Standards
What the markings actually record
Almost everything on this shelf carries a figure, and almost every figure gets read as a promise. None of them is. A stated area records the lawn a maker chose to assume, not the one outside your door; a sound power level records a bench measurement under a named procedure; a burst pressure records the point a hose fails, and gets printed where a working pressure belongs; a thread size is a dimension that decides whether two things seal, and nothing more. Each is exact, each is real, and not one of them says what will happen in your own garden. Some are published documents; several of the things this trade calls standards are conventions with no publisher at all, and the difference shows up the day something will not fit. Each page says which it is, in four parts — what the document or the convention fixes, what it does not promise, what it works alongside, and which families on this site depend on it.
Machine safety standards
The documents a mower, a tiller and a shredder are built against: guarding, blade braking, feed geometry — and why none of them records how well a machine cuts.
- EN ISO 5395-2 — Pedestrian-controlled lawnmowers Machine safety
- EN 60335-2-77 — Walk-behind electrically powered lawn mowers Machine safety
- EN 62841 — Electric motor-operated garden machinery Machine safety
- EN 13683 — Garden equipment: integrally powered shredders/chippers Machine safety
- EN 709 — Pedestrian-controlled tractors and rotary cultivators Machine safety
Noise and emission figures
The decibel figure in the oval on the housing, the method that produced it, the one at the operator’s ear that is a different quantity, and the engine stage beside the displacement.
Battery and electrical
Amp-hours against watt-hours, what an IP digit was actually tested with, and the appliance rules behind a machine that works on wet grass.
Water and fitting dimensions
The inch on a tap thread that is not a measurement, the two thread families that look alike, and the three hose figures a listing replaces with a layer count.
Market conventions
The square metres a machine is said to suit, the word mulching, and the syllable that means the battery is not in the box: quoted everywhere, defined by nobody.