Just to add to my prior post ...
We had 1 inch of snow and "squals" yesterday. That means period high winds and very cold temperatures left some areas clear of snow and other areas with maybe 4-6 inch drifts. It was below zero (F) this morning, so the snow was very dry & fluffy, though in drifts the high wind packed it pretty well.
This morning it is 0° F with moderate winds, and the city plow hit the street end of the driveway, so to help delivery trucks I decided to take the EGO 24 inch self propelled snow blower out to clear the drifts and other deeper snow.
I headed west from the garage along the house, turned south down the east length of the gravel driveway, cleared the plow thrown snow at the street, headed north up the west side of the driveway to a gate just north of the garage, turned around back south next to the just cleared area. At this point I decided to keep clearing the entire driveway and the area in front of the garage just to see if the batteries will last (we'd not done this before since I'm usually clearing with the tractor and its 60 inch
WoodMaxx snow blower.
Even though it is 0 °F out, I continued my experiment. I mostly tried to do long strips running the auger to preserve battery power. When turning around I'd let the auger run to clear the chute, turn off the auger, and turn the blower around unpowered. Midway it was clear to me that I need to lengthen the handle to the longest setting (it was on the middle of three lengths, and I'm 6'5" tall).
I finished the driveway, still had 4/5ths battery, so I started on the gravel area in front of our three car garage. I had to go north with each run, so snow got blown onto lawn to the north. The garage is to the east, the house to the south, and the now cleared driveway to the west. To save battery, I backed the blower toward the house unpowered for each strip, but about 2/3rds of the way I gave up and used the powered reverse.
The driveway from road to the gate is 221 feet, and about 12 feet wide. The area in front of the three-car garage is about 38 feet E-W, and 32 feet N-S.
When done, before brushing snow off the blower, the batteries still showed 4/5th full!! I was shocked. After brushing off the snow, I run the cleaned auger and rotate the chute to make sure moving parts are clear of snow. When done doing that, another battery LED turned off, showing the batteries as 3/5ths full.
Obviously, with only 1 inch of cold snow and 4-6 inch drifts (maybe more on the edges), the blower wasn't working very hard. It handled the street plowed snow without hesitation. It was damn cold out - after finishing the main driveway I switched to using mittens!!