Battery Powered Equipment

jekjr

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Are any of you guys running the new battery powered equipment commercially? I have been using a 58 Echo string trimmer for a while now. I bought my first one last August and it literally shocked me how good it was. I just bought a second one to have as a backup when I start up this spring. It uses the same string and has the Speed Feed head and will run .105 line. It is a split pole unit and will pull and edger and the other attachments also. It is not strong enough to pull the bed redefiner but it takes a bigger gas powered unit to pull it anyway. Pulling the string head or the edger it will run as long on a 4AH battery as the gas unit will run on a tank of gas.

I also have a 58 Volt Chainsaw that is impressive. I bought the 58 volt hedge trimmers and they are great. I bought the 58 volt hand held blower also. It will out blow the comparable gas powered hand held. No gas, no cranking, jut pull the trigger and it is running.

I can see where theses units might not be for everybody or every crew yet but I was running Echo gas equipment and was shocked to find out that the battery was actually comparable to the gas in the real world.
 

BlazNT

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I am going over this in my mind and without pricing so a little guessing.
I use 4 tanks of gas every day give or take a 1/4 tank. That would require 5 batteries a day to be sure I could complete all the weed-eating/edging. To not wear out the batteries I would need double that so 10 batteries and 5 chargers. When I get home I do not want to charge and change batteries till I go to bed. I would need the head unit, string trimmer, and edger. Let's do some adding up. Remember I am guessing the cost.
$400.00 Head unit
$150.00 String trimmer
$150.00 Edger
$1000.00 10 Batteries
$500.00 5 Chargers

$2200.00 for an initial investment.
$1000.00 every 2 years for new batteries.

Does not sound like a sound investment.
 

tom3

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What brand of gas equipment do you use? I'd say you really give them a work out over a long summer.
 

BlazNT

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What brand of gas equipment do you use? I'd say you really give them a work out over a long summer.

It is not what everyone else uses but I love them. Husqvarna is my handheld preference. I normally get 3 years out of them but I also do not abuse my equipment. I run with the guard in place and never have the string longer than it was designed to use. I also use high-quality nonsynthetic oil.

P.S.
Most of my weed eating is because you can not cut a large amount of the grass with a mower.
 

bertsmobile1

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And add to that in a service van/ trailer the batteries will get quite hot.
batteries do not like getting hot, they self discharge more hot than cold & they do not work as well when hot.
Thus you would always have to prospect of running out of power before the end of the shift.
The one option missed was a charging port off you truck &/or a solar charger on the trailer.

When I ran the courier company radio batteries were a never ending nightmare.
The catches on the radios wore so the batteries got loose then they do not make good contact.
Then the mounting flanges break off and it became a disaster.

I have a couple of battery drills & an impact for call outs and both of those batteries are quite loose due to wear in the mountings.
They are both around 5 years old now and have has little use as the workshop is set up for air .

All of the battery powered ground care tool I have seen use basically the same flimsey mounting system as the drills do & I doubt they would last a year in a contractors trailer.
 
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