As the weather steadily warms up, outdoor maintenance often takes centre stage in a facility manager’s daily duties, and your lawn mower can be a critical tool in that endeavour. Keeping your lawn neat and tidy is important for pest control and drainage, as well as presenting a professional outdoor appearance for your building.
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What are the best ways to keep your lawn mower in tip-top shape through the spring and summer?
Maintenance
Keeping your equipment in working order means avoiding unexpected surprises or the possibility that it becomes unreliable, and a maintenance checklist can help. Things like worn belts and brakes, loose bolts, faulty wiring, and insufficient tire pressure are some of the issues that challenge the use and longevity of your lawn mover.
You may even have different models and types of mowers, and in that case, you may need to create different checklists that are specific to each piece of equipment you’re maintaining.
Well-maintained equipment helps to avoid early replacement and improve efficiency. Some manufacturers recommend changing the blades after 25 hours of use, so take a look at the manufacturer’s maintenance recommendations to create a working schedule.
Completing weekly audits, documenting any work or upgrades, and planning for professional maintenance, repair, or replacement is also an important part of your maintenance practice. If you have several mowers it can be difficult to coordinate maintenance schedules, so develop a system that works for you to ensure that all your equipment stays consistently maintained.
Use
Using your equipment appropriately is important for maintaining your lawn mower, so make safety a priority. Safety features are continually improving, with additions like automatic shutoffs, ergonomic hand controls, noise reduction, roll bars, seat belts, safety sensors, and more. Incorporating these into your budgeting allows you to keep safety top of mind and improve your efficiency.
Upgrades may also be an option to improve your lawn mower performance and your productivity. Adding things like deflectors or guards can help protect your property and other equipment from damage if things fly off your lawnmower through the season.
Storage
Storing your lawn mower properly is a key component in extending the life of your lawn mower. Storing it indoors keeps it protected from the elements, providing stable temperature and humidity, which can lessen the chance of rust or corrosion to your equipment or damage to the electrical system.
Covering your lawn mover when you store it will also help keep it in good shape by protecting it from dirt and dust.
It’s likely that your lawn mower gets a lot of use through these next few months and it’s important to ensure that it performs at its best to keep your property safe, pest-free, and efficient.
