If there’s one piece of outdoor equipment that gardeners need to take good care of, it’s their lawn mowers.
Lawn mowers can cost hundreds of pounds to buy and if they are not maintained and stored correctly, repairs can be pretty costly. To many, they are like a second car – which means that should also be checked and serviced just like one!
If you are thinking about getting your lawn mower serviced but you’re not sure how much it will cost, then here’s the in-depth guide with all the information you need!
How Much Does A Lawn Mower Service Cost?
The average cost of a lawn mower service ranges between £80 to over £500 including parts and labour.
That’s a huge price range but the reason why is that there are a lot of different types of lawn mowers out there – ride-on mowers, petrol mowers, electric cylinder mowers, and even robotic mowers which do all the mowing labour for you!
Because lawn mowers range so widely in terms of size, power, and components, so do service prices. Here’s a breakdown of the average service costs for different types of motors:
If you use a ride-on lawn mower, then you can expect a full lawn mower service to cost you between £400 and £500. This is the most expensive service cost because ride-on mowers are usually the largest and most powerful type of lawn mower.
For standard petrol rotary lawn mowers, the cost for a full service usually starts around £150.
For electrical cylinder lawn mowers, the cost for a full service is actually less expensive with prices starting at £90.
Robotic lawn mowers can be serviced for a price between £80 and £150.
If you use a petrol grass strimmer, a leaf blower, or even a petrol chainsaw to help with your garden maintenance, then you can also get these pieces of equipment serviced for around £90.
How Often Should You Get Your Lawn Mower Serviced?
Those are just the cost of a single service for your lawn mowers, and most people don’t need to service their lawn mowers more than once a year.
This means that the annual cost of your lawn mower services should be the same as the numbers above (depending again on what type of lawn mower you use).
However, if you use your lawn mower very regularly, then it’s recommended that you service your lawn mower after every 25 hours of continued use.
This is because a lot of the changes and checks included in a lawn mower service are recommended to be done after 25 hours of use, or every year, whichever comes first with you and your lawn mower.
So, if you use your lawn mower for a total of 50 hours in a year, this will double what you spend on lawn mower services in a year because you should have your lawn mower serviced twice.
What Is Included In A Lawn Mower Service?
A lawn mower service is very similar to the kind of service your car gets – it’s basically a bunch of checks and cleans, and any minor changes, repairs, or replacements that need doing.
If there are any serious problems with your lawn mower, the tradesman servicing your lawn mower will let you know before asking your permission to order parts or make expensive repairs.
Here are some examples of the kind of checks and cleans that are carried out in a typical lawn mower service, no matter what type of lawn mower you may own:
- A basic startup test and run to see how your lawn mower performs.
- A battery check.
- A tyre condition and pressure check.
- A belt, pulley, and fuel line inspection.
- An oil inspection (replaced if necessary).
- Air filter inspection, with cleaning or replacement.
- A blade inspection (sharpened if necessary).
- Replace spark plugs.
All of these are the kind of checks and changes which help keep your lawn mower in perfect condition throughout the season.
Tune-Up Vs Service
One common mistake gardeners make is mixing up what a tune-up and a service are.
A tune-up is basically a much smaller version of a service, and usually only includes three checks and changes: an oil change, a spark plug change, and an air filter clean or change.
Because tune-ups offer much less labour and work, they only cost around £10 to have done.
On the other hand, they’re so quick and easy to do that a lot of gardeners do their own tune-ups as a part of their regular lawn mower maintenance.
Can You Do A Lawn Mower Service Yourself?
Most of the checks and changes in a lawn mower service can be done by yourself at home if you have the right tools and space.
This means that you can save yourself nearly £100 minimum each year simply by servicing your own lawn mower.
To do your own lawn mower service, you will need to at least do the following steps:
Check, change, or clean your air filters. New air filters can be purchased for under £10 either online or from your local lawn mower repair shop
Clean the lawn mower’s carburettor. These jets can become clogged with dirt and debris, and you will need to clear them away using a lubricant, a cleaning brush, and compressed air.
Check the oil level and change the oil if necessary. This is an easy task to do – just check the oil level by removing the rod from the tank cap, just like you would on a car.
If the oil level is between the minimum and maximum notches, then your oil level is fine. Just remember that oil needs to be changed once every year to keep it at the right viscosity for your lawn mower.
Check and adjust the lawn mower cutting height. Tradesmen can’t usually do this for you because they don’t know how high you want your lawn’s grass to be. Doing it yourself will allow you to set the blades at the exact height you desire.
Sharpen the lawn mower blades. Your blades need to be sharp in order to effectively cut the grass, so remove them, clean them, and sharpen them using a grinding wheel or an appropriate type of file.
As you can see, you can’t perform a full in-depth service on your lawn mower by yourself.
Certain tasks are better left to the professionals but if you want to avoid paying the hefty service fees, performing the above tasks will be enough to help keep your lawn mower in great condition.
It’s up to you whether or not you think paying for a service is worth it.
Paying for a full service on your lawn mower will save you a lot of time and effort, plus it will be checked over by trained professionals who can probably do a much more efficient job than you.
However, doing your own lawn mower service will definitely help avoid common issues that creep up when using a lower mower.
So, the choice is yours – do you want to maintain your own lawn mower for free, or spend around £100 to get a professional to do the job instead?
Where Can You Get Your Lawn Mower Serviced?
If you don’t feel comfortable servicing your lawn mower by yourself, then you can always take it to your local lawn mower repair shop and have a professional check it over for you.
This will mean that you will have to pay for labour and probably will cost you more for parts – but at least you will have peace of mind knowing that a professional has given your lawn mower the thumbs up.
You can easily find your local lawn mower repair service online with just a quick Google check. Most garden centres offer this service, as well as machine shops, lawn mower dealers, and some garages too.
In short, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a place near you that offers lawn mower services as a lot of people opt for this rather than do their own lawn mower maintenance.
Final Thoughts
A lawn mower service can cost you nothing if you decide to do it yourself, although you will need to purchase tools and equipment like new oil, a cleaning brush, and so on.
Luckily, most gardeners already have these kinds of things and the cost of things like new filters and oil are so much less than the total cost of a lawn mower service through a tradesman.
The average cost of a lawn mower service can easily climb over £100 for most types of lawn mowers, with ride-on lawn mowers even costing up to £500 in service fees.
The important takeaway from this is that you need to be doing these kinds of checks every year anyway to keep your lawn mower in good condition.
It’s just a question of whether you want to do it yourself for free or pay a minimum of £80 to £500 for someone else to do it for you.
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