Tag Archives: lawnmowing

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There’s a lot of work that goes into being lazy… part two.

Bill and I enjoyed an unusually busy Saturday. Ever since we pulled out our robotic lawnmower a few weeks ago, the damned thing has confounded us. I bought the machine in late March 2019 and wrote a post, complete with video, about our new toy. I joked about how there is a lot of work that goes into being lazy as I watched Bill laying down the boundary wire that would allow the robot to work. We used it in 2019 and 2020 to great success. But in 2021, it was apparently “kaput”.

Bill laid down new wire in April, but the mower wouldn’t work. He tried again a couple of weeks later, but we were still getting the dreaded flashing blue light and fault loop error. Then he had to go away for almost three weeks, so I was stuck cutting the grass with the weed trimmer, which is really loud and doesn’t do a great job on the whole lawn. I tried replacing the power supply, hoping that would be a simple (but expensive) fix. It was a no go.

So today, Bill put down brand new wire all the way around the yard. He did about 2/3rds of the yard, but the mower still wouldn’t respond. I watched my usually sweet natured husband get grumpy as he bent down to tear out the not so old wire he had installed weeks ago and put in virgin wire. It took all afternoon. During that time, I washed clothes, washed the dogs, washed Noyzi’s bedding, put away the clean dishes, and wet vacuumed the floor. I also wrote another blog post on my main blog and practiced guitar. When I washed Noyzi’s bedding, the front loading washing machine malfunctioned, and the plug for the rubber hose came off in the machine. So I ended up having to take the panel off of the machine and rescue the part. I quipped to Bill that I’m weirdly handy. He agreed.

Once he laid the last bit of the wire, he tried to get the mower going. This time, he got a green light on the base, but a message reported that there was “no fault loop”. I watched Bill get pissed anew; then I went to Reddit, where someone who had the same problem mentioned recalibrating the mower and letting it capture a new loop. So while Bill recovered from his labors, I went and messed with the settings on the mower, finally telling it to find a new fault loop. Then I pressed the start button and…

VOILA!!!

Boy, was this a welcome sight! Our backyard has looked shitty all spring! We let the mower do its work and relaxed for a bit. The dogs enjoyed the newly groomed lawn and their nice, clean coats. After I washed them, I took the brush to them to see if I couldn’t get some of the loose shedding hair to come off. I was very excited to see the mower going. It’s cleaner and more efficient than the trimmer is, and makes much less noise. It also does a much better job.

Last night, Noyzi and Arran had a couple of playful moments. Considering how cranky Arran is when his authority is threatened, I’d say these were successful encounters. We also enjoyed the sunshine and temperatures warm enough to have wine outside last night. As much as I appreciate the nicer looking backyard, though, I do look forward to spending time outside of Breckenheim very soon. Bill has completely recovered from Moderna shot number two. I’m hoping that maybe I can get mine a week early, so we can go back to being mobile. I am so ready to break out of this perpetually homebound bullshit.

Nice to see Arran playing…
They really had fun in this video. I had to sit in Bill’s seat, because the sun was killing my eyes. Noyzi is really settling in to being a pet.

Here are a few more photos from our weekend. I am SO jealous of my friends who got to travel for the holiday. Ordinarily, that’s certainly what we would be doing, too. But we’re not quite “street legal” yet.

  • Our latests Ararat Box arrived the other day.
  • Bierstadt (a town near Wiesbaden) got a new brewery and is selling its wares.
  • But I like my wine…
  • Noyzi today, enjoying his fresh bedding and clean coat inside while we enjoy the sun.

Well… it’s hard to tell what the immediate future holds. I’d sure like to be able to get away soon, though. Even if it’s just to the dentist for a cleaning down in Stuttgart. Hopefully, we can arrange it soon… Wish us luck.

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There’s a lot of work that goes into being lazy…

Thanks to our former landlady’s policy of doing the yard work at her property, I have missed out on the chore of lawn mowing since we moved back to Germany in 2014.  Our current landlord doesn’t do lawns for his tenants, so we had to invest in some garden tools.  Although I didn’t know robotic lawnmowers existed until a couple of weeks ago, I was intrigued by the novelty of them.

We currently have a small yard.  In fact, it’s probably smaller than the yard we had in Jettingen.  It would be nothing for me to mow it with a regular mower.  Even as I was shopping for a lawnmower, I told myself this was a rather extravagant purchase I’d be making.  Still, the idea of having a robot cut the grass was too exciting for me to resist.  I don’t enjoy mowing, although I do like having a neat lawn.

I used to have a robotic vacuum cleaner.  I bought a Roomba when it was still a somewhat new concept.  I used it fairly often, but it wasn’t practical in the house we were living in when I bought it.  It would get caught on the fringe of my area rugs.  I also have a Scooba that I used in North Carolina and Texas.  That is a robot that mops.  I left it in storage because American and European electronics don’t always translate well with different voltages.

The robotic mower, though… that was something different.  I settled on the mid range McCulloch R600, a British machine that curiously came with no instructions in English.  I ordered it on Thursday.  It cost 599 euros and arrived yesterday.  It’s now waiting for its maiden voyage.  I also bought us a Bosch battery powered weedwhacker.  Truth be told, we could probably just weedwhack the whole yard in about ten minutes and call it done.

Before we can use the mower, it has to charge.  We also had to lay down boundary wire.  Here are some photos of Bill hard at work, installing the wire for our new toy.

First, he needed to weedwack a path to lay down the wire.  

Arran has really missed Bill.  He was gone for most of March and had to work this morning.

I got a charming video of him looking for attention, but I haven’t turned it into something I can post in the blog…

He finally laid the wire down around the perimeter of the yard, then set up a guide wire.

This new mower is pretty snazzy.  You can set it to mow while you sleep if you want to.  We can’t use it tomorrow, because tomorrow is Sunday and Germans get really pissy if you do yard work on Sunday.  Maybe it will be charged enough in a couple of hours to try it out.

This machine is very lightweight.  It even has anti-theft features and uses a PIN.

 

This 24 minute video was a Godsend.  We were able to find the owner’s manual in English online, but Bill couldn’t get it to print.  Watching the video was helpful anyway, since it showed exactly what Bill needed to do.

 

Yeah, I know I probably should have just bought a push mower.  At our first German house, we even had a mechanical mower that didn’t use any power that didn’t come from my muscles.  It seems silly to get a robot mower for such a small yard.  I don’t know what got into me.

By the way, our new next door neighbors have a pool in their much bigger backyard.  I think they’re setting it up now.  I feel their pain.  We had a pool in Texas.  It was great to have in Texas because it gets so hot there.  In Germany, it seems a little like a lot of work for not so much pleasure.

I was hoping we’d go out today, but Bill’s had a lot to do and needs to relax.  Tomorrow, we’ll find somewhere to have a beautiful lunch, like we did last week.

Edited to add:  It took about 100 minutes to fully charge the mower.  In the course of about two hours, it finished a large part of the lawn.  Bill used the weedwhacker to cut the places that were missed because it was getting dark.  From now on, the mower can operate several times a week so the grass doesn’t get so high.

Here’s a quick video.  The dogs were bewildered by the robot, while I was impressed by how quiet it is!

Another edit:  The end result after I let the robot run again Monday.

I think this is going to work out just fine!

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