Lawnmower generator

Like many suburban homeowners, I have a large number of small gasoline powered engines cluttering up my garage (lawnmower, snowblower, weedwacker, chainsaw, leaf blower etc). For every engine, besides the occasional oil changes and air filter cleaning, the fuel needs to be completely drained at the end of each season to prevent it gumming up the carb if it sits for too long.

I am now considering getting a small generator for emergencies. I had to stop and think, why the hell do I need to keep so many individual engines around when I would NEVER need to be running any two of these devices at the same time? If only the engines were easily “swapped”, I could possibly make do with two of them: one large one approx 6 horsepower (lawnower, snowblower, generator) and a small 2 cycle engine for all the handheld tools (blower, weedwacker, chainsaw). Some manufactures have started to realize this, and you can now buy a weedwacker (string trimmer) that can be also used to power a small tiller, snowblower or leafblower. But what about the big engines?

I propose for instance a simple standard vertical shaft lawnmower with a PTO shaft (power-take-off) opening on the top. A perfect accessory for this would be a small generator that clamps to the top of the mower. Or, generator could instead be integrated into a platform that you sit the whole mower onto. This generator platform would have prongs or a socket of some sort that mate with the lawmower’s shaft (no need to even remove the blade). Such a device could even be made to work with your existing un-modified mower. When you no longer need the generator, just lift the mower off and go back to cutting your grass.

Yes, many commercial generators have higher power outputs, and larger fuel reservoirs than this type of mower/generator hybrid, but I still think there would be a market for this type of device (except of course for people who would want to be out mowing their lawn during a blackout).

I’ve come across some websites that give instructions on converting old mowers to generators using automotive alternators, but they all involve more or less “permanently” converting the mower from a grass cutting tool to a generator. My whole idea is based on leveraging the existing horsepower sitting idly in your shed to perform new tasks.