How to use the mowing calculator?
Our calculator can be used for two different things. So, to start, you need to decide what do you need to calculate. You have two options to choose from:
- The cost of getting your lawn mowed by professionals,
or,
2. How long it would take to mow your lawn with your own mower.
If you pick the first option, all you need to do is to:
- Pick whether your chosen company charges per unit of area or per hour of work;
- If they charge by area, input the price per unit and how big is your lawn; and
- If they do it by the hour, you'll need to know how much an hour of work costs, how many hours mowing your lawn should take - roughly. If you're not sure, don't worry - you can use the other part of our lawn mowing cost calculator to find out!
If you want to calculate mowing time and efficiency, you should pick the second option and follow these instructions:
- Input the speed of the mower;
- Provide the width of the mower's deck;
- Try estimating how effective the mowing will be. Unfortunately, it's rarely a 100%, as factors such as grass type, the shape of the lawn, small obstacles such as other plants and stones, etc., tend to get into the way of keeping your lawn perfect. In most cases, it's reasonable to assume that going over the lawn once will cut about 80% of the grass, but you're free to adjust that number as you see fit;
- The mowing calculator will use the data you provided to present you with the estimated efficiency of your mower, that is, how much area can it mow in an hour; and
- If you want, you can also input the area of your lawn to find out the time it should take to mow it.
How to calculate lawn mowing cost and time?
Let's go through some examples to clear up any doubts that may still be lingering.
When it comes to calculating the costs, the calculations are really simple:
total costs (per area) = price per single unit of area * total areatotal costs (per hours) = price per hour of work * hours of work
When it comes to calculating mowing time, what you need to do is multiply the speed of your mower by the width of its deck. Remember to take efficiency into account - unfortunately, mowing is rarely at one hundred percent on the first try.
To calculate mowing time, you would have to follow these steps:
mowing speed = the speed of your mower * the width of the mower's deck * error margin, for example:
6 km/h * 50 cm * 80% = 0.24 ha/h.
mowing time = area to mow / mowing speed, for example:0.5 ha / 0.24 ha/h = 2h 5 min
What influences lawn mowing cost?
It's no news that prices vary from company to company. However, they generally stay within a relatively stable range. Aside from the obvious included in the mowing calculator, the factors affecting lawn mowing cost include the following:
- What's included in the mowing service? Is it just mowing, or does the company offer all-inclusive packages with weed-eating, edging, and disposing of grass clippings? Can you add on another service, for example lawn ferilization?
- Has the lawn been mowed regularly? If it's a new lawn that has never been mowed, or it has been neglected for some time, mowing will probably take longer and will require more labor than in the case of regularly mowed lawns, hence potentially raising the price.
- Do you want to hire the company for regular mowing? Unfortunately, mowing does not last forever. You might want to consider setting up a regular mowing service with your provider. In most companies, the more frequent the mowing, the less it costs. For example, the same company can charge $50 for a one-time mowing service, but their price would drop to $45 for the same lawn if it was mowed by them twice a month, and to $40 if it was done on a weekly basis.
- How far from the companies headquarters do you live? If the drive time to your place is long, the lawn care might want to charge more due to transportation costs such as gas.
