Many mower engines are big polluters, particularly the 2 cycle engines. (Those are the ones where you must use a gasoline and oil mixture in the fuel tank.) The 4 stroke engines are a lot more efficient and a lot less polluting. Even those aren't exactly "clean," but considering one would hopefully be burning a lot less fuel to run it than one would burn in a car or truck pulling a tow mixer, it's still probably a big improvement, but it all depends upon how someone measures it.
If the car pulling a tow mixer is all tuned up nicely and has all the modern pollution controls still working, then it can be very clean in some respects, but it still will put out a large amount of CO2 simply because it is burning more fuel.
A small diesel mower engine would probably be even cleaner still, especially if someone ran it on biodiesel.
It all comes down to how extreme someone wants to take it. I suppose the cleanest option that has been mentioned is probably the tow mixer pulled by Clarissa's draft horses. I doubt many of us would be interested in getting that extreme about it. Unless Clarissa is volunteering to ride to our construction project and help out.
--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, JUDITH WILLIAMS <williams_judith@...> wrote:
>
>
> I'm not following this thread carefully (not into mechanics) but I thought lawnmower engines were tremendous polluters. Otherwise it sounds like a good idea.
>
>
>
> Follow progress on the new project at http://www.papercretebyjudith.com/blog
>
> More papercrete info at http://squidoo.com/papercretebyjudith
>
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