I think all the mowers you mention would probably work fine for you. The weakest link in that price range of mower seems to be the transmissions. If you just use it as a mower, you may never have transmission problems. If you need much heavy duty usage (like towing potentially could cause) you might want to consider a "Garden Tractor" category machine. You could always look at the used market if cost of a new one is prohibitive. My personal experience: I was in this situation 9 years ago with a 1/2 acre lot and only a walk behind 21" mower. At that time, I bought a new John Deere L111. It has been used almost exclusively for mowing. I have towed / pulled with it a couple of isolated times. Mine still works fine and runs basically as good as when new. Like you, I've read alot of negative comments about this level of lawn tractor (i.e. it won't last 3 years, etc.). My experience (and my belief when I bought mine) was that with reasonable care it would be a durable machine. That has played out in my case. I have about 100 hours run-time on my mower in 9 seasons use, and I have not had any failures outside of having to replace the original battery.

It certainly can be done...the tile will take the longest, then the hardwoods, carpet takes no time. If your builder gets it all lined up right...ANYTHING can be done. One day, I was at the house and there were about 6 guys doing base and crown, 2 master carpenters doing the fireplace overmantle, panel jambs, wainscoting and all of the built ins in the closet, a guy working on installing the cabinets, and painters working on the exterior! It was crazy, there was a circular saw going in almost every room! BUT...like post above said, it may very well take a little longer. Just mentally prepare yourself. You are so close!! We are about 5 weeks out and while I can't wait to live in our new house...I start hyperventilating thinking about all we have to do between now and then. But it WILL get finished! When the going gets tough...focus on some aspect of your house that your love and think about that. There are things in our layout that would have been nice to change...but it is so much nicer and better suited to our family than our old house! I am focusing on all the positives. Best of luck to you! So exciting!

I can totally sympathize and I used to fret over how much sleep I was getting (or not getting) all the time. I was always waking up in the pre-dawn hours and it really bothered me I couldn't sleep through the night. But then last year, I decided to give it up and let my body settle into whatever sleep pattern I felt comfortable with. So I'm a total night-owl now and I rarely go to bed until well after midnight, usually between 1-2AM. That 'eight hours of sleep' thing is drilled into our heads all our lives, but everybody knows you don't need as much sleep as we age. I'm quite comfortable with 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night and can function just fine all day without feeling sleepy. The extra hours late at night are my quiet time and I spend it reading, working on craft projects, watching chick flicks, etc. It takes a while to adjust to a different schedule of sleep, but not fighting it made all the difference and I'm not staring at a dark ceiling at 3:00am anymore!

Sorry about your flood. I, too, live in SE Wisc and can attest that we had something greater than a 100 yrs flood. It topped the last 100 yrs flood of a few years ago. If your basement walls, footing, and footing drains are proeperly designed and built, then you water flood is attributable about 100% to the sump pump. When the sump pump does not have enough capacity - or in your case it quit- to remove the water as fast as it comes in, the water outside the basement wall will rise over the footings, soak the bottom cinder blocks and continue to rise to grade level. If the sump pump quits, sometimes it better to have the basement flood. If something is blocking the water flow from outside the walls to the sump crock, then water pressure builds on the walls - think of the basement as a concrete boat. This pressure can cause a wall to buckle inward. This hazard is most prevalent for a newly constructed basement without any house over it. The weight of the house helps to stabalize the walls and makes it harder to push the walls in. In the usual construction, a house is not connected to the basement walls; It merely sits on the walls. When a basement floods, it equalizes the hydraulic pressure on both sides of the wall. When I witnessed the amount of water that fell in the past week, I question the usefulness of a battery operated sump pump. It would have to have a hugh battery bank to keep it running as long as needed. In a storm like this one, a power loss can last 1 day or more. WE-Energies was pretty good about getting power restored in a timely fashion, but they had only so many crews and they worked off a priority list - the most critical came first. A home owners flooded basement does not rate as high as a police and fire station, or a hospital and traffic lights. Last week, hardware stores in Milwaukee reported a run on sump pumps and emergency pumps. They sold out. By your description, you site design seems ok. Water drains have been designed to move the water away from the house. The sump water should be routed more than 10 feet away from the house and to a location that drains away from the house, else the water merely comes back and is recirculated. My advice to you is to replace your sump pump with a quality unit. You may wish to consider a sealed, submersible one, one that can run under water. In my house, my pump does not run very often. It may go a couple of years before turning on, and that can be bad too. 5 years ago, it was finally called on to run and was frozen by corrosion. I was a busy little boy for about an 1/2 hour while I took the pump impeller housing apart to un-jam the pump and get it back in the crock before water started coming over the top of the crock. I barely made it. As part of home maintence, one should run the pump twice a year to insure that it is in working order. if there is no water in the crock, put some in for the test. I watched a house next door being refurbished, It is owned by a trust of siblings who inherited it. They had a damp basement wall problem. As part of the upgrade, dirt was dug away from the absement wall and a waterpproof sheet was glued to the outside of the wall down to a depth of about 5 feet. This week was a test on that job. Not everyone can afford one, but a backup alternator is good. Have an electrican arrange the circuits to run the sump, refrigerator, freezer, a couple of lights, and the telephone off the alternator. Size the alternator to carry the loads mention above plus a margin. Again, this unit will require periodic maintence to stay in working order. Gasoline engines that sit for long periods of time can become inoperative. And one must have enough fuel on hand to run the alternator for a few hours. Hopefully, replacement fuel can be procured during the emergency.