Leaf cleanup: yard vac or lawn sweeper?

[davesisk]

Hey folks:

Someone give me some opinions please! I've got a lot of trees on my property, so needless to say each week enough leaves accumulate to completely cover the lawn, driveway, everything....it's just a yard of reddish brown! I've decided that my leaf blower and rack just aren't sufficient anymore. I'm wondering whether a "yard vacuum" (the walk-behind leaf vacumm and chipper/shredder, usually sell for around $400) would be my best bet, or one of the pull-behind lawn sweepers would be more effective. What do you folks think? Any suggestions? Are there additional choices I haven't considered?

My property isn't all that large, but leaves cover every single square foot of it!

Thx,
Dave

 

[MossRoad]

Dave,

You already know how a hand held blower will only pile up so many leaves before it becomes a waste of time. Here's what I do. Use the handheld blower to quickly windrow them as far as it can. Then, rather than wasting time, I use the PT bucket to push the leaves down the length of the windrow to my curb pile or into the woods. It is amazing how fast you can move leaves this way. It is like a big leaf plow. You can move mountains of leaves with these little things.

Some days when I don't have many leaves instead of using the PT I take a leaf rake and turn it upside down and lay it on the ground in front of me, then push the leaves with the upside down rake down the length of the windrows. My 5 year old helps me. I windrow and she pushes. She has a blast and it goes pretty fast.

 

[davesisk]

Hey MR:

Don't you rip up your lawn using the bucket to do this? I'm thinking I would, but then maybe it's an issue of operator error... /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

 

[MossRoad]

Nope, I let the bucket go down flat, then roll back the leading edge a little bit so it wouldn't bite into the grass if I hit a bump or something... acted like a skid plate. Worked surprisingly well. I'm sure you could tear up the lawn if you weren't careful, but it really did good this year. If we get any more leaves before the snow falls, I'll take some pictures. I took some last year, but they were pretty dark as it was night time(hence my need for more lights under the canopy). Here's a link to that post with pictures.