Propane weed eaters saving the environment.....Not! Low torque makes you run the motor longer. Propane is a expensive fuel and it yields less btu's than gasoline. In other words you will use more propane in this weed eater vs a conventional gas and run the engine longer. Much like bottled water, bottled propane has a huge carbon footprint on the environment. You have to consider fabrication of the steel containers, paint, plastic decals, transportation of the steel container too the fuel source. Now factor in the energy used to contain the fuel source and transport the final product in its container. Transportation from the different factories, distributor and your local hardware store. Disposal of the spent container also comes into play. Fuel used in the garbage trucks and landfill space the empty bottles occupy.

They should have designed it to run a BBQ/Rotisserie attachment as well.

if you actually start using a lot of propane and you're concerned about the bottles...reuse them:

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=45989

Actually, I don't know why we haven't been made to switch to propane for mowers, especially in California. It's safer, less polluting and if it's a riding mower the extra weight won't matter. There's ways to get propane cheaper so you end up spending about as much to run a vehicle on propane as gasoline, gasoline is just more conventient. Personally, I'd rather lug around a couple of propane tanks than deal with nasty-ass gasoline tanks in my garage just to save a few bucks during the mowing season. I already have to get tanks for the grill, so whatever.

However, I don't trust any 4-stroke for a weed whacker. You need an engine that's meant to run while turned upside down and that's a 2-stroke(oil is in the gas so no oil sump). I'd be curious to see how many of these are still running in 3 years. 2-strokes are dirty but they can only be killed if someone forgets to pre-mix the gas.

What city/state did you find it? I need a sku because the morons at the HD over here in Elgin, Illinois cannot figure out how to find one w/o a SKU.

I saw them in the Pottsgrove, PA Home Depot.

I just bought a straight shaft from Home Depot Friday and used it for about an hour that day. It starts up with no problem at all and is quite powerful. However, it leaked oil all over itself. I am going to have to return it for another one.

They were available this morning in Exton, PA and Naamans Rd., DE stores. In-store personnel have no clue about these (despite the large, handdrawn poster they have hanging), as to what they are, where they are hidden, etc. I had to find the seasonal dept. mgr. to assist. The package is nearly 6ft. long and bulky.

It's not the weedeaters, or cars that are the big polluters - it's coal fired power plants.

goat6500 said:Actually, I don't know why we haven't been made to switch to propane for mowers, especially in California. It's safer, less polluting and if it's a riding mower the extra weight won't matter. There's ways to get propane cheaper so you end up spending about as much to run a vehicle on propane as gasoline, gasoline is just more conventient. Personally, I'd rather lug around a couple of propane tanks than deal with nasty-ass gasoline tanks in my garage just to save a few bucks during the mowing season. I already have to get tanks for the grill, so whatever.

However, I don't trust any 4-stroke for a weed whacker. You need an engine that's meant to run while turned upside down and that's a 2-stroke(oil is in the gas so no oil sump). I'd be curious to see how many of these are still running in 3 years. 2-strokes are dirty but they can only be killed if someone forgets to pre-mix the gas.

Propane is far from being the safe and economical fuel source you claim. Propane is STILL a carbon based fuel and releases the SAME NET levels hydrocarbons as it's room temperature liquid carbon based fuel counterparts so propane by no means is a less polluting fuel source. The main problem with propane is that typical compressed propane only burns at ~ 64% efficiency compared to ~93% for liquid combustion carbon fuels. Where do you think that 36% of unburned propane gas using by most propane devices usually goes? Commercial vehicles using propane as a fuel source overcome this inefficiency by recapturing exhaust and then continually re-mixing it into the combustion chamber until it is 95% consumed. However such propane reclamation systems are impractical for even riding lawn mowers sized engines letlaone those small single chamber units used in hand-held propane powered weed eaters.

Reliable and extremely fuel efficient small cc 4 cycle engines have been available for over 50 years. Modelers have been using them in large scale radio control planes since they were first introduced in the late 50s. If you knew anything about small CC 4 cycle engines you would already know the oil source feeding them in them is pressurized from the cylinder backplane suction so you orientation concern posted above is meaningless. If a 4 cycle engine can reliably and efficiently work in model planes that are repeatedly flown w in inverted high G situations they can easily withstand any orientation movement a homeowner can give them.

Then there are those who are actually delusional enough to think battery powered equipment is the environmental solution? Environmentally friendly battery powered lawn equipment is a joke at best. Such battery powered devices are considered deferred pollution devices since their real pollution output occurs at the point the electricity used to charge them is generated and then again by the “environmental cost” to do to dispose of batteries. For most US residents, that means a coal fired power plant which is by far the greatest source of hydrocarbon emission pollution on the planet.