minutes when the battery is new, less as you use it. You would need several charged batteries to do a mornings work which will cost you hundreds of dollars on top of the cost of the lawnmower.

You might get away with 2 batteries at work but you'd need a petrol generator to be charging them inbetween cuts.

Hedge cutter is a bit better but again you'd need multiple batteries and somewhere to charge them.

The batteries fail very quickly so you'd be replacing them every few months.

Lithium mining is destroying large parts of the Atacama desert so it's not very green at all.

Stick with petrol mate, if you want to appear "green" grow sugar beet, ferment it and make your own fuel and use that to power the machines.

Customers might like the idea of a green business but at the end of the day they won't pay for it and you'll loose out to someone that can do the work quicker and cheaper.

 

[Pies23]

Hi Zigs,
Thanks for your thorough reply mate. I'm not pushing the " Green thing ", I'm actually being selfish and thinking about myself ( lol) regarding the equipment being lighter, quieter and not mucking around with mixing fuel etc

 

[zigs]

Hi Pies

No worries mate.

Having used both, there is a weight difference with the strimmer, not much with the hedge cutter. I'm not really knocking them, I like them, especially as I can charge the lot from our solar array.



It's just the practicalities of using them for a mobile business might be a bit of a logistics nightmare.

You might find a mixture of electric and petrol works or electric and hand tools, but doing a whole day with batteries probably won't work very well and you might find the customer doesn't want you back so you could have a lot of expensive tools and no work

We have about 3 acres to look after and we can't really do without the petrol ride on mowers, as much as we'd like to. The cost of cutting all the grass with petrol has gone up a lot in the past few years. We have a campsite btw so we need to keep it cut.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Less noise and vibration sure, but cutting the top of one of my big hedges takes me about five times as long as it does when the brother-in-law comes to visit and brings his petrol cutter.
What do you mean by 'A small gardening business'? If you are actually into gardening and want to be creative there are quite a few guys out there who do mowing and hedge cutting and know almost nothing about gardening, you might do well to have an arrangement with one of them to do the 'grunt' work for you and stick to the bits that need knowledge and skill. I found it also pays to get into propagation and producing the plants you put in.

 

[cpp gardener]

At work, Cal Poly Pomona, we are transitioning to electric because gas-powered tools are being prohibited from sale. We use Makita and Stihl. I’ll ask around and see which ones are preferred. I know our tree guys love their Makita chainsaw for working around the dorms.

 

[Pies23]

Cheers mate

 

[zigs]

At work, Cal Poly Pomona, we are transitioning to electric because gas-powered tools are being prohibited from sale. We use Makita and Stihl. I’ll ask around and see which ones are preferred. I know our tree guys love their Makita chainsaw for working around the dorms.

Transitioning from gas powered tools to tools that are powered by electric made from 60% fossil fuels

"
What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source?

Energy source	Billion kWh	Share of total
Fossil fuels (total)	2,553	60.4%

Seems a bit daft to me, but it sounds green on paper

 

[Oliver Buckle]

60% at the moment, Zigs, but they are 'working towards' reducing that

 

[cpp gardener]

State of California. Need I say more?

 

[zigs]

State of California. Need I say more?

I understand cpp

 

[cpp gardener]

What I'm hearing from our crew is that both Stihl and Makita are good , except the string trimmer from Makita has less power and poor design for use. It's awkward to use. If you have to choose, the crew says go for Stihl. We have the option now to use gas-powered tools so the batteries don't get used enough to know about the longevity of the batteries. One of the guys loves his one-sided hedge-trimmer from Makita.

 

[Pies23]

Hi Pies

No worries mate.

Having used both, there is a weight difference with the strimmer, not much with the hedge cutter. I'm not really knocking them, I like them, especially as I can charge the lot from our solar array.

View attachment 101191

It's just the practicalities of using them for a mobile business might be a bit of a logistics nightmare.

You might find a mixture of electric and petrol works or electric and hand tools, but doing a whole day with batteries probably won't work very well and you might find the customer doesn't want you back so you could have a lot of expensive tools and no work

We have about 3 acres to look after and we can't really do without the petrol ride on mowers, as much as we'd like to. The cost of cutting all the grass with petrol has gone up a lot in the past few years. We have a campsite btw so we need to keep it cut.

Yep,

What I'm hearing from our crew is that both Stihl and Makita are good , except the string trimmer from Makita has less power and poor design for use. It's awkward to use. If you have to choose, the crew says go for Stihl. We have the option now to use gas-powered tools so the batteries don't get used enough to know about the longevity of the batteries. One of the guys loves his one-sided hedge-trimmer from Makita.

Thanks cpp...appreciate that follow up mate, We have a local Stihl distributor as well

 

[Mr_Yan]

I run DeWalt batteries for all my tools and lawn mower. String trimmer with a 10 Ah 20 V max will run all day and the one I have will fit the 60 V battery. The lawn mower gives up after about 45 minutes when powered with two 10 Ah 20 V-Max batteries.

Tree service I had out here was using Stihl battery operated small chainsaws even when still running a bunch of Stihl gas saws. They must have seen the battery worked as well or better to keep the electric running when already maintaining the gas ones.

 

[Pies23]

Thanks mate...yeah, it's the running time of the mowers ( regardless of battery brand ) that concerns me. Appreciate your input !