Cemetery Mowing

cpurvis

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Looking for recommendations for mowing a cemetery, such as:

Best type of equipment to use. Zero turn, stander, or walk behind? Rear or side discharge? Width of cut?

How many acres/hr of cemetery such equipment will mow per hour.

The cemetery consists of 10.5 acres of occupied area with 3,000+ graves and 4.5 acres of future plots.

Any advice/insight you can provide into cemetery mowing will be very much appreciated.

Thanks.
 

tom3

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Buy a rugged mower for the trimming around graves. I have a good friend who works in the city garage and the cemetery mowers get beat all to heck. And mowing those acres would sure be a job for one person. I'd have to be awfully good at operation to use a zero turn in there.
 

Darryl G

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I considered taking on a cemetery years ago that I had an inside track on getting, but after researching it by talking to LCO friends who do them I decided that I don't have the patience or desire for cemetery mowing. All the obstacles, all the trimming, all the flowers (plastic and real) to deal with. No thanks.

With that said, here are the recommendations I received: Cheap push mowers (not self propelled) - you will hit stones/markers and bend the shafts - and 48 inch walk behinds for maneuverability along with light trimmers.
 

John Fitzgerald

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It would be a slow, tedious job in the occupied areas. I would not take it on myself to do one, too likely to damage something, and face an angry family. I have sympathy for people who take care of cemetery mowing and maintenance. I have heard that rear discharge mowers are popular due to trimming on both sides.
 

cpurvis

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It would be a slow, tedious job in the occupied areas. I would not take it on myself to do one, too likely to damage something, and face an angry family. I have sympathy for people who take care of cemetery mowing and maintenance. I have heard that rear discharge mowers are popular due to trimming on both sides.

The damage has already been done. This cemetery was once well-kept until the city in which it's located took over the mowing. Many areas went unmowed and hundreds of stones damaged by the much too-large mower they use. Many people, myself included, raised hell about it and now the word is they're going to put it up for bid again. Mowing a cemetery is not something I want to do but I feel it needs to be done by someone who'll do it right. Much re-setting of stones somewhere close to where they should be needs to be done, too.

Back in the '70s and '80s, my wife's grandfather mowed two cemeteries, one much larger than this one, but the stones were not as close together. He did it by himself with just a small rider (maybe a Swisher?) and a small push mower. No weedeater, either. He must have mowed all day, every day, during the season. That is definitely not what I have in mind.

I was thinking the 'stander' mowers would be well suited to this.

Appreciate the advice.

edit: Using Google Maps, I got the area of the two cemeteries he was mowing--19.5 acres for one; 5.1 acres on the other. I have no idea how he did it.
 
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7394

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I've been to a cemetary that only permitted flat to ground head stones, so no obstacles.

But our family cemetary has all the regular headstones, takes the right people to do that work correctly.
 

jekjr

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I sold 5 of my mowers and dropped about 80 customers last Summer. Before that we were doing 3 cemeteries. We used zero turn mowers and a lot of weedeaters. We ran 52" Tiger Cat Scags. If I were starting over I would buy a 48" just for that purpose.
 
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