posted on
November 09, 2009 at 06:59PM
A couple of additional insights.
You'll want a deck (mower cutting width) that will match your lawn, get into the areas you need to mow, and is suitable to the amount of lawn you have. Unless your lawn is over two acres you need not get anything over a 42" deck. If you have a lot of trees and flower gardens, lwawn gnomes etc, you can't beat a hydrostatic transmission. It works just like a car- the more you push the pedal down the faster it goes and you push another pedal to go in reverse. No changing gears or riding the clutch/brake.
If you want to try using it to plow, get enough horsepower and consider a manual transmission (In my opinion- 24hp, but others have plowed with as small as 12 hp-or so they say- 24+hp with manual transmission start at $1500 and with hydro transmission start at $1650 and both go up from there) . Consider the slope of your driveway and where you are going to be able to pile the snow. In the snowbelt, as I'm sure you know, you get pretty big snowfalls and your snow doesn't often melt away between snowfalls. I'm not sure you will be able to plow more than a 6" snow accumulation at a time.
Price of the items needed to plow is also a consideration, the plow will cost you at least $240, the chains about $55 and the weights about $70. thats about $375. To plow you need to remove the deck, attach the plow and the chains and the weights. In the Spring, you'll need to remove all of the snow equipment and reinstall the mowing deck.,A lot of work.
For $700 or so you can purchase a good 24" wide, two-stage self propelled snow-blower that can throw tons of snow out of the way. A 20/21 horsepower tractor with a 42" deck and hydro tansmission is about $1300 to $1500.
A leaf vacuum attachment is a pretty expensive item. A bagger attachment will do just as well.
Please let us know what you do and how it works. Any clarifications you need, just ask, there are a lot of fairly experienced tractor people here.
This topic has been locked.