SWMBO wants a leaf blower ... after having seen the infomercial on the WORX WG500
Anybody any experience of this product ? ......... I have their Sonicrafter tool and it does what is says it would do, and seem well built. However no idea if the Lefblower is as good.
Only negative I could find was a comment that said the impellor was plastic and could be damaged by sucking up stones ...
Main requirements for me are electrical not petrol, can suck or blow by flick of a lever ... no need to change pipes.
Although "she" wants to buy it, will she be using it ;) ? If you're the one who gets lumbered with the leaf clearing, it should be your shout. Although I can't help but think it'll only ever get used once a year and just be taking up space the rest of the time.
Cheaper and more economical on space to just bung a tenner to the kid next- door/across the road to do the job, than to buy such a specilaised piece of kit.
Nope, but I have a similar B&Q badged Flymo thing... The aesthetic design is a bit different, and the Flymo is more powerful (the only specs I can see for the Worx are in its US variant at 120V/12A so about
1.4kW)
I bought my one years ago for the specific job of collecting leaves off a gravel surface, where I did not want it to lift the gravel. Hence going for the 1800W machine. On this particular task it was "ok" but not exceptional. It worked well enough if the leaves were dry - but not that well on damp stuff.
Mine can blow - but not well enough to do much except create a draft. It can suck (just) - will pick up dry leaves, and small clippings etc and shred them. But its not much use for say clearing up hedge trimmings. It also has a "chip" wave option, which is a mixture of blow and suck to help dislodge stuff before collecting it.
(You note that the Worx video (at least the one I have seen) shows only brief clips of it doing anything, and it is always on dry stuff).
Hence based on the performance of the one I have, in the average damp autumnal UK garden, I would expect the Worx to be at best poor.
The 3kW machine you mention elsewhere may well be a better bet.
I also have a small blower attachment that you can stick on the end of universal shaft trimmer. Got it cheap and discontinued somewhere - slightly more blow than the electric one - but not really worth having.
The only one I have seen that actually looked useful, was a small briefcase sized petrol Makita one, that was just designed to blow - and it did well enough that it could shift significant quantities of even damp stuff and move it about with ease.
For clearing leaves from a lawn etc, you might find a sweeper is a better bet. You can get ones you push along, and bigger ones designed to be towed by a mower or tractor - those are really quite good on lawns.
My reaction: "Why?" (exactly?) To make the garden/yard/drive look neat and tidy? It's Autumn: leaves fall! And every couple of days, Autumn itself sweeps them into heaps for you.
I agree with root , who wrote:
I had the chance to have one of these blower things a couple of years ago (a neighbour was throwing his out - I intercepted him on his way to the tip). I had it for a couple of days: noisy, fairly ineffectual, VERY cumbersome, and as 'root' says, you need a large chunk of your precious storage space for it.
When I really do need to clear leaves I use (a) one of those very effective wide plastic rakes, which weigh nothing, followed by (b) two bits of 3-ply board to heave the piles into my extra-large compost bags.
In other words: don't do it Rick!
'root' also wrote:
(A TENNER?!?! You must live in The Fabled South.) But again I return to the question "why?". It's called The Seasons.
Yup, "modern yoof" won't even get out of bed for a fiver - literally won't get up. How much are ferrets? one of those might provide the necesdsary "motivation".
My parents bought a Ransoms push-along sweeper when I was a kid. It was a disaster - even with two of us we couldn't push it along, the friction from the brush on the grass was too much.
Perhaps they have improved, it was a while ago.
Of course a spring tine rake is as good exercise as the local gym, cheaper, and more interesting.
I have around 300m2 of patio and roughly same again of drive with 1/2 acre garden ... no trees in my garden but loads of oak etc. other side of boundary ... and there is a lot of leaves that come down.
SWMBO sweeps them up ... but it takes a long time.
As for paying kids ... I have 2 ... and they would not entertain a job like this for a tenner ... :-)
Well if you've got that much space, you obviously can afford to buy a big, fast one, _and_ will have space to store it. (They surely do ride-on ones?!)
I withdraw my "advice" --- I'm in a different league! :-)
I can't afford it ... that is why I did a self build (and it was self .. still have the scars).... couldn't afford what I liked and didn't like what I could afford.
I bought 3 building plots and put a house on 1, used rest to give me space around the house.
Some idiot, probably community service, was clearing leaves from the pavement and entrance to a church hall this morning by blowing them all over the road, at the bottom of a dodgy hill, just in front of a roundabout.
IMHO electric one are not powerful enough to suck up most leaves and fail completely with wet ones, and the blowing performance is not much better. I have a petrol Stihl _Blower_ and blow all the leaves, twigs acorns,chestnuts and just about anything else that gets in it?s way into a corner and then use a wide rake to pick them up.
For starting homebrew turbine engines made from old turbochargers, obviously. At least that seems to be the best use anyone's ever found for them... :-)
Where (outside a bricolage shop in Paris) do I buy one of the _huge_ brooms used by French road sweepers? These are real brooms (ie bundles of long twigs, not short twigs in a head, like a brush) and great for dealing with autumn leaves. The French ones are plastic bristles (in lurid raver colours) and twice the size of a normal broom.
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