Worx Landroid installation tips
This is not an installation manual, but rather a set of tips for laying the boundary wire ~ things I wish I had known before I started and which would have made my life a lot easier had I known beforehand.
Recently I bought myself a Worx Landroid WR139E robotic lawn mower. I really hate mowing my lawns, and having a robot that that would automatically keep my lawn trimmed, and which I could control from my phone, really appealed to me.
The Landroid comes with all the required components, including a boundary wire which you need to lay around the boundaries of your lawn and obstacles.
The installation will take you longer than you thought
Robotic mowers tend to advertise that “it’ll just a couple of hours to get set up” - I guess it depends on what your definition of “a couple” is, and how perfect you want it. I spent a whole morning preparing my yard, cutting back hedges & filling in dips in the lawn, before I even started on the boundary wire. Then I took another 4 hours to lay the boundary wire, working out how to get it as close as possible to the edges of the lawn, and how to navigate the right angles. Since then I have probably spent another 4 hours fine-tuning, and probably another 20 hours pulling weeds I did not realize I had. It’s all part of the fun, right?!
Don’t get me wrong, I love doing this, however I have spent more time in the garden in the last month than I would have in a year of normal mowing! So far it has been worth it, and I am pretty happy with the results. My lawn, which is made up of about 8 different species of grass, plus a few hundred weed types, still needs a lot of work, but it is coming along nicely.
You will require more wire and pegs than you think
Before I ordered my WR139E I used Google Maps to plot out my boundaries and calculate the boundary wire length (you can do this by zooming in on your property and using the “measure distance” functionality to draw your boundary - it’ll then tell you the distance and area sizes). Although I knew I needed to create some islands around some trees, I completely misjudged just how much wire I would actually need for that, and also did not take into account the extras for the 90° right angles, or the extra reserve “loops” of boundary wire I added for future adjustments (more on that below).
I had initially calculated that I needed at least 120 meters, and given that the WR139E comes with 130m, I had ordered an additional 130m of boundary wire anyway. In the end I think I have used about 190m - so much more than I has estimated. In all fairness I did alter my original plan to include a few more features, including three zones (every meter adds up).
The same can be said for the pegs. The standard installation kit for this model comes with 180 pegs - which is sufficient if you peg your wire every 80cm or so (the recommended distance). The thing is it doesn’t work like that in practice - the moment you start to work around features, cater for any unevenness in the lawn, create islands, or make those those 90° right angles, you end up using a lot more pegs. I could have bought extra pegs but felt it was a waste of money & plastic, and I did not need an additional 270 extra pegs (the smallest number they sell separately). So I went down to the local hardware store and bought some regular weedmat pins and which seem to work perfectly well. All they need to do is hold your wire in place (and not rust).
Leave extra “loops” of boundary wire to allow for future adjustments
Every 10m or so around your boundary, peg down (on the outside of your boundary wire) a little excess wire to allow for future adjustments, in case you need to extend or your boundary wire. This is really a good tip, as you may need to adjust the wire around your lawn, and this allows you to do that without having to cut and join new wire. This is better explained in this helpful video.
Use solder splice heatshrink to join the wires
The Landroid comes with just two easy-to-use (but very bulky) wire joiners. I really do not like these as they are rather large, and can easily get caught up in the mower while it does your boundary cutting (I had to awkwardly try bury the one I did use). I switched to using 2.7mm solder splice heatshrink tubes which are easy to use, cheap, and which fit very snugly around the wire so you don’t even know they are there. Simply insert the wire ends into the tube and hold above a candle, blowtorch or lighter, until the solder melts and the outer casing shrinks tightly onto the wires. Done.
Do not bury your wires from the start
It is tempting to bury your boundary wire where possible as early as you can. There is actually no real need to do this (ever), provided it is pegged down properly so it does not get caught on things or cut by the Landroid, but it can be tempting to bury it. I buried mine in a few places, only to have to dig it out again when I needed to adjust the wire later.
If you are considering burying your wire, then first peg it down properly and wait a few weeks until you are absolutely sure you have the positioning exactly right. You will save yourself a lot of effort, and your lawn doesn’t like being sliced through. Remember, your grass will grow over your wires and you probably won’t even see it (despite it not being buried).
Multi-zone bottlenecks
At first I did not think I needed any zones, as the mower easily found its way from my front section to my back. What I did find, however, was that the Landroid was spending a lot of time bouncing back and forth between the front and back in each mowing session, which was not ideal. Yes I need the passage mowed too, but not that much, and it uses up a fair chunk of the mowing time each time the Landroid passes through.
I ended up creating bottlenecks and setting up three zones, which effectively splits the mowing session to the back lawn (1), the passage (2), or the front lawn (3). This cuts out the wasted time bouncing back and forth during each session and allows the Landroid to focus on just one section at a time. The point to note however is that the Landroid mowers are extremely good at accidentally finding the bottleneck gaps. I have made several minor adjustments, reducing the bottleneck gap and widening the “neck”, but in the end it still sometimes manages to find its way through the gap anyway. There probably isn’t much you can do about this though, so my advice is to just live with the fact that this will happen from time to time.
Tune and adjust the wire over time
As I’ve mentioned several times, if you are like me, who wants to trim edges as little as possible and ensure the Landroid is always on the right track, you will be adjusting your boundary wire several times to find out what works best. This ties into the “do not bury your wires” and “leave some loops” sections above. Make a change, test, and if you’re happy then leave it for a few days to see if it really works.
Landroids are good at finding gaps (a lot better than I initially though), and so they manage to work themselves in and out of tight spots all the time. If you have a particular spot where it always gets “caught”, making 20 turns to finally work itself out, then it is maybe best to change your approach, as the wheels of the mower may wear out your lawn in those places.
Give it time before making changes
Don’t be too hasty to adjust things when it initially doesn’t seems to work - unless it is escaping your boundary or getting stuck (neither of which I have personally experienced). If you do make a change, and it doesn’t get a very spot the first time, just wait for a few days before adjusting. Landroids mow in random directions, and it will not cover your entire lawn in each mow. I had a few spots it had initially missed in the beginning, but after a few days those areas eventually got mowed.
Final thoughts
I have never been keen on gardening, and I hate mowing the lawn. Despite the fact that I have recently spent so much time in the garden, watching the Landroid “do its thing”, adjusting the boundary wire to get the optimal cut, and pulling out buckets of weeds, I actually am really enjoying this. Eventually it may turn into just a thing it does without me bothering about it, but for now I’m happy with all extra effort I put in to see what I can do. When I started, I just wanted something to cut my lawn, but that has changed and now I want a nice lawn too. Every robotic mower will have its upsides and downsides, but I’m very happy with my Worx Landroid (who we named “Axl Mows”).
Hopefully some of the tips above help save you time and money, and I hope you enjoy your Landroid if you get one!