Hi there,
I am moving my family to a house on a 1.5 acre lot soon, and I'm in the market for a small tractor or mower for the first time. The new lawn is mostly weeds right now, but there are lots of small trees and shrubs planted around the perimeter of the property. Over the next several years, I hope to get the place looking like a park!
First off, congratulations on the new house. It sounds like you are very much looking forward to making some landscape improvements.
I was in a VERY similar situation 3 years ago -- almost 2 acres, residential area, and landscape-wise the prior (elderly) owners had "let things go" for about 10 years. So in my case I could walk just about anywhere on the property, swing a yardstick around, and hit something that could be improved.
I too vacillated between a landscaping service, a ZTR, a lawn tractor, and a small utility tractor. From strictly a financial standpoint, the landscaping service had the highest cost -- but would require the least of my time. So there is a tradeoff, as all of the other options are "DIY" and require some seat time. This is an important factor for some folks, who may value their time at work, or with their spouse, or with the kids, or at the beach, or at the range, etc much higher than sitting on a machine going in circles.
In the end I decided that in 4 years I could either have a shoebox full of reciepts from the landscape company or I could purchase something outright and hopefully win on the depreciation/maintenance economics. I am not the type to make a purchase on a whim and then part with things quickly, so whatever I invested in I would be with for the long haul. And, I would want year-round use of the machine, so versatility was a key factor to me.
First and foremost, I think I need a really good mower.
I also want a wagon for hauling firewood and shrubs around the yard
I could get a loader, a spreader, and a sprayer.
Those things would all be handy to have as I create my "park".
I could dig trenches for my sprinkler system, clear out a parking pad and a garden area, move big rocks around for building steps and walkways, dig up and replant shrubs
These are the exact factors that I considered, and in addition I had one more -- clearing snow.
In my analysis I considered a ZTR a "purpose built" tool -- that is, if I only wanted to mow grass it was clearly the fastest way to do it. But, any additional tasks would be limited by the limited towing/spraying/etc options available to a ZTR platform. This seemed to me to be a significant tradeoff, at least for my anticipated needs. Of course, for a professional landscape guy who cuts a square mile of grass per week, a speedy, highly-maneuverable ZTR makes perfect sense. But for my acre and change of grassed area, I did not think the time-vs-versatility tradeoff tilted the scales to the ZTR. Finally, the ZTR was going nowhere from late November to March --for that timespan it is a dead asset.
The lawn tractor approach similarly had limitations. It would have none of the time-saving advantages of the ZTR, and none of the better capabilities of a bigger utility tractor, and finally very few lawn tractors have 4WD which (combined with the light weight) pretty much negated any type of usefulness in the snow. Moreover, typical lawn tractors have limited lifespans; the last thing I wanted to do was purchase a tractor and throw it away in 5-7 years because the engine or transmission or deck has reached it's designed-in end.
This process of elimination is what led me to look at SCUTs. With one I would get the versatility, lifespan, and year-round utility I was looking for. Would it cut as fast as a ZTR? No. But I could do a lot more with it than a ZTR, and that would in the end save me time, money, and/or aggravation (e.g. dealing with rentals etc).
So at this point, I really don't know what I want. What to do, Internet? What to do?
Get a subcompact utility tractor. How's that for decisiveness?
Wrooster
