That Time We Talked About Ego Weed Eater

Shasha!

This is episode number 86 of The Homeowner's Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett. Here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner's Show. We're glad that you could join us from your Corona 2020 self-contained quarantine bunker.

Man, we should probably like change the intro. Here with me is Craig Williams, but you're really not here with me.

I'm not with you.

You're beside me on the screen.

That's right.

That's about it.

It's the warmest, fuzziest homeowner show you've ever experienced.

This social distancing sucks, man.

So here's one of the interesting things is, Like my wife, like, is a loving, kind, wonderful person, but she is not a hugger.

Yeah.

And so she's been telling me for like the past week, she's like, I kinda don't want this quarantine thing to end. Not because I don't want the quarantine to end, but because so many of my friends have told me that they're going to come hug me. And if I get hugged too many times, I'm probably gonna smack somebody.

Yeah, and I think she— it's even worse, like she's choosy about who she even like will allow to touch her in general.

Yes, yes.

It's like, get away from me.

Yes, the circle is very, very small.

Yeah.

So, and then sometimes I'm not in there.

I'm almost never in it, so.

So, so yeah, she's not, she's not looking forward to the, uh, to the unveiling of the new world.

Yeah.

Well— Not because she doesn't want people to get back to normal, but she just may continue to self-quarantine for a while just to let everybody get the hugs out, and then she'll emerge from the cave.

Yeah. It's interesting because there are some of us, like me and like you, who love being around people and love being social and those sorts of things. And then there's my wife. Who I'm really not sure she notices any difference right now.

She's good.

She's fine. She is fine staying at home and never leaving.

I get to ratchet up my introvertedness? Deal.

Exactly. Exactly. Like, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure that extrovert-extrovert or introvert-introvert marriages work really well, but I know that my extrovert-introvert Marriage works really well. Yeah.

I mean, we have a weird dynamic because I'm probably in that weird extrovert-introvert borderline because I do really enjoy social interaction and being around other people. But at some point I reach a threshold and I want to go be in a cave. And like, it's not—

I think as a man, on some level, there's like, just let me go do my thing, leave me alone. Almost every man has that, at least somewhere.

I would hope so. Otherwise, this isn't normal.

No.

And then there's probably a lot of this that's not normal anyway, but I just don't need one extra.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So no, I get it. Well, how's everything around your house?

It's good, man. Like the, I mean, like I'm not here a whole lot still, um, still out saving the world.

That's right.

One bug at a time. Um, but, uh, so since the kids have been home, I, I think I mentioned this a few, I don't know if I mentioned it a few episodes back, I can't remember, but, um, one of the big things my, my wife wanted me to make sure and get taken care of was that the pool was warm enough for the kids to start swimming in it. And once again, nothing's normal at my house. So it's difficult to get my pool warm because it never sees the sunshine.

Right.

'Cause it's kind of indoors. It has a roof over it.

It's under, yeah, it's under roof.

It's in a building under a roof that is not an enclosed building, but it's under a roof.

Sure.

Never sees the sunshine. So like it can be 90 degrees outside and if you didn't have any way to heat the pool, it would be like 65 degrees, like no problem.

It's cold in the middle of the summer.

Yes, it's quite chilly. And so, So one of the ways that we work to make that better is we put a solar heater in. And I don't know if many people know what that is. It doesn't mean that we have a solar-powered pool heater. It means that we have black rubber lines. I mean, it's actually designed in order to heat pools, but like you put it on the roof of the building, you run the lines from the pump up on the roof and pump the water from the pool through these black you know, they're very small black lines that, you know, absorb the heat of the sun, heat the water up, and then pump it back into the pool. It's actually pretty effective when it's hot outside. Um, the problem with

early spring in Texas is, like it's been for the past 3 nights, it can— it's been down in the 40s.

Right.

Um, so it's gotten kind of chilly. So we decided to be a little more proactive, and it's a smaller pool, so we don't didn't wanna spend like 3 grand on a pool pump, on a, on a pool heater, um, which just seems ridiculous, by the way. Um, but that's, that's generally about what the, I mean, and that's just what the unit costs. That's not getting it installed or running the electricity over there.

Right.

'Cause it, you know, or running a gas line over there or any of that kind of stuff. Um, so we did a little bit of research, um, and, and figured out that we could get a propane water heater. And these are—

Propane.

Yeah. And so it runs off 2 D-cell batteries and propane. It's super, super cool. Cost us $120.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah, it takes a little bit of plumbing prowess to get this. And we're still working the kinks out. I mean, because it's not designed to be functioning the way that we're using it.

Um, well, welcome to your house.

Yeah. So it's, I mean, what these things are designed and they're, and like for what they are, man, they're, they're fantastic. I mean, like if anybody has like a, like a primitive cabin and they want to be able to take a hot shower, this thing would be fantastic if you have access to any kind of running water. Um, okay. So basically you pump water in once. It's, it's a, it's a tankless water heater is what it is.

Nice.

Yeah, and I think they're made in like Taiwan or something because like none of the things on the outside are in English or in any kind of good English. So, but basically, you, you know, you hook up an inlet and then you— the out and then a gas line and that's it. And as soon as water starts pumping into the thing, it clicks on. And let me tell you, man, it'll pump water out that's about 140 degrees. Like no problem.

No problem. Goodness.

Um, so, but the issue has been the way that our pool pump is set up, that as the water begins to circulate, the water circulation is so strong because of that pump that rather than continuing to push water out to this, uh, to this water heater, it actually eventually creates a suction. Like a vacuum. And so it begins to pull water where it was at one point pushing water.

Oh, well, that's not good.

Yeah. So the way I got around that is I end up putting a backflow preventer on the line coming out so that it can only push water. Okay. Um, and that, that seems to be working better right now. But like, if you just hook like a regular hose bib up to it and you want hot water, you can get hot water until you run outta propane, man.

So, okay. So, so I guess the question I've got is like, you really only run this thing whenever you want to swim in it, right? Is that the way that works?

Um, well, I mean, you, you, you run it whenever you run the pool pump. So whenever you run your filter, your filtration system. And so like, and we have a toggle switch and so we'll, we'll go out there and we'll set it and run it for a long time. Um, and within like, It's not a huge pool, but it's not a little pool either.

Right.

And so within about 3 days, we were able to raise the temp on the water about 5 degrees.

Okay.

Which is pretty significant.

Yeah.

And so now that we've kind of got it figured out, we figure we'll be able to get the water well above 80 degrees within a couple of weeks.

Okay. So at that point, how much propane are you using?

So just the, um, 5-gallon tanks.

Okay, but how often do you go through one of those?

Um, the— we went through a— so like just to get going, we had like a half a tank and it, it— and this was running it quite a bit, but we went through that one in about 2 and a half weeks.

Okay, that's actually not bad at all.

Yeah, so I mean like a refill on a 5-gallon propane tank's like $15.

Right.

So, I mean, and we just went and bought 3 more just to keep it running. So, I mean, all in all, with $120 and another $45, I mean, like, we're still under $200 to get the pool heated.

That's, that's not bad. So, and, you know, I mean, given that, given the fact that to actually buy a heater for that thing and the maintenance on that and all those sorts of things, you're probably still saving Quite a bit of money.

Bookoos. I mean, like, we, we ran the numbers on this, man. It's like, if, if we wear this thing out and we have to buy another one, we're still not even approaching $3,000.

No.

So now the $3,000 one, I mean, like, it'd probably do it faster, um, but there was all sorts of extenuating circumstances around even installing that thing.

Yeah.

Um, because if you, if you do it electrically, then your electric bill is going to go up. And it was going to go up anyway because we're running the pool pump, but it's, you know, then you're pulling twice as much. And if we do the gas, we're gonna have to get a gas line put in, and we don't know exactly how easy that is.

Yeah, especially whenever your pool is— I mean, it, it's under a deck basically, right?

Yeah.

So, I mean, There's one that might look at that and go, oh yeah, shouldn't be a problem because it's easy access, and there's probably a different reality somewhere in there.

Yeah, there's, there's not an easy way to get, to get gas over there, basically. There's not.

Well, that's cool, man. I'm, I'm looking forward to, uh, getting in that pool whenever it's warmer because, oh yeah, as it was, I didn't get in that pool, man. Too cold.

Children were coming out blue.

Yes, literally my son would come out out and is like chattering. It's like, okay, come over here. Let's warm up. Step outside for a minute.

Yeah. So, well, my previous experiment on heating the pool last year, which mind you was effective, caught on fire. So.

Oh, well, that's not good at all.

Well, it wasn't. No, it wasn't good when it caught on fire, but everything Prior to that was great. It heated the pool like nobody's business.

Well, it was an experiment.

Yes. If you want to make an omelet, you got to break a few eggs.

It eventually failed.

I don't mind killing baby chickens.

Exactly.

They're delicious.

Exactly. They are delicious. That's good. Well, We've got a pretty cool episode here. We just got through doing a review. It's been a while since we've done very many reviews, but—

Yeah, so we just decided to go ahead and mash them all together.

That's right.

Some reviews.

That's right. Well, just to be honest with our listeners, it's easier to get Craig and I on a Zoom call than to get some interview people. It's a whole lot more fun to be in a studio whenever, whenever we got people to interview and if we have that option. So anyway, it's a good opportunity for us to get some reviews that we've been looking forward to doing, um, kind of, you know, get those up. So, uh, today we're gonna, we're gonna review a new purchase of mine, one that, that I'm, I'm pretty excited about. Um, so I'm gonna kind of give a little bit of history here. before we get into this and give some more information here. So I don't know, man, like probably,

probably about 7 or 8 years ago, I bought a— I finally kind of broke down and bought a really good gas weed eater.

Mm-hmm.

And it was great. I mean, they're really not all that expensive. And you can get one for $150 that It works really well.

Yeah.

And they've got a lot of power and they do, they do a great job. And I, and I started, started thinking, man, I'm, I will always have a gas weed eater. Always. Like there's no reason to go back to something besides that. And so oddly enough, at the end of last season, This thing started leaking gas a little bit and it wasn't a lot. It was just enough that like I would come back the next time it was time to mow my yard and go, I'm pretty sure I filled that tank up last time and I didn't run it enough to run all the gas out. And now I have no more gas. Um, and it was, you know, there's moisture on it. So I'm going, okay, there's something going on here.

So finally it was like, man, I'm going to have to buy me a new weed eater because I don't know if you've ever priced just getting something like that fixed.

You might as well replace it.

Absolutely. I mean, you're going to pay, you know, $75, $80 minimum to get someone to diagnose it. And then you got to buy parts for it. It's not worth the money. So, um, I had been hearing and kind of last time I was in the box store, I'd walked up and down the weed eater aisle and I had seen battery-powered weed eaters being more of a thing. And I was like, this is interesting to me because we're no longer talking like 18-volt batteries.

Mm-hmm.

Like Ryobi came out with a 40-volt battery that they use on multiple different products and There's all kinds of variations of batteries now that are bigger than what you would put on a cordless drill, for example. So I got to thinking, some of these products are— I mean, if they're doing this well, maybe it's something that I should look into. And so I just started doing some research, and I'm a researcher by nature, and I enjoy knowing that the product that I get is going to be a good product, it's going to last a long time. And I'm going to get the best thing for the job that needs to be done. Honestly, I mean, don't go postal on me or anything, but I really don't

care if my weed eater puts out emissions or not. Okay? I don't care.

Not at the top of the list of concerns.

No. It's, does it get the job done? That's really— I don't want to have to play games with a weed eater.

Is that something people actually fuss about?

Like?

The emissions on a weed whacker?

I would hope not. Somewhere, somebody does.

I just assumed that you'd encountered some hostility at some point in time.

No, no. I just know people. I know that there are people out there that are like, as few emissions as possible. drive electric cars. They, you know, and not that there's anything wrong with electric cars, right? There's, I think I might want one someday.

I'm getting one. I've made it publicly known that I'm getting that Tesla truck.

Yeah, man. It's, it's a pretty good, pretty good option. And the thing, but like, to me, there's bigger benefits than the emissions. So to me, that's not even, that's not even the big question. So, Anyway, I started doing my research and I got— I started Googling the, uh, the phrase, uh, electric battery or battery-powered, either electric or battery-powered weed eater versus gas.

Mm-hmm.

And man, it's a rabbit hole. You can, you can go a lot of different places with it, but I started getting some really good information and found out that a lot of these new battery-powered devices have every bit as much power and maybe more power than some of the gas versions out there.

It's completely reasonable to think that they might have more power.

Okay, it is, but I think it's counterintuitive to think that because a lot of times, like for instance, what I think about originally is I think about the chainsaw that I own. So I needed a small tree down a long time ago. And I was like, okay, I can pay someone to come do this or I can do it myself, but I don't have a chainsaw. So I go to the store, I look at chainsaws and I, and for half the price I can buy an electric one that plugs in.

Right. Right.

And it's a decent one. Honestly, it does a really pretty good job, but I got to have a cord on it. It has nowhere near the power of a gas.

No.

And so logically speaking, I'm looking at this going, there's no way that something electric is going to beat the power of gas. But when you start talking about battery power, then things start changing a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

And I don't know all the physics behind everything. I don't understand electricity all that much. Somebody knows that a lot better than I do. But I, for instance, I know there's a reason that a golf cart that's electric has 6 batteries in it.

Right.

There's 6 6-volt batteries rather than 3 12-volt batteries. Part of that is because you can't put a sequence of 3, right? You got to have even numbers in order to make things work. But at the same time, like, When you start putting things in sequence, then you get more power out of them. So all that to be said, I started finding out that some of these battery-powered trimmers are actually every bit as good as a gas trimmer is. And so then I'm down the rabbit hole of which one's better than the next one. Because there's all sorts of companies out there producing these things. And so long story short, without going through all of that information, it was very obvious to me that EGO was

by far the best electric battery-powered trimmer on the market.

That's the brand name.

EGO is the brand name. So there's a lot behind that, but as far as its power and as far as its runtime goes, it was, it was by far the best. There were others that were close, but the interesting thing is it was also not the most expensive. There were ones out there that were more expensive that didn't perform as well as the EGO did.

Do you remember the brand names of some of the other ones you looked at?

Yeah. So, so I looked at, um, I looked at Ryobi, which is a very popular brand. I looked at, uh, Worx, W-O-R-X, I believe. Um, and I looked at Milwaukee.

Okay.

And I, I'm here to tell you, man, like Milwaukee has some incredible products. And what's interesting is their trimmer, Works on the very same battery as their power tools, which is an 18-volt battery. Okay. And it was the second one in line as far as I was concerned. Oh, for you to get? Yes. And it was running on an 18-volt battery. Um, but Milwaukee has some really incredible power tools, including like, you know, miter saws and compound miter saws and all kinds of stuff that runs on an 18-volt battery. And outperforms a lot of other power tools out there. And so if you've— one of the things I would say is if you've got a

system, stick with your system.

Sure.

You know, if you've got the Milwaukee system, go get that trimmer. You know, if you've got a Ryobi system where you're already using their 40-volt batteries, it makes sense to go get one of those trimmers, even if it may not be the best one on the market, right? DeWalt is another one that has a good trimmer. But at the end of the day, none of them outperformed the EGO. So before I really get into the trimmer side of things, one thing I want to do is I just want to run through a list of some of their products because I think it is astonishing some of the products that they've got. So one of them is just to kind of start at the top, I think, is a mower. So, you know,

there are other brands that have mowers as well, but there's a few things that are unique about it. Uh, one of them, and whenever I bought my last mower, I was very intent on buying one that had a blade stop on it. So do you know what I mean by that?

No.

So basically, um, I can, I can shut the blade off without stopping the motor.

Okay.

So, uh, you know, for instance, let's say I'm, I'm bagging my grass. Most mowers that you buy, when you let go of the handle, the whole thing stops, right? So every time you put the bag on, you're ready to go again, you got to pull the, pull the cord, right? Right. So I was tired of pulling the cord. So I wanted to pull the cord one time, you get a blade stop, it basically means you can let go of the thing. And the, the blade shuts off, but the motor doesn't shut off.

But you're talking about, this is all like on push mowers.

This is on push mower, like what I, what I currently own, a gas mower.

Yeah.

I wanted to make sure I had that feature.

Well, lazy people like me have no idea what you're talking about when you say pull start.

Well, that's okay. Um, so you go to, to one of these types of mowers, And first of all, they're very quiet because there's no big massive gas motor, carburetor, all that kind of stuff making noise. And so you press a button and it starts moving. It is self-propelled, but you don't have to have the blade going in order to move the thing. So that's kind of a nice feature.

Yeah.

But it's also got 2 blades on it. It's got a mulching blade and a regular cut blade.

Okay.

And, and, and honestly, like, from what I can tell, it doesn't interfere with each other. It doesn't have any issues. And the thing works really, really well. It's very powerful. It's got like a— I think it's got a 60-minute runtime on it, um, which, which isn't bad. Uh, that's on one battery.

Yeah.

So, um, one of the things I'll mention about batteries is They've got all the batteries fit on all of their products. So that's kind of a neat thing.

And they have different size batteries, I'm guessing?

Different sizes. So the lowest one is a 2 amp-hour battery and the highest one is a 7.5 amp-hour battery, which a little bit deceiving on what that actually means. It doesn't mean you get 7.5 hours out of that deal. It just means that you're getting quite a bit more capacity out of that battery.

Okay.

So, uh, you know, depending on which batteries you're using, you're gonna get more time on that, on that mower. But they've got a mower and it's, uh, from what I can tell, it is, it's a good product. Uh, they've got a couple of different blowers. One is just a handheld blower and this is gonna be, uh, they've got different models, but it's gonna be equivalent to, uh, any gas-powered handheld motor, uh, handheld with a motor blower. It's gonna do a great job. But they've even got a backpack blower.

Hmm.

So, and so you think about this, like, this thing is, is a lot lighter than something that has to have a tank on it and a motor. All you gotta do is put, put a pack on your back and stick a battery on that thing and, and you're good to go. And it, I mean, the thing, the thing has really, really good power on it. Um, I was reading some of like the CFMs and stuff. It has between 320 and 600 CFMs with a maximum air velocity on it of 145 miles per hour.

So, I mean, I have no idea what a CFM is.

Uh, it's, um, it's, as soon as you said that, I knew I was going to forget. Basically it's the amount of airflow that it pushes through the cylinder per minute. So it's a flow amount of air.

Okay. It's an acronym for something that— It is.

And as soon as I've, you know, as soon as you ask me about it, I'm going to forget because that's what I do. It's a— oh, there it is. Cubic feet per minute. I had it. It just came to me. Cubic feet per minute. So, uh, a couple of different blower options. They've got hedge trimmers. Um, they've got chainsaws, dude. Like, like legit chains. Yeah. They've got, they've got an 18-inch chainsaw, chainsaw, um, all the way down to a 14-inch chainsaw. Um, so they've got a—

I mean, real quick, are the, are these guys mainly focused on like outdoor, like lawn maintenance tools?

That is, that is all they do.

Okay. So they're not doing like drills and saws and all that other stuff?

They are not doing power tools. They're doing outdoor lawn equipment primarily. There is an exception to that, and I'll get to that in just a moment.

Are they a fairly new company?

Yeah, yeah, they're fairly new. I'd have to go back and figure out where they started and timeline and all of that. That's something that you can go research yourself if you're really interested in. But like, they've even got a pretty amazing looking snowblower.

Huh.

Obviously, we don't have a need for that.

No.

But I mean, think about the ability to just put a battery into a snowblower and go.

Although, I think there's a case to be made that at least here in Southeast Texas, we need something equivalent to a snowblower in order to manage pine needles.

Yeah.

Because the typical blower just does, I mean, like it, it doesn't get the job done.

Not the same.

No, not the same.

I mean, you can get a really good backpack blower and it's still gonna be difficult.

Yeah, for sure. I, I kinda have a really powerful one, man. And you get like this weird like sheeting effect with the, the pine needles. Like they all like hold on together and make like a bed sheet and like you kind of flap it in the wind. It doesn't go anywhere.

It goes nowhere. Yeah, you're exactly right. I, I know the feeling.

So, um, get on that. So whatever, whoever you are out there, figure it out, engineers.

So, uh, just a couple other things I want to mention that are kind of cool. One of them is, uh, that they have a— this is so cool to me, uh, they have what they call a commercial backpack battery. Um, and so basically it is a backpack that is a battery. And so it, and it plugs into any of your devices like anything would, uh, and like any regular battery would, but it has a ton more time. It's a 28 amp-hour battery.

So I guess like if you have like a commercial lawn service. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, if you're using this commercially, they do have, uh, commercial products.

So how long are they estimating that backpack could last?

Um, that's a really good question. Um, so 20 hours—

I mean, like, the only reason I ask is I know, I know that we have lots of landscape companies that actually listen to this show. Um, sure, that might be interested in something like that. Yeah.

Um, I, you know, I, I think, I think it's really difficult to kind of figure that out because some, some things are going to require more power than others, right? Like a, like a lawnmower is going to require more power than, than a trimmer is, right? Um, so I, I think it's a little bit difficult to figure that out. What I do know is that you're, you're using a 28 amp-hour battery when their largest handheld battery is 7.5 amp-hour, right?

Right.

So it's almost 4 times the, the capacity of one of those.

So, but it also sounds like their products are gonna be more geared toward like the homeowner rather than the commercial landscaper and things like, because they only have the push mower and then the weed eater and some of the other things. And a lot of these guys who are, you know, they at least want like the stand behind units. Yes. With the sled or the zero turn. Right.

And, and I, I don't know that they'll ever have something like that. Maybe they will. I mean, goodness. If we can build a car with a battery in it, I think we can do that as well.

Give Elon time.

That's exactly right. So speaking of that, uh, one other product I want to mention before I get into really into, you know, talking about the trimmer for a minute, which won't take forever, so don't think that we're going to be too much longer here, is that they have a, uh, some portable power things. Like they've got a 150-watt power inverter But they've also got a 3,000-watt generator.

Oh, that's cool.

That you can put 4 batteries on. And so it's got 3 regular AC outlets, 120-volt outlets, and 4 USB ports. It's also got an LED display that shows runtime, all these sorts of things. It is indoor and outdoor rated.

Because there's no emissions on it.

Exactly.

It's just electrical.

It's not going to be loud either. It's battery-powered.

Could it run a refrigerator?

It says it'll run absolutely every— there's not an appliance in your home that it will not run.

It could run the air conditioning?

Well, I don't know about that. That's typically not an indoor appliance.

I mean, that'd be the real test, honestly.

It would be. It would be, but most— I mean, it's running 120-volt outlets, not 240. Yeah, or 220 or 240. So yeah. So anyway, the point is, I mean, that's a pretty slick device. Oh, heck yeah. To have. In fact, if I can figure out a way to con myself into buying one of those, I probably will.

Well, which to me raises like a— I mean, because you, you've got the, the trimmer, right?

Yes, the weed whacker.

And so did it just come with the one battery?

It did.

So did you look into like what the cost of replacing that battery is?

Yeah, and, and honestly, I mean, they're, they're really not— they're— it's really not that cheap. Uh, they're, they're expensive batteries. Um, you can, you can find all of that on their website, which we will post a link to. But like, just to replace the battery that I've got, which is a 2.5 amp-hour battery, you're looking at roughly $150.

Okay.

For that battery.

That's actually not that bad.

No, I mean, when you consider a couple of things, one of the things to consider is the fact that I'm never going to buy gas for my weed eater again. Right. You know, I don't ever have to buy gas and oil. I don't have to buy oil. And so the maintenance of it is greatly diminished.

By the way, is there maintenance?

Probably a little bit. We're going to get into that in a minute. Before I get there, I'll tell you that if you go buy their 7.5 amp-hour battery, that thing's $350. Okay. Um, but if you're using a trimmer, you're probably— you don't need that much.

Yeah.

Uh, you probably need that for some of their bigger items like a lawnmower.

It would probably make those sorts of things trimmer a little heavier too. I mean, like—

It would, it would, it absolutely would. Uh, one, one of the things that I'll say is, um, it balances really, really well, um, with the battery that you have. With the battery on there, it balances itself really, really well. You take the battery off and it's very, very end-heavy, as you can imagine. As far as maintenance goes, I mean, there's, there's a lot of different things that I think you would need maintenance for on the head of a trimmer. And some of that is just, you know, the debris that gets in there. If you ever get any, you know, twine, you know, like some of these grass stuff, it, you know, could wrap around. Just keeping those things clean. But as

far as like, there's no motor, it's just battery. So, um, there's really not that much to, to maintain. So, uh, maintenance-wise, thing's a breeze. Um, so let's talk about the, uh, the trimmer specifically because, because I've got it, I've used it, and I will tell you, man, I am, I am so impressed. Uh, it's weird, like whenever I was using it for the first time, it didn't feel like I had as much power in my hand, but it definitely performed every bit as good as my other trimmer did. It was amazing.

Well, not to throw it under the bus, but what was the other trimmer that you had?

It was a Troy-Bilt.

Troy-Bilt, okay. Which is typically a really good brand.

It is. It was a Troy-Bilt. It was a 2-cycle. So basically the difference, if you don't know, the difference between a 2-cycle and a 4-cycle is a 4-cycle runs off gasoline alone. And a 2-cycle is gonna have a mixture of gasoline and oil.

Have you ever used a 4-cycle?

I haven't, no. I'm sure they're a lot more powerful.

They're monsters.

Yeah, yeah, I, I doubt that this specific one would really compare to a 4-cycle.

I honestly don't know why a 4-cycle is necessary. I mean, I got— well, there might be a situation in which, I don't know, maybe there's just—

I don't know. But I mean, like, 2 cycles always been plenty for whatever I needed to do. Yeah, same, same here. Um, it's gonna, it's gonna do a fine job. Um, One of the things I will tell you is I was a little bit frustrated with myself because even with all the research that I got, they have 2 different trimmers that are essentially the same thing except one of them is what they call a split shaft. And split shaft allows you to put other accessories on it. So, um, a lot of, a lot of trimmers will, will allow for this, but, um, some of the edgers and like, uh, yeah, that kind of stuff. Yes. So they've got like an edger,

they've got a, a small tiller, they've got like a sweeper and, um, a couple of different sweeper brushes, then they've got a hedge trimmer, and they've also got a pole saw. And then there's like an extension that you can, you can buy as well so that you can use even more of the pole saw, for example.

Okay.

Um, I thought for some stupid reason that they only— that was the only one that they were selling in the model that I was getting, uh, which was untrue.

Hmm.

They have one that is just the tool, and then they have one that is the tool that you can also put accessories with. So the difference was when I bought mine, uh, the, the price of the tool with the battery was $230. If I were to buy the one with the trimmer with the PowerLoad that you can put different adjustable, the adjustable attachments on there, it was $350. So, you know, another $120 for the tool, and then you have to buy all the accessories separately.

Right.

So for example, let's just take the, the pole saw for instance. I went and looked because I was curious, how much does that 18-inch chainsaw cost. One of the things that it has on it, which is crazy, it is a big old LED light on it, which is, which is pretty awesome. But you can buy the tool by itself for $200, the, the, the chainsaw.

Okay.

I've already got a battery, you know, I've already got a battery for it. I didn't necessarily have to go buy another battery with it. And so if you go buy the pole saw attachment for this trimmer, it's $160 or $170. So for another $30, you get the entire tool. Now it functions differently, right?

Right.

Pole saw is gonna have a different function, but I'm just saying, if you're looking for a chainsaw, you gotta kinda weigh the cost.

Right.

Do you want just the tool or do you want the interchangeable parts option? It was an extra $120. bucks, uh, between $120, $130 to get the one that had the attachments available to it. So I just chose not to go that route this time.

Hmm. Well, one of the best routes you can go, Kevin, is with Paul the Plumber.

That's right.

You can give them—

he's awesome, man.

These, these guys are so incredible. They keep coming out with new options in order to adjust to the way we're having to do business right now. I was talking to them the other day, and they were talking about how they added virtual diagnosis now. Maybe they don't have to come into your home, but they can get on the computer, they can get on the phone with you, and they can actually diagnose what's going on with your phone if you can just show them around virtually via your phone.

Yeah. They can see my kitchen back here right behind me. I could just walk them over there and be like, look, here's what's going on with my refrigerator over there in the background.

Yeah, and they're like, Kevin, stop throwing your used Cheerios down the drain. It's gonna get clogged every time.

We're tired of them.

Not that there's anything wrong with it. So listen guys, you can call Paul the Plumber at 832-521-3252. I know Deborah would be happy to get you on their schedule or get you on the phone with an experienced, licensed, and bonded plumber. To get your house diagnosed and fixed.

They're gonna take care of you.

And you don't even have to call.

I mean, all you gotta do is get on Facebook, right?

Get on Facebook, click Book Now, or go to paultheplumberllc.com, click Book Online. You can book an appointment there, send them an email if you need to.

It's simple.

Give him a call.

It doesn't get more simple than that.

It's a great way to help support the show as well.

That's right.

Give Paul the plumber a call.

That's right.

So I gotta tell you, man, like this trimmer, this is one of the rare situations where I actually got to see this thing.

Yeah.

And I gotta tell you, like I'm, I was pretty impressed.

Yeah. In fact, whenever I, whenever I pulled the, uh, the trigger on it, because I didn't let him touch it because coronavirus, um, even though, even though I was gloved and masked. That's true. You were, you absolutely were. You're being responsible.

And standing 6 feet away, which I think I still could have reached the trimmer with at 6 feet.

That's true. You got monkey arms.

Not, not that I'm upset. or bitter or mad or plotting my revenge.

That's okay. I'll let you borrow it someday. But I pulled the trigger on it and he went, whoa.

Yeah.

You're like, wow, that was not what you expected to hear.

I was expecting to see a windmill. Yeah.

You did not see a windmill.

No.

And the next thing you commented on was like, You said, is that a carbon fiber shaft?

Yeah.

And I said, yes, yes it is.

Yeah. So, but like, here's the thing that like, that took the cake for me is, is when I saw it electronically adjust the, I don't even know what you call it, but the, um, the line. The line on the trimmer.

Yeah.

When it, when like it adjusted the line on the trimmer automatically. I was like, yeah, oh, everybody else is done.

That's right. I mean, I don't—

okay, and there may be gas-powered ones out there that are doing that, but I haven't seen them.

I haven't seen them either. So, so let's talk about a couple of the features here, um, and let's start with that one because I'll tell you, when, when you combine the, the fact that—

Like, if you had nothing else and you just had that feature, I'm out. I'm in. Like, give me that. I want that.

Exactly. I'm, I'm done looking at anything else. So you combine the, the fact that it had the most power, the best runtime, and then you add this feature. It was, it was a no-brainer. So, so let me explain this to you guys. So one of the most frustrating things that I did with my last trimmer was change the trim line. Because what I had to do is I had to unscrew the bottom of that thing.

Pop it out. Let me just say this real quick. There has to be some obnoxious jerk out there that's the engineer on some of these things. Some of these things—

He's laughing.

They are the dumbest, most obnoxious systems I've ever seen in my life. I despise them, and I hope that they all get massive bunions on their feet, because they deserve every single one of them. I hate those things.

I hate them.

I mean, like, there's nothing wrong. Like, like, I, I don't know what it is, but like when I was a kid and my dad used to make them, like there was just the simple wraparound. You, it was, there was 2 levels and you wrapped them around and then you stuck it through the hole. And when you needed more, you popped it on the ground, the spring loaded it and popped it out more. I don't know what's going on with some of these other ones. I know.

I agree. Well, I, so I'll tell you what's interesting is mine is very, my, the one that I just got rid of. Is very much like what you were just talking about. You, you wrap it around, you got— there's 2 different, 2 different like levels, places. Yeah, levels that those go in, wrap it around, stick it through all that. But man, it was never that simple. Part of it is because that bump stop that you had to unscrew, like that thing, it wound itself tighter. Yep. Whenever you, whenever you turned it on, you could not Do it in loose way. I had to use a strap wrench to get that thing off every single time. It was it was annoying.

So that guy needs to be throat punched.

I agree.

If you're that guy, send the show a message. We'll send you a virtual throat punch.

Exactly. So so here's what this thing does, man. You you you take your line, you cut it, and you thread it through the head, and it you just push it in one hole. It comes out the other hole, and you make both ends meet. You kind of hold it, and then there is a button on the top of that that head that you push, and it electronically feeds the line into the right place. And you don't have to wind anything. It literally winds itself because battery.

Yeah.

I, I'm— I was flabbergasted whenever I found out that that was even a thing. And so here's the crazy thing. Like, I didn't believe that it worked. So I started watching video after video after video after video of people doing this and went, Oh, if he can do it, I think it probably actually works.

Yeah, I saw it, and and my first thought was, oh, they invented a weed whacker that can improve your mental health.

Exactly.

Good for them.

Exactly. So on top of that, it is a bump feed instead of a self-feed. So a lot of these new innovative weed eaters have come out with this self-feed feature. that when you need more line, it just puts more out. It continually doesn't work.

Right.

So the bump feed continues to be the best option where you just bump the ground and more line comes out. So this thing, I mean, as far as the functionality of it goes, just bumping it, the line comes out immediately. It works every single time. And when I'm out of line, re— you know, putting more line in is the absolute easiest thing that I could have possibly done. Um, and just so you know, it's got a 15-inch cutting swath. So that kind of gives you an idea of how, how wide.

Just a little more than a foot.

It's just a little more than a foot, which is pretty on par with just about every gas or electric out there. They may be an inch different here or there, you know, more or less, but it is—

It's good because you want to keep your toes.

Exactly. You don't want it to be much more than that. Um, it is, uh, so, so then I mentioned, I mentioned the shaft. This thing is a carbon fiber shaft. So, um, it— first of all, carbon fiber is very, very strong. Yeah. Um, the likelihood of you damaging that is is pretty small.

Mm-hmm.

And on top of that, it's extremely lightweight. So when you start thinking about just the weight of a tool, you put a carbon fiber shaft instead of, you know, a metal shaft on there, and it is— man, it's awesome. It's really, really lightweight, and it feels good in your hands. Like I said, it's very evenly weighted. So you don't have to worry about any of that. So really, really cool as far as that goes. The other thing is like some of these, some of these trimmers feel very short. Have you ever picked one up that's like, like I gotta lean over the whole time?

The Hunchback of Notre Dame in order to operate this thing.

Exactly. Even, even for me being super short, it just still feels like You know, some of these things are awful to deal with, but this one is really long. I would have to go back and figure out exactly what length the shaft is, but it's long. I do not— it's longer than my other one was.

So let me ask you this, because this is— did they have the option for a shoulder strap?

Yes, on their commercial one. They have a commercial trimmer.

Yeah, so like—

They do have it.

On that one, I'll tell everybody, like, this is an upgrade worth getting if you haven't ever experienced it. Um, so on the one that we use over at the office, uh, we have a shoulder strap with a Y handle. And so you actually don't hold it on the shaft, you hold it with the Y handle and then you support it with the shoulder strap.

Oh, okay.

And if, yeah, if it, if it's set up properly, like what you're talking about where like the shaft is actually long enough where you're not having to like hunch over and go see a chiropractor when you're done.

Yeah.

You know, yeah, you, you basically stand upright and you've got this Y-handle in your arm, and then all the weight is basically on you like a backpack, and you just use that Y-handle to kind of move things. I'm moving around like people can see me when they're listening. Um, go over to YouTube and watch the video. You can see what I'm talking about. I mean, you kind of—

that's right.

Yeah, it's, it's really, really cool, and it's a, it's a great option on weed whackers. I don't know if this EGO one has that, but like, it's It makes— it's just better on your back. It is.

No, it absolutely is. Um, a couple of other things I just want to kind of mention is, so in order to operate it, uh, it's got a good nice rubber handle grip. Um, there is kind of a, kind of a thumb and then a pull with your fingers. Now once you, once you do that thumb lever that thumb button and pull the, the actual lever to start the motor to spin.

It—

you can let go of that thumb button. You don't have to have it, you don't have to have it depressed the whole time. Although I found just the ergonomics of that handle, it, it actually isn't a problem to kind of hold that in. So, but it's variable speed. You know, you're gonna get the ability to not put it full throttle. And if you need to get some heavier brush, you can put it full throttle and it works really well. The other thing I love about it is that with my gas trimmer, a lot of times— so I use it as an edger too, but I don't use the edger attachment. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. I just kind of turn it over and put it

perpendicular to the ground and take off. Sometimes my gas one would clog up, uh, when I did that. Just the gas didn't like being turned upside down and it wouldn't feed the gas as well. Uh, you don't have that problem with this because there's no gas. So, you know, hold it however way you want to.

Flip it upside down, nobody cares.

Take off like a helicopter. That's right.

Um, dude, that's, that's what they need to get into right there is the helicopters. Well, you need to be able to like join 4 of them together Oh man. Transforming lawn equipment into drone, rideable drones.

There you go.

That, if you, man, that's your business right there. If you can make that happen.

You got, you got some money coming at you at that point.

I'll give you some.

There you go. Yep. So, I mean, honestly, there, there's, I mean, there's not that much that goes into a trimmer. Really, does it cut the grass? Does it not? Does it kill, you know, cut through the weeds? Does it not? This thing does a phenomenal job. I guarantee you that it has every bit as much power as my gas one did. Does a phenomenal job. The ease of the self-load feature on the line, and that's worth it. And to think that the maintenance is so much less. That I'm never gonna have to buy gas for this thing. Like, I mean, I just—

Back up real quick, just so everyone understands. How long does it take you to load line into this trimmer? Like, give—

from the time, from the time that I start loading it, so it's already cut?

No, like, you can include the cut time. That's fine.

I can, I could, I could reload this thing in under a minute.

I want everyone to just soak that in for a minute.

Under a minute. Cutting it, inserting it, pressing the button, it goes, weep, weep, weep, weep, weep, weep, weep, weep, weep, weep, weep, weep, weep, weep, weep, done.

That was a very accurate impersonation of the weed whacker, by the way.

It sounds just like that, doesn't it?

It does.

So to me, to not have to mix, mix oil ever again. But, but even beyond that, like, I'd gotten lazy and I, I would go buy the pre-mixed stuff, um, just because it was already mixed. Dude, I don't know what was wrong with me because one of those gallons is like almost $20.

Yeah.

And so just think about that for a minute. I, I bet you In my lazy years, I probably bought 10 of those. I've basically paid for that trimmer.

You paid for the battery. Exactly.

Exactly. Now, okay, let's talk about the battery for just one minute and then we can kind of be done. So these batteries are incredible. They're not just the typical lithium batteries that they've always had. You can go do some research on how they put the battery together and what makes it different. One of the really cool things about this battery is it's smart. So you can leave it on the charger all the time. You do not have to take it off even through the winter months. If you want to take it off the bat, off the charger, you can, but you don't have to. What it will do whenever it's quote unquote dormant is it will reduce itself down to 30% and hold at 30%.

It will not expel itself past 30%. And the research that I was seeing was saying that in order to preserve a battery, you need to keep it below 50% and higher than 20% in order to kind of keep it safe. So at that point, what you do after the winter months is you just take it off the charger and plug it right back in and it'll it'll rapidly charge itself back up and you're good to go probably about 30 minutes later.

Hmm.

So it's a very smart battery. There's not a lot to do with it. You don't have to worry about, do I have to run it all the way down before I charge it back up? No, it's like your cell phone. I mean, you can charge it at any point. It's not gonna kill the battery. So the batteries have a very, very long runtime as far as That goes, I haven't done all the research to figure out exactly how long you're gonna get out of a battery because again, are you running that battery every day? You running it every week, every other week? You know, what are you doing with that really determines on how long that battery is gonna last? Everybody's gonna use it

differently, but the batteries are really, really great. And I forgot to mention this, it's a 56-volt battery.

Yeah.

So, I mean, this isn't a, It's massive, but it's not so heavy that it— I mean, again, it balances very, very well. But yeah, 56-volt battery. It's one of the biggest on the market right now, and it gets the job done. It cuts the mustard, so to speak.

It's a really impressive trimmer, man.

Yeah, I'm pleased with it. I can see a day whenever I buy more of their products. I mean, I just think that they're doing a really good deal with providing a lot of power and a lot of quality products while honestly it is good for the environment. And if I can couple both and still get the job done, that makes me happy.

Yeah, I think if there's anybody out there that has been using, you said EGO, right?

Yeah.

If there's anybody out there that's been using EGO products, we'd love to hear from you. I mean, like, send us a, tag us up on Facebook, send us a review. Maybe you've been using something different what Kevin has, like the mower or the, the trimmer or the—

what, uh, chainsaw or any of those things.

Yeah. Or some of the other attachments for the, uh, the upgraded, uh, edger would be, would be cool to hear about as well. So if you've had any sort of experience with these products, we'd probably love to hear from you guys. Um, absolutely. On Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, any of those places.

So send us an email, info@homemonershow.com. That would be fantastic.

We'll shout it out.

That's right.

That's right. Anything else, man?

Man, that, that's pretty much it. I, I, I give it 2 thumbs up and I say it is worth every penny and I am super thrilled with it. So, and I don't, I don't have much else. What else do we need to, uh, discuss?

No, I'm looking forward to borrowing it and not returning it for a long time.

We'll see about that. I know where you keep your stuff.

Yeah.

So Well, man, it's been good. And please feel free if you're enjoying this podcast to go out, leave us a review, rate us on iTunes. That would be wonderful. We would thoroughly appreciate that. Thanks for sticking with us. I know a lot of people are not listening to as many podcasts as they might normally when their drive time was different or when they were on the job, and now they're at home teaching their kids. Things are different. So thanks for sticking with us.

Thank you.

gonna be here every Tuesday. I mean, goodness, we've still figured out a way to make that happen, which is pretty amazing. Um, so, uh, thanks for, thanks for sticking with us. And, um, I guess that's about it. Until next time, we'll see you later.

See ya!