Snow Snow removal from those "sensitive" areas

[Firefighter Kubota]

I have 4 surface types that I need to clear on my property, Asphalt driveway, compacted nit-pak parking area, pea stone parking area, and my rear lawn...

Yes, I said lawn.. Just a path to my fire pit and cord wood for heating.

I have at my disposal My FEL, 6.5 foot plow mounted to my bucket, my 5' rear grader blade, and my walk behind JD snow blower.

The last one is out, Who wants to use a walk behind when we can be hving fun on the tractor.....

Both my pea stone area and lawn are uneven terrain, There are even raised roots by my canvas garage out back....

This winter has been cold, warm, cold so the ground is less than frozen..No matter how careful I am with my FEL in/out of float, my plow or the grader blade the pea stone and lawn take a BEATING.....

NOT Today..Think ouside the box.... I ended up pushing the snow in reverse with the back of the grader blade and it worked Great. The reverse curve, Floats nicely over the uneven terrain, no hard corners to gouge into the earth, and surprisingly remained in good contact with the surface and still managed to push a large pile of the white stuff....

If you have those "sensitive" areas, give it a try.....

 

[ChuckinNH]

I have some uneven areas to do also, and I appreciate the confirmation that a rear blade used that way works well! Thanks for posting the photos also.

 

[Ace3]

I also have various surfaces to remove snow from with my rear blade. I have found that to plow my loose stone driveway I turn the blade around and drive forward with back of the blade floating over the surface. I also shorten the top link to tilt the top of the blade forward. This keeps it from digging in.

For the hard packed gravel road I turn the blade to the normal forward position. This does a nice job of scraping right down to the surface.

 

[PILOON]

The more you plow/blow snow you will recognize that the biggest secret is having a frozen snow 'base'.

That being said you really dont want to plow/blow the first snows, you really want to compact it either by simply driving back and forth, dragging a FEL bucket backwards slightly tilted or dragging a back blade reversed.

Recently we has a serious thaw that messed up my base.
I simply back graded the 'slush' to even out the ruts 'till it refroze.

If forcasts call for freezing rain, DO NOT blow minor snow accumulations as you will only end up with a skating rink.
Let the snow act like a sponge to absorb the water and when it re-freezes you will again have nice traction. Once frozen you use your back blade to scrape away the excess or even the blower (adjusted lowest on the skids).

 

[C6rider]

I do it the same way as Ace3 does except I don't turn it back around to do the road mainly because it isn't frozen hard enough yet.

LQPAPPY suggested I use a 3" piece of PVC pipe. Cut a slit in it and slide it over the blade so there won't be a sharp edge.

Someone else suggested to cut a piece of horse stall mat and sandwich it between the cutting edge and the blade letting a little hang down so the edge won't cut. Anyone want to split the cost of a stall mat?

Think I might try that. It's snowing/sleeting here now so we will see what happens.

 

[JDPN]

for even better results rotate the blade (angle it) 180 degrees so the curve of the blade is with the snow. Just make sure there is clearance between the rear tires and the blade. I have used this method for years plowing in reverse.

 

[Firefighter Kubota]

C6 I bet if yopu just use the blade backwards you won't need the PVC. I tell you this way worked great, whether you drag the blade in reverse, or push the snow driving in reverse...( no compacted tire tracks doing it the second way)

And yes to PilOON, If its a light snow, I just drive around packing it to give a good base, but weve had extreme temp variations along with rain, so this year has been a mess so far...

 

[rxk9394]

Just a quick word of caution on blading in reverse. The three point attachment points are engineered to basically handle forward motion only.

I've seen messages related to bending/breaking of 3-point arms and housings when hitting obstacles in reverse with box-blades, grading blades, and even mowers depending on what gets hit and the angle.

So as long as you are sure of whats underneath the snow and that what you are pushing it against is sort-of "soft" as well, the reverse blading works fine when needing to quickly clear areas similar to what is mentioned above.

 

[BANDAMAN]

I do it the same way as Ace3 does except I don't turn it back around to do the road mainly because it isn't frozen hard enough yet.

LQPAPPY suggested I use a 3" piece of PVC pipe. Cut a slit in it and slide it over the blade so there won't be a sharp edge.

Someone else suggested to cut a piece of horse stall mat and sandwich it between the cutting edge and the blade letting a little hang down so the edge won't cut. Anyone want to split the cost of a stall mat?

Think I might try that. It's snowing/sleeting here now so we will see what happens.

The horse mat is not too cheap, is it! I thought about cutting mine into strips and selling the extras on here Instead, I use the remainder of the mat to protect my floor when taking the loader on and off in the garage. If you know of one nearby, stop by a truck tire retread plant...they may have an old obsolete piece of tread that they might give you or sell cheap. It might not be as thick as the horse mat depending on what you can find, but worth a shot if you don't want to drop the $50 or so on the mat.

 

[Northland]

I use to operate my back blade in reverse. I bent a turnbuckle on my tracrtor by backing too fast into a snow covered boulder so I stopped doing that

We have too much snow here for a rear blade/loader combo to keep up with. Last winter I bought a rear PTO snowblower and sold me rear blade