Snow Attachments snow removal tools advice

farmerjim · Oct 2, 2006

was wondering what everyone uses for snow removal? i have been using just fel but it takes forever. i was thinking of a rear blade or a clamp on snow plow for my fel, but they are hard to find. i found 1, sno champ by aiken trailer but its about $850. i think i can get a 3pt sno blower for less than that.just curious as to what everyone's using.

SacandagaBrad · Oct 2, 2006

I use a rear blade and a 3PH mounted snow blower, depending on depth of the snow. I leave my FEL on all winter, handy for pushing up the banks or just moving heavy chunks of ice and snow around. For 6" or less, I use the rear blade at a fairly fast pace to roll the snow off to the side. Mine has the tilt feature, which works well with the pin pulled out so the blade follows the contour of the ground. I could move more with the blade, but prefer the blower for deeper stuff. The beauty of the snow blower is one pass and its gone. It also cuts through the scaper banks and deep piles with ease.

It all depends on how much you get on a regular basis and whether or not you want to wait for the end of the storm. A blade can be had for a lot less $$ and handle a lot of snow, just takes more time like the FEL. Getting out before it gets too deep and you'll have no problems. I take care of our private road (gravel) for about 300 yds and can plow out a 4" to 6" snow fall with three passes in about 20 minutes. We haven't had any real snow falls since I bought mine 3 years ago, but I know it would be no problem cutting through 20" or more with the blower.

Snow blowers do draw quite a bit of HP!

Don't know what size blower you are looking for, or if you are looking at new or used, but $850 would be on the low side. I think when I bought mine, a 50" to 60" was running around $1400 +/-.

Brad

roxynoodle · Oct 2, 2006

I am wondering the same thing. What I get is a lot of drifting. One 7" snow fall + west wind = 3 feet of snow in the driveway to my barn. I'm pretty sure a rear blade will be of no use in that, although it could take care of most of my driveway near the house. I was planning to use the FEL back by the barn. Would a 3ph snowblower work better? For anyone who has front hydraulics I see a lot of front mount blowers on ebay for less than $800. Won't work for me though.

browns40 · Oct 2, 2006

Sounds like you guys are poised to buy the 2nd most useful/multipurpose implement out there (opinion of course!)...

Get a box blade: The FEL can push the bulk of your material forward, then the boxblade follows, capturing what's left without leaving windrows... once you push the snow to where you want it, lift & dump the FEL, back throught the snow pile, then load that bit where you want it...

Wit a 6 ft FEL & 6 foot box I made pretty short work of what we got, and the biggest plus was being able to back up to each entry at work, lower onto the snow, & pull it away... very little shovelling...

Last year was no big year for us, but we had the cleanest parking lot I ever saw, using that combination, the switching out to spread sand after the snow stopped...

The other nice thing about the box blade is you have two plowing directions if you wish... the rear blade portion is great for cleanup and moving snow backwards.

Course I never used a snowblower on the tractor...

ksmmoto · Oct 2, 2006

I have a three point hitch Agro-Trend 60" snowblower which works very well on my L3430. I am going to purchase a 84" light material bucket to use on the front.

I have several commercial accounts that I started with last winter. My blower works better than a truck on residential driveways, but its just not as quick on parking lots. I always have to go back over to remove the trail that leaks off or go slow to blow all at once.

With the large bucket I can push away the small trail on the return trip. I was looking at a snow pusher blade but they run $2000 for an eight foot! The light material bucket is $800 and I can use it in the summer for mulch and yard cleanups.

ksmmoto

RalphVa · Oct 3, 2006

I now use my FEL plus a back blade. The back blade is faster for removing most snows, but the FEL is useful for removing clumps up around the garages. For most snows, you can just drive forward with the back blade pushing away snow in the back. It takes away even snow compacted some by the rear wheels.

When I had my Gravely, its front blade worked great to remove snow very efficiently but was a bit cumbersome up close to the garages. ONE TIME, I had to remove the blade and mount the front snow blower. The blade would not touch the 7" of SLEET that we got that one time. Think the FEL on the JD would have been able to remove it.

I don't know why they don't make a snow blade that would just clip in place of the front end bucket on JDs. They just attach with a couple of U hooks on top and 2 pins at the bottom. A fairly inexpensive front blade could be made to just hook and clip into place. No one offers it. A manual swivel like my Gravely blade had would be fine. Wouldn't need to be hydraulic swivel. It would be easy though to disconnect the bucket dump lines and use those for a hydraulic swivel though.

Ralph

scesnick · Oct 3, 2006

I have a 2.5 mile driveway and i live on top of a mountain on the Md/Wv line. We get plenty of snow so This is one area I know pretty well.
If it snows 12"or less i just use my Yamaha Rhino with a 72" plow. Believe it or not it works great !! If we get a good snow I use my 580 Case backhoe. If we get over 2 feet I just park everything and break out the 3pt Ber-Vac 64" snowblower. it takes alot longer but works very well. I can make one pass down the mountain and one back in about 2-2.5 hours. The problem is that most of 1.5 miles of the driveway is through the woods and treelined so if i use nothing but plows after a few snows there is no place to put the snow so the blower was a mandatory piece of equipment for me.

Hard · Oct 3, 2006

I just use a 6' rear blade on my 500' driveway and large parking area. I have removed up to a 9" to 10" snowfall with the rear blade. It does a great job of scraping down to the asphalt. A lot cheaper than a snowblower but if I had to do this job quite frequently and over a span of several months I would probably get a front mounted blower.

Thomas · Oct 4, 2006

Good morning farmerjim.
Useing rear blade after while was hard on the neck...as you said fel takes to long,soooo I got my crayons out and came up w/this idea...works darn well.

One pin to hitch up the plow or unhitch to use the fel...and one can get closer to objects while plowing and not fearing having the rear tire scuffing objects.