How big of a lawn do you need in order to justify a riding lawn mower?
My neighborhood is like 50/50. I use a push mower and it takes me about an hour to mow my whole lawn. Two of my closest neighbors use riders and one other also uses a push.
I hire a kid to mow and edge every other week, then I just mow on the off week.
My guess for a rider is somewhere approaching two hours for a push mower, I’d prob start looking into a rider.
Yeah, that is probably where I land. I'd say that if your lawn is an 1.5+ hours, and/or has fairly significant elevation changes and/or you are getting older and at risk of passing out in the heat then a rider mower is pretty justified IMO if you plan on doing yourself and not paying to have someone else do it.
At my old house it took me 45 minutes and I had a non-powered electric mower and it was totally fine (for me) cause it was light and quiet and I could listen to music/podcasts as I did it. If it was a powered gas I'd be done in probably 30 minutes, and a rider mower simply would be too "big" to fit through many areas, but would probably cut it to 10 minutes. Just seemed overkill to do that.