 So you're a homeowner and you're thinking about getting a commercial walk behind lawnmower for your property Should you get a gear drive or a hydrostatic model? Well, if you don't feel like watching the whole video Here's my quick summary of my beliefs If you have a completely flat property with almost no hills, then the gear drive models are perfectly fine They're a lot less expensive and they have fewer parts to maintain over the life of the mower Everybody else should get a hydrostatic model. If you want to watch my explanation, stay with me Hey there, NJRoot22.com here with another vlog and this time it's a property owner type landscaping vlog and we're talking about specifically two different John Deere commercial walk behind mowers that we Owned one that we have now and one that we returned And it basically boils down to should you get a gear drive model or a hydrostatic model The first one we picked up it was for budgetary reasons. It was Normally a thirty nine hundred dollar Mower we bought on sale. I think we got like thirty one hundred bucks and After using it, I shot a whole video to explaining Explaining and just so you know, I'm a newbie when it comes to this commercial stuff. I'm not a landscaper. This isn't a professional expertise video, but it's more like Let's share our notes Because I'm sure there's a lot of people out there also like me who was a first-time owner of these commercial lawnmowers and And wants to know how it feels to be in our shoes not just, you know, look up some experts with things They know what they're talking about. This is first-time experience and you know, I'm like kind of learning on the job Anyway, we got this gear drive model that WG 36 a stands for you know walk behind gear 36 inches and so on and I guess a stands for but After using it on our property and we have a lot of hills on our property and We were extremely remorseful for buying it because a gear drive model has basically has one motor in the back and with two I guess gears and you use the handles To engage and disengage the belt that Attaches to the motor and that powers the powers the lawnmower And you're basically just releasing power and it gives the belt slips and so on And that's how you steer it and it's a real big pain in the neck because it seems like there wasn't as much control When you released it the springs And If the belts get wet it gets even harder to control and we found that the This the wheels would skid and tear up the turf and so on and not ever using a hydro model We were able to use this John Deere promise to return the the mower and Get the hydrostatic model now on paper the hydro model, which is the WHP 36 a it's hydrostatic with pistol grip That means like this Instead of like this or like this and we'll get into the grips at the end of the video because I think Pistol grips are the way to go for everybody. I don't care Maybe commercial landscapers who do it seven days a week or six days a week might be better off like this I don't know but we'll talk about that then so we got this hydrostatic model which on paper lists price was twenty five hundred dollars more But there was a tremendous sale and we ended up only getting it for about 1400 more I think we paid 4500 for the hydro model and there's four main differences between the gear model and the hydro model what they Have in common is the same Kawasaki Engine the same cutting deck the same pistol grip handles then the same I guess the front wheels on the Gear model were a little bit wider apart and the front caster wheels on the hydro model are closer together And I think that also helps prevent some scalping But the rear wheels are a little bit bigger on the hydro model. I don't think they're quite as wide They may be half an inch Narrower but the format besides the the wheels there's other differences in the hydro model obviously the hydrostatic transmission is two motors one for each wheel and You also have two knobs pushing the power for each motor and then that Presents its own set of problems the bigger wheels and you have real reverse Three miles an hour in reverse has real power for reverse the gear model had no Real reverse you only had reverse assist which means it gives it a little bit of power like hardly any and you have to literally pull The tractor and that can be a huge problem for people So for 2,500 bucks you get the room in our case 1400 you get Also electric start the hills mowing the hills on a gear drive model is a real pain in the neck although when you have both Gears in full power both sides. I'm sorry both belts. I guess There's one motor powering. So you don't really have any tracking issues over straight land it goes straight But any hill no matter which mower use you go one degree either direction and the mower will go towards gravity And you have to compensate and that that's where I run into product. There's differences. I guess there's good and bad for each this John Deere hydro model has two power levels one for each side and That's it's you never get it even it always both track one side or another even on I mean you can almost get it straight On straight level ground, but it's a pain in the neck to get the power Level and then you have to tweak each side of the steering to make it go straight on the hill So mowing on the hills that I don't think is easy for any commercial walk behind mower You're gonna have to compensate for the hill one way or another so But the gear model was much harder to steer on the on the hills And it definitely skid more often it got off track way more often I had more control when I first used the hydro. I was like man This is just as hard as the gear but after using it a couple times. I'm very happy We went with the hydro model because it definitely gives you better control I mean you take a look at me mowing this hill here on the hydro. I mean, it's definitely not easy It's not a pleasant task. Let's put it that way mowing hills, especially with a fence in your way I can't go up and down really. I mean I would probably go up and down if the fence wasn't there It's definitely a challenge if you have any hills on your property. I would highly recommend you get a hydro model They also work better in wet turf if you feel like mowing along when it's still wet You can do it a lot easier with a hydro and have no slippage. So that's that's basically it I mean I was gonna go on and on and on and on but I'm still going on and on but the hydro models are good for anybody that has hills and I wanted to talk real quick about the the grips the big trend in commercial mowers as far as I can see is they're going with these these Ergo grips where it's comfortable to drive all day and it seems like I mean it seems like it's a Comfortable way to drive especially if you're landscaping you're doing a lot of properties All day many days a week But I'm a fan of the pistol grip for many reasons number one it gives you leverage when you're when you're Moving the tractor it gives you leverage to use your body weight You really can't put too much into it when you're when you're holding one of those Ergo grips And I think the main reason they're doing that or grips because if you look at how you hold a smartphone like this It's the same thing. I think everybody's just used to that. It's such a comforting feeling I like the pistol grip and they say, you know, I guess you can hurt your your wrist But I don't think so because I think it's actually a arm strengthening Pose and I think over time it doesn't really matter. I think the pistol grip is a much better option For anyone even commercial landscapers. So that's basically it. We're happy we went with the hydro And if you can afford it, I would recommend hydros for most people But again, like I said the gear models are great if you have a large Flat property and you want to have less parts to maintain over time Do you have to change the oil in the hydro and there's other things that can go wrong? And obviously the hydro motors at some point will have to be replaced I mean everything has to be replaced including the gears and spindles on the Gear driven model, but either way it's it's an interesting thing that you can't really mow hills Comfortably in it and unless you get one of those dual wheeled What are those right mowers that you can literally drive on a 35 degree hill? I didn't measure the degrees on this hill. It's probably close to 40 degrees and it's It's just a challenge for a homeowner. So I hope this helped And that's it. Have a good week