Tips on buying power tools for the garden
Power tools are appealing for many gardeners since they provide an abundance of power that can be used to perform garden jobs in minutes rather than the normal hours you’d spend doing everything manually. Leaf blowers, chain saws, hedge trimmers, shredders and chippers, tillers, string trimmers, etc – there are multitudes of great power tools that can make your gardening life easier. However, the act of buying one can be confusing for the experienced handyman, much less an initiate gardener. Here are some tips that will help you buy the perfect power tool you need for your garden:
As with the old proverb, the early bird will get the worm. In terms of shopping for power tools, it is recommended to shop early in the fall, and keep watch for that day when many garden centers and hardware stores start doing clearance sales on their seasonal items. Get things while they’re cheap.
You don’t always have to go for the most complicated, most high tech, or most feature-filled tool. The objective behind power tools is to help you do tasks more efficiently, and with less effort involved. Buying an overly complicated power tool may bog you down with too many features and actually hinder you from doing your intended work. Worse still, is the fact that the more complicated and feature filled a power tool is, the higher its tag price will be. Just find a tool that will do what you intend it to do.
Try to test the power tool in the store, even if it is just the act of letting it run for a few seconds and testing its feel and weight. There’s nothing worse than buying an expensive power tool and lugging it all the way back to your home garden only to find out that you can’t even operate it because of the torque and sheer weight when it’s running.
When choosing between cordless and traditional plug in power tools, it’s best to remember that the added mobility brought on by the absence of an electrical cord usually comes with the sacrifice of power. If you need a garden tool that has a lot of power but you want a cordless one, try to test it first for strength. You should also remember that while there are cordless tools that can go toe to toe with traditional plug in ones in terms of power, they usually come at premium price. As the saying goes: “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.â€
Remember that hand tools are there to help you do you work more efficiently while at the same time, making things easier for you. Don’t get too bogged down by all the hassle of choosing between features, functions, promo tags, and other marketing bents that a store clerk may give you. All you have to do is find a power tool that does exactly what you want it to do at a price you can live with.