Falling back from the edge of technology: This time, leaf blower/vac. Back to raking.
Last edited Sat Sep 22, 2012, 02:12 PM - Edit history (2)
I'm barely tech. This website and a very few others, plus e-mail, plus basic Photobucket, and Teh Kindle (reader only) are about as far as I go. And Kindle is on thin ice with me, am teetering on going back to Gutenberg for keeps.
So let's extend this to lawn maintenance. As a barely Hippie leftover/secular humanist, I pride myself on 40 yrs of not engaging in Xmas consumerism. But it was Xmas Eve last year that I saw this machine in an infomercial that promised to do away with raking and using up Brazillion bags of leaves by mulching it.
I'm not going to name the brand beyond its being near the end of the alphabet. It featured a leaf blower function and a vacuum sucking and chomping function and a shoulder strap plus bag collector and seemed in the video to be lightweight and just a miracle.
So after running from the infomercial with its toll free ordering to the Google, I discovered that it is *instantly* available at the local home improvement big box outlet. So on that Xmas Eve, when stores were minutes away from closing, I did the unthinkable: Ran over there to get one of those, and there it was.
So in the following days I did what I usually reserve for exercise equipment: I tried it a couple of times then dumped it in a utility closet that I seldom go near. I did try it maybe once or twice during the past year on a more widespread basis. All the ease in view in the infomercial didn't seem to materialize: You know that shoulder strap that looks somewhat dashing in messenger bags, like a royal sash diagonally, well it CUTS into the shoulder when a BAG OF WEIGHT is at the ends of it. And the bag gets heavier as the job goes on. And there's the electrical cord to trip all over. And the elephant trunk of rigid plastic to knock against you. And figuring out how to accommodate the bag and its ending up in the position of bouncing against your gluteous maximals.
But most of all, my type of leaves to be sucked up are the kind that grow on either side of STEMS, or whatever they're called, fronds? So the sticks get sucked sideways and get stuck at the sucking end, like a dog with a big stick to get past a gate. So last year I decided to just take the whole year off from raking at all, didn't pick up ANY leaves.
So this week, for the first time in five months, the heat has let up somewhat, dipping into the SIXTIES for a couple of hours at dawn and into the beginning of the day, giving one the will to live and move around a little bit. A very few of this year's leaves have dropped, but there were plenty from last year, so I decided to try the leaf vacuum with a revived vengeance.
Yesterday I tried vacuuming up the leaves and the vacuum bag DID get filled up, but it was apparent that there were layers of leaves that had begun solidifying into the topsoil and that RAKING was going to have to be done. Fine. I thought that once it all was raked up into piles the vacuum would make short shrift of it all. Well, no. There were all of those stems getting stuck crosswise. Plus the vacuuming wasn't that powerful, needing to be hovered in the same spot over and over.
I did about half of the front yard with the machine. I finally decided that it would be a lot faster just to RAKE the damn things into piles and use the LOW TECH scooper into a rollaway trash can. And it was.
I'm going to e-mail (HIGH TECH) the company, and not demand a refund, just give them my dissatisfactions and say I'm going to sell it for a pittance at a yard sale and see whether they will spontaneously be moved to offer me a refund. And stick with the old rake and scooper.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Having done a share of work for a landscaper, these tools are not as easy as they look. I can ID some of your problems though:
1.) If I understand you correctly, you're saying you have compound leaves in some substantial quantity.
The solution to this is pretty simple actually. We used to mow first to chop them into kibble and vac the kibble. As long as the leaf-cover is not too thick, you don't usually need to mow the grass separately.
2.) The bag gets heavy or wears bad. Yes, yes it does. The only solution is to empty it more often. They seriously overrepresent the carryable capacity of those bags. Leaves are...like paper...effectively wood; when you chop them small and compact them...it's like carrying around a bag of damp-wood. Wood and water are not light. A 50gal bag is useless if you can only physically carry 20gal. There's a reason you often see landscapers using vacs attached to bags on carts. It's a lot easier to pull 300# of leaves on a cart than carry 50# with you.
3.) Cords. They're a pain in the ass. They're the real reason landscapers prefer gas-powered tools. It's not that we need the extra power usually or we like polluting the environment. Every last one of us has gotten the cord (or other stuff) in/around our feet and taken a face-first shitter into the dirt with 30# of debris and equipment on our back. The simplest solution is to work (depending on the size of the property) either from one corner of the yard diagonally to the other corner or in rows for larger pieces of land. First you work directly away from the outlet...then you come back towards it. That way the cord is always either behind you or in-front-and-slightly-to-the-left of you like a yellow road-line. Having a spooler that will draw in slack on the line helps too.
4.)Under-rot. Under rot (which is really just composting) occurs when the leaves sit too long damp and on the ground. You need to vac, rake or blow more often. If you do it a few times a week, it'll take less total time than doing it less frequently. (Doing it twice a week, I can do an acre in about a total-time of 30 mins/week.) I also watch the weather to make sure I do it before it rains.
And it's always a pleasure to hear from a real pro, somebody who knows what they're talking about. But just to be clear, I am not one of those. Besides being ancient, I do this project 3-4 times per year when the leaves drop, that is, within a period of a month until the final leaves are done away with for the year. The under-rot (thanks for *that* term, too) this time around is the result of my having skipped all raking last year. When I get through with this year's job, there shouldn't be any of that for next year.
As for cords, I deal with them with the weedeater, too, and don't use the gas powered things because they are usually heavier.
I am not at your level of endeavor and intensity in this project, am a single family maintainer. Plus, as far as having a lush green lawn goes, the severe heat and drought have left me with just dirt, not even weeds. I used to joke in lesser drought conditions that if I didn't have weeds I wouldn't have ANY ground cover at all. This year, not even weeds. Just dirt. The only thing I water are the perimeter pseudo-"pine" little trees (ON EDIT: ) arborvitae.
I really admired your know-how and vigor.
The type (not my own real ones) arborvitae perimeter ones that got the only watering:
but our weed whacker is full on solar now.
We put a panel on the roof of the shed, battery and charger inside. Now it runs our B$D weed whacker for 1-2 hours, at least in summer.
Every little bit counts.
