Leaf Blower?

[Ed in Virginia]

Ed, I have an acre of sweet gum balls each fall you are more than welcome to them. If you want or need them. Won't charge you a dime for them.

I'll trade you an acre of beech tree nuts for 'em - deal?

 

[jes_in_sac]

I've had both an Echo and a Stihl backpack blowers until they died, and now I just use a corded SunJoe blower for the odd jobs I need a blast of air. I do use it to clear the debris off the tile roof every fall. Truthfully, whatever pain the cord is, it's less pain than keeping gas powered equipment running... especially with crummy and expensive California gas.

 

[RickLJ]

I went with a 80V battery system with assorted yard equipment that works great but I use the mower to blow the leaves into the woods. The tools are pretty light too. Lowes is where I bought the 80V stuff (Kobalt), including the blower, edger and chainsaw. AND.....I'm right behind you in age.

 

[sequence]

I don't have a lawn, but use the blower on the deck, cleaning out the back of the pickup and tractor and sometime on a burn pile. I have a relatively inexpensive battery operated one that works well for me.

 

[Pitt]

I usually edge and weed eat 1st, then blow all hard surfaces and the previous debris into the turf areas.
Then bag or mulch everything.
Then come back and blow off hard surfaces.
Leaves a very clean/attractive yard.

 

[VWPapa]

Anyone else feel like a leaf blower for lawn care is kind of overrated? I mean, I get that they clear off driveways and patios, but half the time it feels like I’m just moving the mess around until it lands somewhere else. I was thinking of picking one up for the yard, but not sure if I should just stick with a rake. Does a blower actually make lawn care easier in the long run, or is it just noisy yard clutter?
Thanks

I have a backpack blower and a 6 hp walk behind. The walk behind takes more effort but does a great job. I think the real trick is, do you have a place to blow the debris to? I used to have a woods next to me which made it real easy since I just blew everything back into the woods. Now I have a lot of pine trees so whenever I do my clean ups I just blow everything under the trees out of site. It also depends how big your yard is. If it's small enough it might not be worth the cash outlay.

 

[MyGrassHasCrabs]

If you decide on getting one, I recommend the Echo PB-9010T (aka "The Beast"), 220 MPH 1110 CFM...makes quick work of a slew of fall leaves and Sweetgum balls. It's heavy and expensive, though, but for me, it's well worth it.

 

[PGB1]

I've a 60 volt battery leaf blower that I use similarly to what Sequence wrote in #14. It gets used more for sweeping hard surfaces than for lawn leaf moving.

But, despite being in the "old guy" category, I still prefer to rake the lawn. Fun exercise, I suppose. (We've maple trees galore). By raking, the twigs and pine cones are gathered along with the leaves.

I rake the leaves into a giant pile and chop them to bits with the battery mower. The now much, much smaller pile gets put in a corner & turns in to good, earthworm loaded compost/soil amendment over the winter.

 

[Honest Abe]

 

[Chipg1956]

Leaf blowers are both good and bad. What you need to ask is which one you should buy. I have a battery powered Ryobi model P21011VNM for blowing leaves off grass it is useless and has short battery life. After fixing, I used an Echo backpack PB8010T. That thing blows a huge amount of air, so much that even at an idle it is hard to pile the leaves because it blows them so far.