Husqvarna Automower Review Part 7 – I Messed Up

We’re getting close to the end of our Husqvarna Automower Review series. Here’s the latest update from the last two weeks.

Secondary Area

The Secondary Area operating mode is used when you have an additional part of lawn that cannot be reached from the main one. Selecting the Secondary Area menu offers three options., from the manual…

Mowing until empty battery – This option is suitable for a large secondary area requiring more than 90 minutes to mow.
Mow 90 minutes – This option is suitable to prevent unnecessary mowing and trampled grass in a small/medium sized secondary area.
Mow 30 minutes – This option is suitable to prevent unnecessary mowing and trampled grass in a small sized secondary area.

If the lawnmower charges in Secondary Area mode, it will fully charge, drive out about 50 cm and then stop to let you know that it is charged and ready to start. Nice touch.

Two Halves

The Automated Home front garden is in two halves and we had considered using this Secondary Area feature. The big side has a 3 meter wide corridor that leads to the rear garden. But from there, there’s only a narrow strip (just 60 cms wide at the narrowest point) that continues back round to the smaller front side.

Our original installation only covered the big front lawn plus the rear garden, not the narrow front portion. But our wonderful Husqvarna dealer paid us a return visit a while back and worked their magic. Now the Automower can reach all three areas and even though this is pretty much outside its design parameters we’re delighted that to report its all working well. That brings our total area up from 2,700 square metres to around 3,000.

Spot Cutting

It took another intensive period of cutting to get the narrow side of the front lawn down to the required height. After that was complete I started to back the machine off on the timer again, our dealer advised moving away from the 24/7 regime and trying to lessen the load on the machine.

I reduced the timer several times over the last few weeks, eventually getting down to 14 hours a day. This was just not enough time though as a combination of the new area and the intense growth of the warm wet weather meant the grass seemed to become unmanageable almost over night. Completely my fault.

So we’ve seen a lot of ‘Spot Cutting’ lately, as well as previously each time we reduced the cutting time for the mower or the cutting height. Spot cutting is a program that puts the machine into a spiral automatically when it detects longer grass. You can also kick this off manually and it’s useful for things like cutting an are where there’s garden furniture. You can lift the table and chairs and let the mower go to work. It will automatically go back to its regular operating mode once finished.

Dark Silence

A few of you have asked how quiet the mower is and if it can cut in the dark. These are definitely two of the things we still find most amazing about the Automower. It’s really quiet (57 dB), and it cuts in the pitch black dead of night just the same as if it was daylight – check out the end of the video below.

So here’s the seventh part of our video review (please like, share and subscribe).

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Make sure to check out all 8 parts in this video review series…

Part 1 – The Robots are Coming

Part 2 – The 1st Cut is the Deepest

Part 3 – Perfect Timing

Part 4 – Connect Control

Part 5 – Rain or Shine

Part 6 – Stolen?

Part 7 – I Messed Up

Part 8 – A Tesla for your Garden

www.automowerchallenge.co.uk : husqvarna.com

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