If you religiously cut the grass back by 1/3 of its height (eg: if you keep it cut at 2 inches, then you'd cut it as soon as its grown to 3 inches)regardless of whether its been a week or only 2 days since you last mowed, like is recommended by all the experts, then you may be perfectly satisfied with an inexpensive low powered mower because you'd only be removing roughly an inch and a half or less at a time and you'd not be subjecting it to the constant stress of bogging it down in tall grass. But as a general rule neither a mulching mower nor a bagger will do an efficient job unless they have a lot of power if you let the grass/weeds get tall before you mow, if then. However, the more torque the engine has the happier you'll be with the results I think. Buy the most powerful mower you can find within your budget. You'll get a more powerful engine for less money if you go Briggs & Stratton or Kohler over Honda and B&S is generally less expensive to repair if they need it. B&S has a lot of detractors, but with the exception of one push mower, every one I've had or used in the last 30+ years has had B&S engines. All were box store mowers from K-mart, Sears, etc. and all virtually trouble free for many years even when not cared for properly.

We are assuming it's a 2-cycle, although the commercials are now 4-cycle and have been for two years. As you may know, the oil is mixed with the gas on the 2-cycle, so there will be some smoke. On a 2-cycle, the amount of smoke does not indicate engine condition. It simply means either it's running rich or there's too much oil in the gas. All Lawn-Boy accessories for 21" decks work on the commercial except the rear bag as already posted. It may have just a discharge plate in it, so you'd need a mulch plate. The bagging chute is green and replaces the mode plate (mulch or discharge). The blade is not changed for any mode of operation, and it uses the Tri-Cut blade. For mulching, you should install a mulch fan over the blade. 2-cycles don't have compression releases for two reasons; they have low compression to start with, and they have no valves to make the compression release work. Compression should feel pretty stout on pulling the starter, but not really hard. The engine should start on the first pull if properly primed/choked (2-cycles like to start 'wet'). It is normal for the engine to 'clank' when starting and stopping. It has roller bearings on the crank and rod which require greater clearance. The commercial is the ultimate Lawn-Boy because it's the utmost in simplicity. It just cuts grass. Where I used to work at a County government center, I used to watch the female jail birds use the Lawn-Boy commercials all summer long, year in and year out. I've never seen another mower that throws grass like that, and you must know that those prisoners didn't pamper them. Yours will most likely have an 'F' engine or a Duraforce 6.5HP. A commercial LB with the Duraforce would have to be the ultimate lawnmower, although the 'civilian' 10424 came very close. I would have said 10550 except it has the Toro Personal Pace drive that irritates me. The commercial will not have Personal Pace - if it's propelled, it'll have a 3-speed.

The tabs really do a great job (there are some older threads with loads of posts singing their praises!). We used Cascade Complete initially, but Miele came out with the tabs sometime around when we first started using our DW. A bunch of GW'ers tried them and kept raving about them so we decided to give them a try. The CC worked perfectly fine and everything came out spotless. However, the tabs seem to give the loads an extra level of clean and sparkle. Also, the air in the DW just had a fresher quality (odor) after running a load with the tab vs CC. The DW after a CC cleaned load isn't bad, just less fresh smelling. FWIW, some on this forum use 1/2 a tab (and possibly even 1/4 tab?) to clean most loads. Again, my stuff comes out fine with a 1/2 tab, but a full tab just seems to raise that sparkle and clean to another level. It's not overly noticeable, in fact, I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me, but some others here have said the same thing. We don't usually run our DW every day, so I like the sense of security (that everything will get clean) that using a full tab gives. Last night I had a pretty empty DW, but one of those few items was a stinky plastic food container that would have been quite foul smelling by morning let alone this evening, so I ran the DW before bed instead of waiting, with a 1/2 tab and everything came out great. PS there were some posters who had trouble with grit (undisolved soap powder) build up in their rack glides from using Ecover so you might want to do a search for those threads discussing that.

My daughter loves candles, and I thought the soft light might look nice for her apartment, which is otherwise all cool or cold colors. They are supposed to have some kind of health benefit, but most such claims make me roll my eyes....so I wanted to see if anyone has felt they were actually useful. She has a cat, and is allergic. She has had shots, but they only work up to a point. (Me too, so I can attest). When it gets really bad, she uses a nasal rinse. If they really help with allergies, it could be worth a try. Though we'd have to keep it from her brother, who is a doctor: he'd laugh his head off.