Hector the Robot Mower

Now that things have warmed up a little, Hector our robot mower has been out and about. The weekend was decidedly Spring like and he’s been busy keeping the garden tidy for us.

Perfect Edges

The time spent creating the perfect habitat for him was time well spent. So far he hasn’t got stuck anywhere. He seems to be mowing all the areas we want as well. Installing the lawn-level edging was worthwhile. Not only does it look neat and tidy but it allows the robot mower to mow right the the edge. It’s possible to adjust how far over the boundary wire the robot goes. We’ve left it on the default setting so far. This seems to allow the wheels of the robot mower to go right to the edge of the concrete slabs I installed. This means it mows all of the grass and overlaps into the edging by a few centimeters. He doesn’t however fall into the flower borders and get stuck – perfect.

Uneven Lawn

The lumps and bumps of our far from perfect lawn don’t seem to be causing it any issues. Nor does the house I built for it. Once it has finished its mowing time it follows the guide wire back to the house. It then turns around and reverses perfectly into the house and connects to its charging station. It did once enter the house my mistake whilst mowing and then had trouble turning around. I have now activated the ‘Avoid House Collisions’ options within the settings and that hasn’t been an issue since.

Robot Mower Settings and Schedules

There are plenty of settings and scheduling options available. I’ve set it so that it doesn’t start too early in the day. Not because it’s noisy but because the grass is often wet with dew in the morning. It’s not at all noisy by the way, you can barely hear it really. If there is even a slight breeze then the rustle of the tress is louder than the mower. It really is almost silent.

As well as scheduling options there are also ‘Lawn Sense’ and ‘Frost Sense’ features. The latter means the mower doesn’t mow if the temperature is below 5°C. The Lawn Sense feature means that the robot mower automatically detects the growth of the grass and mows it when needed (within your predetermined timing schedule). This, I think, is better then than simply mowing as much as it can during the scheduled times. If the grass hasn’t grown much it doesn’t bother. This not only saves power and wear and tear on the mower but also prevents over-mowing of the lawn as well.

Passage Sense and lawn Coveage

We’ve also set up the ‘Passage Sense’ feature and the ‘Lawn Coverage’ feature. This allows us to divide the lawn up into separate areas and tell the mower how much time to spend on each area. This should mean that its time mowing is shared evenly between the various areas of the garden. The passage Sense features allows us to tell the mower that one of these areas is a narrow passage. In our case this is the little bit under the pergola. This should instruct it to mow this narrow passage fully but not too often so as to prevent over mowing and wear.

So far, so good. It’ll be interesting to see how it gets on over the course of an entire summer.

I now have to decide if I should weed and feed this year or not. I think I probably will as there is still some moss in amongst the grass and getting rid of that should allow the grass to grass thicker and greener. The constant mowing by Hector will keep the grass luxuriant and hopefully prevent the moss coming back.

All I need now is a robot to clean the windows, one to weed the flower borders and one to wash my bikes! We might need a second robot mower for the fron garden too. I think we’ll call her Harriet!

Tags: Robot