Daily Home Renovation Tips

What first attracted us to this new lawn mower was its Terra Phase brushless motor, battery operation (so I don’t keep chewing the electric cord as per my prior electric mowers), self-propelled feature and its optional Solar charging station. Once we had the machine and learned more about it we were even more glad we made the purchase. As well as, of course, the important fact that it did not use a gas-powered engine which typically requires more maintenance and is of course not environmentally friendly compared to an electric engine.

This year we wrote (from a far, if you will) about the changes we could tell with the 2009 model. This article, titled Solar Charged Mower - Solaris, Epic, Utopia - New for 2009, has been our most popular article ever in terms of comments … more than 50.

Late last week I was approached by Linamar Consumer Product asking if I would like to receive a 2009 Solaris and provide a similar series of articles as we had done last year on our personal experiences. Would you say no? Sweet.

If any other consumer lawn mower manufacturers wish to give us one of their 2009 models to similarly test and write about our experiences with their product well, just send me an email … except for gas-powered lawn mowers, that is; there is no need for a consumer to purchase a gas-powered mower to pollute the air we breathe. There, you now know my bias going in.

So, this is the first in a series of articles we will be publishing every day this week on the 2009 Solaris 21-inch front-wheel self-propelled electric lawn mower with the brushless motor. We thank Linamar Consumer Products for their offer and confirm to you what we said to them; specifically, as we did last year when we purchased our 2008 lawn mower, if there are features or performance issues we do not like we will not hesitate to say so. At the end of the day, if one does not maintain one’s integrity what does one end up actually achieving?

So, let’s get started. The first several articles in this series will focus on the machine itself and my experiences with it. Later in this series I will do a compare / contrast between the 2008 version and this 2009 model (although some comparison to the 2008 model throughout all articles will be unavoidable).

My wife and youngest daughter were off on vacation in the Big Apple when I received the call from Phil Maurion of Linamar Consumer Products. They drove down in our family mini-van, leaving me with our now 7+ year old Saturn L100. As I was already off from work last week I made the almost 2 hour drive to their headquarters in Guelph, Ontario to meet Phil and pick up the unit.

Did they give me a special unit to which they had applied more quality control tests than they would do for any mower? No. How do I know? I’ll tell and show you how I know in the next day or two.

Now one of the concerns I had was whether I would be able to put the mower into our small little car. 

As you can see above, the standard shipping box is quite large. The picture was taken in the parking lot of their headquarters. 

It did, however fit, with the handle positions over the mower, in the back of our car with the back seats folded down plus a little room to spare. In the above picture the two batteries can be seen on the floor of the back seat.

So, here is what it looks like out of the car. 

The motor is centered in the middle of the lawn mower body. It comes with side discharge, rear discharge & bagging attachment, and mulching options. We have always mulched our grass clippings and will continue to do so.

This model has the front wheel drive self-propelled feature. I am not aware of any type of lawn mower, other than those with polluting gas-powered engines, which have the self-propelled feature (front or rear wheel drive). To me, this is one of the significant product differentiators: a lawn mower with the self-propelled feature which does not generate polluting emissions into the air. If you do know of any other electric lawn mower, corded or battery operated, which is self-propelled, please drop me a line as I would be very interested to know. 

Tomorrow, more features of the 2009 Solaris self-propelled electric lawn mower.

To continue to the next article in this series, simply select this link to Part 2 of our 2009 Solaris self-propelled cordless electric lawn mower review.