55gal snow roller/ compactor

[Wild Bill the 2nd]

I'm interested in how this turns out for you. I plow 200 yards down over our hill for sledding. I've done it many different ways.

Sometimes I have plowed it with the plow raised up a bit.
Have used the back blade with the blade turned around backwards.

I end up building a snow tubing run with banked sides and corners so it is usually pretty difficult to maintain it after another decent snowfall.

It would be nice to go back down the run and pack it down rather than plowing.

I have a design in my head for a sled that I could pull to maintain 4" base and move the excess snow to the banked sides. Just never made it to the top of the list...

 

[BleedingOrange]

I,m surprised that your tracked wheeler wouldn,t be enough to compact the snow, with it,s own tracks. Or how about making a simple drag like they use for packing snowmobile trails ? Even an old car hood with some weight would work.

 

[VitaBene]

I,m surprised that your tracked wheeler wouldn,t be enough to compact the snow, with it,s own tracks. Or how about making a simple drag like they use for packing snowmobile trails ? Even an old car hood with some weight would work.

I groom a fair amount of snowmobile trails so here are my 2 cents. To your point, I can just run the Tucker with no drag and pack with its tracks, it does a good job but I have to go over everything twice to cover the trail.

The drag is for making the trails smooth. We like to pack them by rolling them first, otherwise the drag's pan blows the snow off the trail!

If the picture post, you can see the roller tires behind the red drag- I can take a better pic if anyone is interested.

 

[NS Gearhead]

Yes the tracks do compact the snow somewhat... but they are made to float on top, so I thought this may work better. Tried it this morning...with so so results. First, the snow's extremely powdery. I can stomp in one spot and it just keeps shifting around like sand. Second, the barrel is too slippery. Tried flattening ridges left by towing the pallet, and it would just slide sideways. I'm wondering if there's a size of corrugated culvert that would press fit over it. This would streghthen it and keep it going straight. If not I have an old truck bed liner I may be able to wrap around it. One thing I'm kicking myself over; when I welded the axle to the plates on the barrel, I only tacked them in four spots. If I would have welded all around it would have made a water tight seal and air could have put more in it... maybe next season.

 

[NS Gearhead]

...also, if it gets tilted sideways the washer fluid leaks out. I did go back and tried putting a bead of silicone, but it's really cold outside...not sure if it will work. Oh well, these should be pretty easy improvements to make. Hard to predict everything.

 

[VitaBene]

I think what you have will end up working. Super low moisture snow is impossible to work with anything. That is what I was in in my third pic above in the 97 Tucker. You can see it gets pushed out of the way too easily, 14"=2" packed!

 

[GPintheMitten]

Why don't you tow a few kids around on a toboggan for an hour?

 

[FatTire]

I think what you have will end up working. Super low moisture snow is impossible to work with anything. That is what I was in in my third pic above in the 97 Tucker. You can see it gets pushed out of the way too easily, 14"=2" packed!

That's right, once your snow turns to sugar (or around here we call it "depth hoar" because its usually buried at the bottom of our snowpack) it is very difficult to work with. You'll have an easier situation next winter if you can pack the snow starting early in the season.

 

[aczlan]

Last year when we had 3 weeks of 10F (or below) in which we got 2-3 feet of snow (that settled into ~2' of snow), I used the snowblower on the 3 point to pack down a sledding hill.
I backed down the hill blowing off about a foot of snow, then I drove back up letting the blower float on top of the snow.
I ended up with 4-6" of nice hard packed snow that was perfect to sled on and the blow packing down the snow filled in my tire tracks nicely.

Aaron Z

 

[NS Gearhead]

Well a quick internet search shows that the OD of my barrel s 23.3". If 24" corrugated poly culvert is measured in ID, it may be feasible to marry the two. Finding a 3' length for cheap may be difficult though...