yard sweeps work or not?

[shady1701]

I was wondering if anyone has those yard sweeps they sell for around $250 has a brush and a hamper on the back?

Any features and do you have to run it pretty fast to get it to work or any other comments on buying/using thanks.

 

[s1120]

I have one, and they do work, but fill up pretty fast. Better then nothing, but a good bagger, or leaf vac will do a better job.

 

[jwstewar]

I have a small (38") Agri-Fab that I bought last year at Lowe's for $50, it was missing a couple of pieces which Agri-Fab sent to me no charge as well as a new hamper because someone hat cut it when they opened the box - which was why the pieces were missing. Used it once last year to pick up the corn husks that blew into the front yard from the field across the road, but it was windy and the stuff kept blowing back out of the hopper - usually at me. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif Now that I have the New Holland I hadn't thought about using it much until this past week. We were having a party and where the yard had gotten away from me I had a bunch of grass that was going to be messing for everybody to walk in. I got it rigged up to the drawbar on the 3 pt. hitch and off I went. It was hard keeping the tractor slow enough for the sweeper. The grass still had some dew on it which helped keep it in the hopper, but I figured out when I went to dump it that wet grass weighs a lot. Had a little trouble getting it to dump. Took less grass on the next 2 trips. Got most of the loose stuff out of the yard. Still had some that had gotten packed down, but if I but the brushes down lower the wheels just wanted to slide in the semi damp grass.

Two modifications I want to make. A cover for the hopper to keep stuff in that I've swept and better hangers to keep the hopper from bouncing off the support arms that it hangs on.

One note though, I don't plan on using this thing much except for circumstances like this, for the most part the rear lack-of-rear-discharge /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif MMM does a pretty good job of chopping stuff up. It just has a hard time doing it when you bushhog your yard first that it didn't do that great. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[Argee]

Have you picked up pine needles with it? How does that work? Good or bad? /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[jwstewar]

Haven't tried it with that. The tallest of my 200 or so pines is probably only 12" tall it would probably suck the whole tree up. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif I think it would kinda depend on who the pine needles were laying. If they are laying on the ground so thick that they killed the grass and are flat on the dirt, I don't think it would do very good. But if there is still some grass to keep the needs up off the dirt I think it would be OK.