OK, the guy who was the go to person on things building and garden maintenance appears not to be here much but I will post the question anyway.
Our lawns and drives are absolutely covered with leaves these days. Perfectly natural as trees shed their leaves in late Autumn but leaving leaves on lawns is not a good idea and sweeping them away is a total waste of time. In recent years I have used a lawnmower to 'hoover' up leaves. Works fine for the places the lawnmower can get to so I decided to look at getting a leaf blower to help with this task. The word on the street is that electric blowers are useless so it must be a petrol engined machine, preferably one that is worn backpack style.
Anyone any knowledge of these machines and can recommend a model. Thanks.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. [Albert Einstein]
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
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Whereas a rake and a bin actually gets rid of them.
A few weeks ago I watched a pair of workmen spend about an hour blowing leaves all over the car park where I work, and when they finished there were still exactly the same number of leaves in the car park.
I’m sure they got paid for burning a couple of gallons of 2-stroke fuel, so from their point of view it was presumably worthwhile... but not from anyone else’s.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Itll suck or blow and is quite light weight.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
The suck/blow conversion is done manually - i.e. to go from suck to blow, remove the sucker tube from the in side, replace it with a debris cover, then remove the bag from the out side, replace with a blower tube. So I blow the leaves into a reduced area, then suck away.
My feedback thread is here.
Only issue with mine is I find extended use can destroy the grip in my hand for a while, because of the vibrations.
- it doesn't deal very well with wet leaves
- it is noisy and heavy (after a time)
- it has difficulties getting leaves out from between plants
- it sucks up a lot of dirt and risks sucking up or blowing away small plants if you really go for it
- as a result, the machine also slowly fills with soil and needs a time-consuming clean after use
- you need to faff about with extension leads and make sure these don't decapitate any plants
- you need somewhere to store the machine and its attachments
I have come to the conclusion that in a mid-size garden it is easier to use a rake and compress leaves by jumping about in the green bin - gathering up leaves is a little slower but work is less destructive and there's no time wasted setting up, cleaning and storing away machinery
A good electric one can hoover up dry leaves, say from a small garden patio and side path
Now we have a large garden, I use my pressure washer instead, which also works on wet leaves:
this will clear 95% of leaves, etc into a corner/pile, then you shovel them into a bin
If you already have a pressure washer, try it, we have 3 electric leaf blowers, and only one works well, and the pressure washer is 5 times faster than that.
The petrol leaf blowers look effective, but as I say, try a pressure washer (with the general purpose nozzle)
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B May
A blower is great for chasing dry leaves. In a small garden you can suck up the dry leaves, but in a larger garden you’re constantly emptying the bag.
Last week we didn’t have too many fallen leaves, so I mowed them up with the grass for composting. This week the lawn is covered with leaves. If they are too deep to mow then I’m going to rake them up and compact them in 1m bags. Either way they will go for leaf mould compost, ie not the normal garden compost.
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Go to a garden machinery shop and try and find a second hand stihl hand held blower. A good one will cost around £200.