snow blower use questions

[Rustyiron]

I plow a lot. I keep close to 2 mi open on my place and do about 25 driveways & lots. All but 2 are dirt.
My current method is with a frame mounted Fisher "EZ-Vee" 9'6" blade. When the banks get too big to push back or I just run out of room (woods), I'll get out the blower (8' dual auger Loftness) and the customer get's charged for that. That makes ALL my blowing what I would estimate to be "severe", meaning very deep and usually hard & icy snow. Shear bolts and chain repair is common & frequent.
My reasoning (and question) is simply speed. Normal snows are 6-10" and it's hard to beat the speed of a blade, but with that said, I've never blown a "normal" snow either. My tractor is borderline under powered for that blower (80 ish pto hp) for much over 16". I'm wondering what travel speed would be reasonable for the blower in a "normal" 6-10" fresh snow? It's usually a fairly dry nice snow. I have been considering making a front mount for the blower for comfort & convenience but I question myself how often I would use the blower over the blade. In the past it's also handy to have both on for a final clean up.

 

[zzvyb6]

There are some good videos on Youtube about drag behind snowblowers that seem ideal for your application. Not sure about the gravel situation, though. My front blower is not bothered by dirt, gravel or grass sod clumps. If I had to start all over (have an 9' Western front mounted on a tractor and a 47 front blower on my lawn mower), I'd get a forward facing rear blower. This arrangement seems to satisfy all the position, operator and transport requirements.

 

[leonz]

I wish I still had our original IHC 112 hydro cub cadet with the single stage snow blower.
I never had a bit of trouble with it and my parents had a steep asphalt driveway to plow with a 3 car wide apron and one car turn around and a dirt path to the horse barn.


It might be worth considering a 5-6 foot Riest single stage and bolting wider wings
to it to make it 7 foot wide and they can be mounted on the front with the Reist
mounting kit and also be used on the rear three point hitch as a standard offering.

I wish I could buy a front mount single stage for my JDLA115 as it would be so much less costly to own than the junk RAD blower I bought for it.

 

[Reb954]

I plow a lot. I keep close to 2 mi open on my place and do about 25 driveways & lots. All but 2 are dirt.
My current method is with a frame mounted Fisher "EZ-Vee" 9'6" blade. When the banks get too big to push back or I just run out of room (woods), I'll get out the blower (8' dual auger Loftness) and the customer get's charged for that. That makes ALL my blowing what I would estimate to be "severe", meaning very deep and usually hard & icy snow. Shear bolts I chain repair is common & frequent.
My reasoning (and question) is simply speed. Normal snows are 6-10" and it's hard to beat the speed of a blade, but with that said, I've never blown a "normal" snow either. My tractor is borderline under powered for that blower (80 ish pto hp) for much over 16". I'm wondering what travel speed would be reasonable for the blower in a "normal" 6-10" fresh snow? It's usually a fairly dry nice snow. I have been considering making a front mount for the blower for comfort & convenience but I question myself how often I would use the blower over the blade. In the past it's also handy to have both on for a final clean up.

In my experience there is no set answer in regards to traverse speed when blowing snow. It all depends on how much snow there is, how wet or dry it is and is it packed in or loose and fluffy. Usually I go by the engine rpm, if the blower drags the engine down about 100 rpm then I keep going, if it is much more than that I drop down a gear. I like the engine to work but I don't want to lug it either.

I don't have a plow on the front, instead I use a bucket for stacking. For convenience I like the idea of a front mounted blower but I need the bucket too so a front blower is out of the question for my situation. A forward facing rear mounted blower would be out of the question for my situation also. At times I need to cut back banks and go thru deep drifts that I doubt I could drive thru.

From what you described, it sounds like you are setup well. Do the bulk of the work with the snowplow, then widen the road when needed with the snowblower. When I am doing that I usually figure on using 1/4 to 1/3 of the blower width when moving a snowbank to widen the road.

Last winter I had to open two neighbors driveways, both are widows and the guy that regularly cleared their driveways was out of town for a week. He had asked me to check on them if it snowed much. By the time I got to them they had been blown in for two days. Ones driveway is a mile long, the others is 1/4 mile. It took me 21 hours to get them opened up and that was using my old Ford 4400 open station tractor with a 7' McKee blower. The snow was running 3' deep on average, just over top of the blower so I would raise the blower so I took half the snow depth for 100 feet or so, then pull back out and drop the blower and clean down to the road surface.

 

[Z-Michigan]

I plow a lot. I keep close to 2 mi open on my place and do about 25 driveways & lots. All but 2 are dirt.
My current method is with a frame mounted Fisher "EZ-Vee" 9'6" blade. When the banks get too big to push back or I just run out of room (woods), I'll get out the blower (8' dual auger Loftness) and the customer get's charged for that. That makes ALL my blowing what I would estimate to be "severe", meaning very deep and usually hard & icy snow. Shear bolts I chain repair is common & frequent.
My reasoning (and question) is simply speed. Normal snows are 6-10" and it's hard to beat the speed of a blade, but with that said, I've never blown a "normal" snow either. My tractor is borderline under powered for that blower (80 ish pto hp) for much over 16". I'm wondering what travel speed would be reasonable for the blower in a "normal" 6-10" fresh snow? It's usually a fairly dry nice snow.

Total guess - 4-6mph travel speed with your setup. I can do 4-5mph in those conditions with a 6' single auger blower and 45 PTO HP, if I'm pushing it a bit. 3-4mph is very comfortable for that amount of snow when it's dry and fluffy. Your tractor is much larger and your blower heavier duty than my setup.

I imagine you can plow much faster, but keep in mind doing a driveway with a blower you do one or two passes (and maybe just one with an 8' blower) and it's done, you don't come back for clean-up, compacting piles, stacking snow or anything like that.

 

[Drewmon]

This is my first Winter with my tractor LS 4140HC. I have a 7'6" Diamond plow blade on the front and a 76" Dettson blower on the rear. In the past I've always had "yard trucks" that were not legal to use on public roads because of rust issues. I care for my own private road that is gravel, with a few houses on the road. I don't clear out everyone, but do help about 4-5 older couples that need the assistance. When I bought the tractor the plan was to use the bucket and the blower for everything. I quickly found out that the bucket was useless for anything other than moving snow banks. I find myself using the plow 90% of the time and the blower here and there. My current "plan of action" involves plowing opposite of what I would normally do. I plow from the edges of the road into the center and then use the blower to shoot the snow into the woods. This plan is working great, leaving the edge of the road clear and without banks of snow. I can plow the road quickly then take a slower pass or two down the center of the road with the blower. My reason for doing this is so that the snow banks never really build up narrowing the road, and will help later in the spring to prevent mud and potholes because there is far less snow to melt into the road. This is just my opinion, but so far this Winter we have had a good amount of snow and the road is still wide and clear.

 

[leonz]

Your doing exactly what airports do so no worries there.

With some airports they plow the snow in fifteen foot piles in one direction going in a loop if they have room to blow snow on both sides of the runway and then follow it with the snow blower eating the windrow and repeat this for the entire 160 foot width of a FAA standard 6,000 foot runway.

 

[Farmer495]

M7040SU will push a 78" blower easy in Low 4 in 12" of snow, even deeper if it's that fluffy stuff.

 

[FatTire]

This is a hard one to answer. Plowing is just faster for me, no matter how fast I can go with a blower. No matter how fast I'm moving along with the blower, replacing one or more shear pins (and maybe unclogging chute) will cost a lot of time compared to plowing. I run the blower on accumulations greater than 10 or 12 inches to keep from building giant banks and piles, or to cut banks back, but plowing is my "go to".

 

[KubotainNH]

I don't see how anything could be faster than a blade, the quicker you can go the farther the snow is kicked within reason. If I had miles to plow I would think about a side wing to push the banks back. I do like the idea of plowing to the center then blowing if the road is wide enough.

Funny, after posting this I noticed you have a wing on your wish list per another thread. Old plow blades are pretty cheap in the summer. Make it happen.