Good choice. That X500 will do everything you ask of it. If you were looking for the 25 year machine, I believe you've found it. You should look into a Hayes enterprise sleeve hitch and a brinly back blade for when you start expanding the property. If you decide to get into row-crop gardening, you can find a lot of good deals on Brinly turning plows, cultivators, and discs online. Then get an earthway walk-behind seeder/planter and you'll be all set. You couldn't dream of doing those things with the X300. I highly recommend filling the rear tires with windshield washer fluid for snowplowing. Do a quick search (at the bottom) and you can find the post where I offered a few hints on one way to do it. Did you get the HDAP tires?

I have a Craftsman 917.255810 42" 19 HP Briggs & Stratton Fast Auto TurnTight® Riding Mower equipped with a General Transmissions RS800 CVT (constant variable transmission). It was purchased on Black Friday, Nov 24, 2017. I also purchased the correct Craftsman 9 bushel, 3-bin bagger to fit the mower. I used the mower to 'get up' leaves 3 times in the fall of 2017. I stored the mower in a shed, out of the weather, until this spring. I have used the mower 2 times to mow my lawn. Basically to knock down the onions and dandelions. There was little or no 'real' grass to mow yet. My front yard has a slope that I run side to side on. The CVT started sticking, becoming difficult to change from forward to reverse and back, in the fall. In the Spring it became an issue to the point I contacted Sears Service and they sent out a service technician. He was a contractor for Sears and had enough work with Sears that he didn't do anything else. One of the common problems with this CVT is debris jamming the exterior workings, ie. Variator Levers, Inversion/Variation Control lever (forward/reverse), Drive Variator (variable pulley), etc. The Sears Tech said that my CVT was one of the cleanest he'd ever seen (I attribute this to the few times I had a chance to used it & blowing it off with a leaf blower.) and was not a debris problem or issue. The short of it was that the CVT was failing. The Tech said that the GT CVTRS800 was one of the main issue on most of the calls he was dealing with. He said that Sears & Kubota had gone away from it and were mainly using a hydrostatic transmission again. He did say that John Deere was using it in their new 'consumer grade' mowers sold at big box stores like Lowes & Home Depot. My options were to continue to call Sears Service for 2 years while the mower was still under warranty, then purchase a yearly Service Contract for about 1/2 the cost of replacing a CVT, or try to sell the mower and purchase something else. The Tech did say that he had worked on one CVT RS800 equipped mower that didn't have these issues. It was used on a yard that was about an acre or less and as flat as a 'golf course putting green'. The Tech is coming back in a few days to replace the CVT at no cost to me. The Tech said that the CVT was originally designed to drive the blades and wheels of snow throwers/blowers and it did fine at that. GT tried to repurpose it for Lawn tractors to less than mixed results. I guess I'll ride this horse for two years and then try to sell it to someone with a pool table flat lawn. I'm also with toefungus wondering if there will be a Class Action Lawsuit as a result.

Disclaimer: I'm a homeowner not a plumber. How about something like this: Quiet Wrap⢠Pipe Soundproofing Wrap (see link below) I came upon it when searching for noise abatement of a HVAC duct which started last winter when a new more powerful solenoid was installed for our whole house humidifier. It causes the Aprilaire to suck quick and tightly to the furnace return, sending off pressure waves etc on the vent ducts. I haven't tried the noise reducer yet, but sure enough, with the heat and humidifier back this weak on the specific HVAC duct noise is audible and I believe traceable. None of the HVAC men seem to want to replace the offending copper solenoid, nor check part number on the Aprilaire humidifier. I think it's just too much of a load so I'll probably call them. Read up on flammability and check with local code department for your booster pump though if you consider using this tape. I'm not familiar with booster pumps (hot water delivery related)? Good luck. Here is a link that might be useful: Sound proofing wrap

Just wanted to chime in ... I recently sent back 2 (TWO!) Samsung fridges for excessive fan noise. You know that trick where you put playing cards in bicycle spokes? That's what they sounded like. It was awful, I could hear it anywhere on the first floor. The delivery guy told me, "all fridges sound like that" but since my basement fridge is a Samsung I knew that wasn't true. I wound up with an LG with bells and whistles I did not want (like ice and water thru the door). And it is QUIET. I wondered about the trade off I was making to sacrifice fresh food space for a possibly quieter fridge and it IS worth it. I don't know if manufacturers are using marginal components (louder than normal fans) in the simpler, cheaper models. I would have gladly bought a Bosch or Liebherr if it would have fit a standard depth, 36" cabinet but no luck there. My advice is to go to an appliance store (not Lowes or HD) that is QUIET and listen to them midday. Whenever the store is least busy is when you want to go, have them turn on each unit that is on display mode (so the compressor and fan starts working hard) and really listen to it. That's what we did and it worked, the KA and Samsung were LOUD. GE and LG were quiet, but GE was backordered by 3 weeks. So LG is what we got.