Ok, this last blizzard has pretty much made up my mind. I am tired of shoveling, and am considering buying a snow blower.
However, being raised in FL I am largely clueless as to what to look for. I see some at Home Depot for anywhere from $169 to $1,500. Was thinking of about the $300 range, but have heard those are no good. No specific reasons given, though.
Any of you folks out there in doperland have any suggestions?
We had a snowblower but sold it after three years. It took up a lot of space in the garage, and we weren’t using it very often. (It was a model from Sears, for about $1100, worked great.)
It’s just easier and more convenient to pay someone to move snow. I think we paid $50 for snow removal all last winter, on the sidewalk and driveway (a big driveway). Also, our work hours are such that we can wait for someone to come and scoop us out, or we might have kept the blower.
I can’t imagine a cheap blower holding up for very long. If you’re dead set on getting one, consider the storage space you’ll need for it, and get it from a store that will be around after your warranty expires.
We were looking at buying one and then my brother offered us one (an older model) tonight. Here is what my SO deemed important:
[ul]
[li]Self propelled - that way you don’t have to push it - it goes by itself[/li][li]Two stages - a separate auger to move the snow and another to shoot it out[/li][li]remotely controlled snow chute - so when you want to change where it shoots off to, you don’t need to reach ahead - you can change chute direction from where you stand.[/li][li]Forward and reverse - I don’t know much about this, but most in the price range we looked at had 2 reverse speeds and 4-5 forward speeds.[/li][li] Electric start[/li][/ul]
We were looking at a 5.5 hp model with these features and the were running about $550-$675. We don’t have a huge driveway or sidewalk and anything larger would be overkill.
I believe I paid around $600 for a 27" 8.5 hp 2-stage 6-speed with electric start (Sears). Serious overkill for my little speck of land but it was purchased after the blizzard of 2004.
The only change I would make to my purchase would be to buy one with different handles. To engage the auger or the drive unit requires squeezing down on handles that face straight back. It’s a little awkward. I may modify it down the road to work like most lawn mowers.
I would find a size that suits your needs and budget and I would stay away from 2-stroke engines.
3.5 hp snowblower owner chiming in: you want 5hp or save your money. You don’t want to have to mix gas with oil; make it gasoline only. Of the things I did right, you want both pull-start & electric start (redundancy is wonderful. Plus, I don’t care what he promises about “starting on the first pull”, he won’t be answering his shop phone at 5AM with 2 feet of snow when it doesn’t pull-start).
Self propelled: a must. A ‘slow’ vs ‘fast’ is nice, as you can gauge engine capacity vs snow load. (wet heavy 12 inches = slow; light powder = fast) It should be wheel-drive (or tread drive) and the wheels should have chains on them.
Remote controlled chute: ??? No…really, you want solid mechanical movement. Ever try to play X-box with Mittens? I’d imagine that’s childs play compared to remote toggling a chute at 10 degrees F at 5AM with heavy gloves on. Also, I’ve dropped keys in snow & not found them til spring; if you did that with your remote, I imagine you’d be pretty angry. (well, I suppose it could get worse…imagine if you ‘plowed it’ afterwards???)
I used to make my winter spending money clearing walks & driveways with a snowblower in highschool. A Sears snowblower. I remember well their ‘service speed’: drop it off and it’ll be fixed by June. They might have gotten better over the years, but I have never heard any evidence of it. Snowblowers are items you buy where you need to trust the seller to provide good after-market service. Things do break after normal wear & tear. My best suggestion for you is to find the make/model you like first (top 3 maybe?) and then look under ‘repairs’ for who does good service for those brands. I’d recommend that you buy from them, not the big-box store. (Hey, you wouldn’t buy a car from a dealership with only one service bay, would you?) Any higher price you might pay will be offset by good will in service later on. Trust me, the people who bring their ‘Sears’ and ‘Home Depot’ purchases to them for repair after-market have always payed through the nose and gotten the slower service, in my experiance.
Thanks for all the responses so far. Some really good information, and some things I never would have thought of!
These pics show a bit of the reason I am considering shelling out for a snow terminator:
I have two properties that look like this to dig out of. Bleah.
::Laughs::
I didn’t mean a remote controlled chute like with a remote control. I don’t even know if they make them like that! I mean that the little dealy to move the chute’s direction is by the handlebars/controller area - you don’t have to lean forward to the chute itself to change the direction. Some of the smaller/cheaper models have a handlebar thingy on the chute itself so to change throwing direction I’d imagine you’d need to stop the blower and lean forward to physically change it, instead of just spinning the little thingy to make it move.