Congratulations, Brian!
The PT425 is an outstanding machine. I'm sure it will work well for you.
The power sweeper is a BRUTE. It weighs what I estimate to be 400-500lbs. It cannot be lifted by two men, certainly. It came strapped upside-side on a pallet, and it was all Ron and I could do to flip it over. Lifting it would not be possible. It has a huge rotating brush in the center, made of stiff poly bristles. The brush rotates so that the material is brushed away from you (counter-clockwise when viewed from the right side of the unit). It is made of heavy sheet steel that forms a heavy hood over the rotating broom, and has a HUGE hydraulic motor to turn the brush. It has a smaller actuator that allows you to angle the broom left and right. This helps to control where the debris cloud is going. On a very dirty road surface, it can produce a truly impressive cloud of dirt in a hurry. Goggle, hearing protection, and breathing protection is a MUST! You must gauge wind direction before starting!
This device cleans roadways and hard surfaces (e.g. asphalt, concrete) in a big hurry, orders of magnitude faster than a power washer. It has been essential several times this year after moving tons of bark chips, to clean up the roadways after all has been moved. It would have taken many hours with a power-washer, a leaf-blower and a large manual broom. The power sweeper was able to clean in all in under an hour, and make things look absolutely sparkling.
I have tried using it on the lawn a couple of times. You can indeed change the speed by altering the PTO volume, which can only be accomplished on the PT425 using engine speed, as there is no 'variable volume pump' ability on the PTO. Since the PT425 has no draft control, you can't really specify what kind of down-pressure is on the bristles. Therefore, it's a little tricky when using it on a lawn surface. I used it on a couple of spots where the grass was dead, and I wanted to clean and dethatch the areas prior to reseeding. Frankly, this is not an ideal use for this device. It is clearly more well-suited to cleaning hard surfaces. The reason is that you don't really have good control over how hard it presses on the ground, and how fast the bristles turn. If you can live with these limitations, it does a decent job of 'brushing' out thatch and dead grass on areas it contacts. Be prepared for this thing to decimate anything it is brushing, especially if said surface is friable. This thing is NOT intended for lawn cleanup, the way a tow-behind lawn sweeper is.
This thing is designed to clean the living-daylights out of hard surfaces that are difficult to clean in normal situations. For example, I haven't power-washed my concrete courtyard for a couple of years, and I could tell that the concrete was turning a dark grey, and that moss was growing in the soil that had collected in the expansion joints in the concrete. Normally, I would have to spend hours and hours with a gasoline powered pressure washer going over each square foot of the courtyard, with special attention to the cracks with the moss. The PT Power Sweeper took care of this little problem in less than an hour, and everything was sparkling clean - the concrete went back to light grey, the embedded rocks sparkled, and my wife was mightily impressed with how much cleaner and tidier the whole place looked after I was finished. I am getting into the habit of doing the courtyard and roadway like once a month or so to keep everything looking great. For this, the Power Sweeper has no equal.
Sincerely,
Rob /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
