I didn't say "just let it grow over" though. Turn it into natural landscape except the part you need for recreation. In many places people almost never play or sit in their front yard, for example. If you make that a natural landscape you might have to mow it once or less per year depending on what you actually plant.
It's a nice thought but the reality is that you'll be killing animals no matter what. I have a 48" riding mower and live in a rural area. At first I was really worried about all the field mice, voles, frogs, etc., that I saw running away from the mower. After a while, I realized that no matter how hard I tried, a certain number of them were just going to die. I tend to let my lawn grow fairly tall before cutting, and it's a mix of grasses, clovers, wildflowers and other plants that just grow naturally around here. The downside is that a lot of small animals live in it. I only remember running over one bunny so far, but who knows how many I might not have seen.
At least it's not fawns. Baby deer seem to be a magnet for combines harvesting corn.
Anything having lots of rpm ain't silent. Especially not at night.
So they surely ain't as loud as a combustion lawn mower and are pretty silent in comparison, so maybe you won't notice them in the city with its background noise. But in rural areas I perceive them as noisy even on daylight with normal noise level. And I never saw anyone using them at night - for a reason.
And as for gp .. he is already shadowbanned and you likely cannot see his answer (I have showdead=true). He reacted poorly I think.
Yeah, in that case, this sounds like a horrific idea.
I could hear a neighbours smoke alarm beeping periodically due to low battery the other night and went around to replace the battery for them the next day.
Also, I wasn't aware of the showdead setting (and had no idea about the answer that had been hidden), thanks for the tip.
Your brain will completely tune the beeping sound out after a certain point, if it's a thing you notice at all. Similar reason to reversing truck beepers being replaced with ones that produce white (or other coloured) noise, so you don't lose your ability to hear where they are.
Can only disagree there (I built an OpenMower based on a SA650B), in a rural area, also cannot hear it from about 10m away, even at night.
Though I don't run it at night except when it is just finishing up from the afternoon
Either there is a new generation of ultra silent mowers, or we have vastly different hearing levels.
Edit: but I only know of mowers noise level from what I experience walking around, I don't own one, nor did I research that model number. Maybe I will.
The modern razor blade based robot mowers are barely audible. Segway claims 58 dBA, for context. Anywhere near a city (which, these smaller robot lawnmowers are really meant for smaller city lawns) is going to have close to that for background noise levels. Maybe it's partially audible if you're standing next to it, but with fencing and some distance between you and your neighbor, you aren't bothering anyone.
Electric motors can run at quite high rpms with lower decibels. Sure not silent but the origin is low enough that at a distance say 25 feet it’s almost silent.
True, but remember what’s quiet to a human may be quite different to what’s quiet to a hedgehog. When reading about these things it’s surprising how often things that we might not consider - like how vibrations travel though the ground - can confuse wildlife in ways that we might not expect when viewed through an anthropomorphic lens.
I have an electric (though not robotic) lawn mower, and it turns out that it's not much quieter than a gas powered one. No engine noise obviously, but the blades spinning and hitting grass still makes a lot of noise (and indeed in my case it turned out to be the vast majority of the noise). So it wouldn't be a very good idea to run your robot lawn mower at night.
Maybe your specific model? I have a Makita electric mower and the difference is night and day. It's very relaxing and I mow with no hearing protection. I've tested to see how far the noise carries and none of my neighbors can even hear it. Meanwhile, I hear gas mowers from my neighbors on all sides and several lots away from me.
It probably depends on model, but mine is dead silent (Mammotion Luba 2). However the reason I avoid running it at night is it has a fairly bright headlight, and I worry it might create shadows/light effects in my neighbors house and I know they have little kids.
I think the concern is animals that hide or sit still when threatened more so than it chasing down a rabbit :p
Also, eventually animals would get used to the noise until they get hurt.
