Lawn Tractor vs Zero Turn

[Carl_NH]

52" is the best all around for access and for replacement blades and the deck will stick out 5-6" on the left side. I use Oregon Gator Blades - get a few sets thrown in as part of the deal - at least 6 blades. They run $50-60 for a set of 3. They also do a great job on leaves in the fall.

The G5 Oregon Gator are good .200" thick and some hard coat, the G6 are better - .250" thick and great hard coat on the cutting edge if you have rocks or sand.

 

[Yander]

We have one of these. ZT HD Zero Turn Lawn Mower | Gravely

You can get them for around $6k. We have 400 trouble free hours on it. My son has it and put the last 200 hours on it and he is HARD on stuff. They are considered light commercial. Ours has the Kawasaki and the HydroGear 3100 hydros. I wouldn't go smaller than the HG3100 for mowing hill sides. You defiantly want dual transaxles also. I saw someone posted to buy gently used. I don't think that is a bad plan either.

Mowers are fairly easy to work on and if you get a commercial one with less than 300hrs on it, it should have a lot of life and you will have a nice mower.

I would not be afraid of a ZTR on hills. Just mow straight up and straight down. The higher end and heavy ZTR you buy, the better it will do on hills.

This is the time of year to buy a ZTR.

 

[Yander]

Do you think they were useless on hills because of the stock turf tires, or because of the weight distribution of a ZT vs a garden tractor?

I mow a ditch that is fairly steep with my ZTR that I would not mow with a riding mower. It has to be dry as a bone but I feel safer mowing it on the ZTR. Any moisture with a ZTR and hills is a no no. Let it be dry and you can mow some pretty steep stuff.

 

[RSKY]

Might not be the right sub-forum for this, but hoping this works as a general "catch all"...

Just finished seeding and strawing the lawn for our house build (hope to close/move in in 3 weeks or so). Doing it all by hand, I'm well aware of how much lawn I'm going to have to mow in the future. Clearly not going to do it with the 6' bush hog or push mower + string trimmer...

All in all, I'll have about 1.5 - 2 acres of "yard" to maintain with this mower (I have a bush hog I use for our 5 acres of pasture). Don't intend to keep it like a golf course, just mowed to keep weeds/saplings at bay, and keep ticks and snakes away from the house. Ground is still pretty rough - quite a few stumps from forrestry mulching and felling trees to clear, and terracing from long-ago agricultural use. Not terribly steep, but am in middle TN with rolling hills and we do have slopes in part of the "yard" (maybe 15-20 degrees?). We've kept a larger # of mature trees around (as well as a 1/10th acre pond) so have a number of obstacles to work around.

My question: Anyone have guidance on whether a zero-turn mower (looking at something like a Scag Patriot or LibertyZ) or lawn tractor (like Kubota T2290 or Deere X384) would be a better fit?

My instinct is for the lawn tractor, but hesitate for two reasons: 1) the lower center of gravity of the ZT I assume would be better for side-hill mowing of our slopes and 2) The lawn tractors don't appear to come with ROPS/offer them as an option, where the ZT mowers do.

Would appreciate any insights or guidance y'all might have!

ETA: Cleaned up some details. Also want to add my budget is in the $6k-8k range

I'm coming in without reading all the other posts in this thread but here goes.

If your goal is to mow grass get a machine designed primarily to mow grass.

To summarize my experience on our one acre, 35 obstacle (trees, flower beds, etc) yard. Small lawn tractor, mowing and trimming took three hours every week. Small ZT took two hours mowing and trimming weekly. Larger ZT takes less than an hour and a half mowing and trimming. And with the ZTs I only trimmed about the third or fourth mowing.

A ZT will be faster and you will spend MUCH LESS time with a weedwhacker in your hands.

RSKY

 

[riptides]

.....

A ZT will be faster and you will spend MUCH LESS time with a weedwhacker in your hands.

....

Yes, I have about 3 miles of fence lines that the ZTR goes into and out of. So I weed whack the posts only.

Around the house I am good for getting in close to a few inches on stuff.

The ZTR has expanded our "lawn". What used to be tractor, garden tractor areas are now considered ZTR territory. The garden tractors disappeared over the arrival of the ZTR and the push mower has limited spot duty.

Overall, a perfect addition to the "lawn", pasture maintenance workload for us.

 

[RSKY]

Four things I should have put in my post above.

First, when grass is wet, don't mow hillsides with a ZTR. Try it once and you will find out why. I have seen some than can lock the front wheels and that would be okay but a normal one, nope. Not unless you enjoy sliding sideways down a hill.

Second, ZTRs do not like wet spots in the yard. I mowed a young lady's yard for her for about a year until she could sell the house. After a rain there was one spot in the yard that would stay wet for about a week after the rest was dry. If both rear tires hit the spot all was fine. If one hit the wet spot and the other back tire was on dry ground I would suddenly make a sharp turn or be making high speed circles in the yard.

Third, I am surprised at how much less gas I burn with the ZTR. Even with an engine nearly half again larger than the last tractor type I probably burn half the gasoline. And I only mix oil and gas for the weed whacker once a year instead of three or four times.

Fourth, my wife loves mowing on the ZTR. If I say the yard needs mowing I better have my shoes on and my hand on the doorknob or she will beat me outside and hop on it. This last one has an electric deck lift because she had trouble with the older one that had the height set by pushing a pedal and moving a pin.

And lastly, if you want to mow grass, get a machine designed primarily to mow grass!

RSKY

 

[Duds13]

Based on my experience with Cub Cadet, I would not buy another nor recommend anything Cub Cadet. Pure junk, in my experience.

Have you considered a stand-on mower? From what I gather they are much more agile than a ZT, and you can stop and get off them much quicker if you need to pick anything up in your way. Might hold the hills better too, and of you were to get into trouble you could easily hop off.

 

[RjCorazza]

Based on my experience with Cub Cadet, I would not buy another nor recommend anything Cub Cadet. Pure junk, in my experience.

Have you considered a stand-on mower? From what I gather they are much more agile than a ZT, and you can stop and get off them much quicker if you need to pick anything up in your way. Might hold the hills better too, and of you were to get into trouble you could easily hop off.

I've been thinking of replacing my small walk behind mower with a small stand on. I use a sulky to get around to my clients, but it's a drag to constantly remove and replace the sulky, even with a quick release pin.

 

[nyone]

The speed at which even a low end commercial ZTR can mow is amazing compared to any riding mower. They just seam to have more blade tip speed and that's really the spec you want to look at, yet can be hard to find.

For the most part ZTR mowers all use the same brand drives. So really you need to pick what series of drive you want and what engine. This will leed you towards a brand.

I have a bobcat (the green one, not white) I bought used with 100hrs one fall about 5yrs ago. I paid $2500 for it when they cost about $3700 new. Today I believe there closer to $6k.

Dont even bother with the box store ZTR.

 

[GeneV]

I got me a z-turn stander mower, a Bradley 48", it's awesome in every way compared to a riding mower.

Sorry, I'm coming into this thread late, so don't know the o/p's exact needs/wants. I will say if you want a swiss army knife type machine that does it all, then a garden tractor or scut with a midmount deck is your best option. But for straight up mowing, it's hard to beat a z-turn, and a stand-on mower beats out a sit down z-turn in too many ways...eg, better on hills, WAY easier on your back if you got terrain (your legs are shock absorbers instead of your spine), pop right off to pick up sticks or move stuff out of the way, could bail easy if anything happens, could get off and use as a self-propelled walk-behind if the ground is too soft for a heavy machine (or walk-along under trees), more compact, and finally it's FUN to use!

I got me Gator G5's on it and a chute blocker, so it gives a great cut and handles all the leaf stuff in the fall, makes life easy. Great machine, best $5k I ever spent.

Here's my boy when he first arrived, so clean! Not anymore tho.