August 26, 2008

Saving $8 a year with my lawn mower

The high price of gasoline has hit us all at the pump. Today's average price is $3.69 and just a month ago it was over $4. Another place we use gasoline is with our lawnmowers. You can save money by using an electric lawn mower instead of a gas powered one.

"An efficient gas mower will use ¼ of a gallon of gasoline per hour." So that means that a half hour mowing job like my lawn will take 1/8 gallon of gas per mow. I have to mow the lawn half the year where I live so thats about 25 mows per year. If I were using a gas mower that would equate to 3.125 gallons of gas per year to mow the lawn. At an average cost of $3 per gallon that is $9.37 per year in gas costs for an efficient gas mower.

My electric mower is a 1000W model. So I'm using 1000 W x 0.5 hours or 0.5 kWh per mow. With 25 mows a year thats 12.5 kWh per year. My electricity costs $0.09 kWh so this means I'm spending $1.125 per year in electricity to mow my lawn with my electric mower.

So by using an electric mower I'm saving over $8 a year on gasoline

TO keep this practical you'll have to have a relatively small lawn that can be handled by an electric mower. Also the cost of the electric mower shouldn't be significantly higher than the gas version.

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