I've never seen the point of leaf blowers. Noisy, heavy and always thought they'd make a bigger mess than you started with by just blowing leaves up in the air.

This past Summer, I was temporarily flush and being fully aware that the Universe KNOWS when you have an extra dollar, decided to splurge on a Milwaukee 18v blower for blowing grass off the sidewalk and out of the flower beds as well as cleaning off the mowers. Works great for that.

I have a HUGE maple tree in the back yard. Gorgeous in the Fall, but if I left the leaves laying, it would kill the grass for 50 feet in every direction. So I always rake them into a pile and then suck 'em up with a shredder/bagger and compost them.

I'm not the least bit anal about getting every leaf, just get the bulk of them to protect the lawn. That and 70 year old shoulders and elbows means I only rake the heaviest concentrations.

This year I decided "What the hell, I'll try the blower." After a bit of experimentation with direction and technique, I'm pretty darn impressed. Get a little windrow started, keep the proper angle and you can roll them up pretty efficiently. Benefits are 1) Faster, 2) MUCH easier on the bod, and 3) it doesn't pick up big sticks or stones to get sucked into the vac.

Not sure about battery life. Don't know what the charge was when I started but I was down to one bar when I decided to suck up what I had piled before the wind came up.

I blow off the dixie chopper when I'm done mowing. Grass likes to gather on the cooling fans on the motor and oil coolers.

Blow out the bed of you pickup truck or trailer.
Blow the grass off the mower deck.
Dry the motorcycle after washing it.
Dry the dog after washing it.
Dry the kids after swimming.
Blow the leaves out of the gutter.
Spin yourself in circles in an office chair.
Get two and a small beach ball for leaf blower soccer.
Fly a kite on a calm day.
Etc.

Blow out the groove I make with the edger.
Blow the yard stuff off the street and into the yard before I mow.
Blow off the vehicles especially the front grills and wheels before finishing with an Absorber.
Blow off the bow deck of the boat I run after I wash.
Point it behind you and ride your skateboard down the street. Back pack blower only.

Ryobi here, takes the same batteries as my mower & probably adding the weed eater to the group over the winter & selling off my 2 stroke Stihl.

I'm a tad disappointed in battery life. About 10 minutes use on High used half the charge.

I'll see how much difference Lo makes, both in effectiveness and battery life.

And I LOVE the idea of blowing my gutters out. Just replaced the fascia on both sides of the garage due to rot from plugged gutters overflowing.

Paul, I’m glad you finally found an Air Rake.

When I moved into this house, it has lots of hedges, an apricot tree, and two huge, messy mesquite trees. I bought a Stihl 600 backpack blower. It was worth every penny. I do use my shooting ear muffs with AirPods in my ears for music when using it though.

Once you get your technique down, they are much faster and easier than a rake.

I use my blower for soooo much stuff. Blowing leaves off the lawn, cleaning out the bed of my truck and cleaning off the front porch. My back definitely appreciates it.

Five times last winter I used my wind machine to take the snow off my drive way.
Worked great
Under very specific conditions

Great for blow drying the truck too.

I have a large wooded lot (5+ acres), with a quarter mile driveway that also has a number of grassy areas and we get lots of leaves in the fall. Like right now.

I'm another Stihl 600 proponent. To keep it looking reasonable I probably blow it off 4-6 times during leaf season. The quick version takes 5-20 minutes and the final through version a bit over an hour.
I can also keep the roof and gutters (screened) mostly clean from the ground with this beast.

I have to get the leaves off our 75 yard, sloped driveway. Snow or ice on a bed of leaves fuse together and come up in plates if at all.

Slope and wind direction make leaf blowers that much more effective.

Fifteen or more years ago I bought a used Shindaiwa backpack blower from a landscape business on eBay. The thing is an absolute beast, a must have on our difficult property.

My Sister, age of Late 70's and in amazing shape, has a beautiful patio and front entryway that gets a lot of leaves, flower petal droppings, pine needles, etc, and she being a neat freak, takes her broom and dust pan out and cleans it up, all nice and neat, twice a day.

For the last few years I've asked her why she doen't get a leaf blower, battery or corded model, and be easily and quickly done with it.

She always has just sighed and rolled her eyes at me.

Last month she called me, so excited and giggling, and told me she bought one! And how much she loves it.

So of course I had to drive over and see it with my own eyes.

She shows me, and she's just giggling like a school kid.

So me, being me, told her her garage floor was a little dirty and needed sweeping.

There she went, right to the garage, opened the big door and walk out door, and had a good time doing so.

It warms my heart to see her happy.
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Lots of good suggestions above, I'll add you can blow dry your horse after giving it a bath. Won't make much difference, horse is gonna go roll on the ground right away anyway. But, that's just normal horse behavior.

When blowing, or even raking leaves, technique is all. Never, never rake leaves into a pile "to be picked up later." Instead, rake them into a row, until it gets deep enough that you stop making good progress, then bag, tarp, or vacuum up the bulk of them, not trying to get spotless, but just enough to renew the hedgerowing operation. You will be amazed at how more quickly and efficiently this procedure goes than the the usual piling them up that seems so natural. Mostly because the "final cleanup" is done only once, and not for each and every pile. Obviously, never rake/blow back over an area that has already been cleared.

^^^^^^ What blows on one side sucks in the other end. There should be some sort of attachment that vacuums the leaves in, grinds them down smaller and into a bag. That would make good mulch or compost pile fixin's.
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Yeah I never had a leaf blower either but I've been struggling trying to sweep or hose grass off my carport as well as a couple 16' x 20' concrete pads due to their lightly "brushed" non-slip finish. I have a Stihl saw that uses an AP300 battery so since I already had the battery and charger I bought a Stihl blower that uses the same battery and it does the trick while being pretty quiet.

When we moved from Washington this summer, my wife said "we won't have trees, you can probably give the leaf blower to the neighbor." I looked at her like she grew a second head.

quote:

Originally posted by OKCGene:
^^^^^^ What blows on one side sucks in the other end. There should be some sort of attachment that vacuums the leaves in, grinds them down smaller and into a bag. That would make good mulch or compost pile fixin's.
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I have that in the form of a Toro corded sucker/blower. I used the suck side to pick up the leaves. Can't imagine a battery powered suck broom being very practical in that application, I'd be changing batteries every time I changed a bag, which is often.

The Toro will blow too, but dragging the cord around is a pain, plus won't reach the outer perimeter even with my longest extension cord. The combination of battery blow and corded suck seems to be optimal.

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:

And I LOVE the idea of blowing my gutters out. Just replaced the fascia on both sides of the garage due to rot from plugged gutters overflowing.

Leaf guards on the gutters solves that problem.

Got mine about 4 years ago, worth every penny!

quote:

Originally posted by gjgalligan:

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:

And I LOVE the idea of blowing my gutters out. Just replaced the fascia on both sides of the garage due to rot from plugged gutters overflowing.

Leaf guards on the gutters solves that problem.

Got mine about 4 years ago, worth every penny!

I need to look into redoing mine
PO put some metal mesh covers on &* they're just pine straw traps which in turn catches other debris.
The gutters are clean, but they don't blow off easily since the straw gets caught in the mesh.