It’s leaf blowing season (or fast approaching). I have 1/3 of an acre which contains 3 mature silver maple trees in my front yard alone, along with one other less mature maple of some other breed (its leaves change color and drop before the silver maples).
Normally, it takes me hours of leafblowing or raking to manage to get all the leaves where they need to be. I have both an electric and a gas-powered leafblower, but they hail from the days when I was a bargain hunter but not very educated about what I needed in terms of leaf collection.
I am looking to trim my time spent on the leaves down to something more manageable. I live in Michigan, so inevitably the heavy leaf-fall is usually driven by a fall rain, which means the leaves are usually wet. My problem is that I can usually only manage to traverse about 1/3 of my property before the leaf pile is too big for my blower (an old WeedEater gas model) to push any further.
So in my hunt to reduce the time it takes to move the leaves, I have been looking largely at 2 blowers: The Husqvarna 125B handheld blower, and the 150BT backpack model.
The handheld uses a 28cc engine, and is rated for 420CFM at the end of the tube, with a 170MPH velocity.
The backpack blower is 50cc engine, 495CFM at tube-end, and has 180MPH velocity.
On paper, to my untrained eye, these blowers look fairly comparable. the 125B has a bit less output, at a bit lower velocity, but I am not sure how much of an impact it will make. It’s considerably less expensive and lighter, but I do not want to purchase something that is going to underperform.
Does anyone here have experience with either or both units who can give me some more insight into it? I suspect blowers are a lot like computers…the specs don’t really give you the full story on them.
Let me help you visualize the amount of leaves I get. Once I am done raking or blowing or whatever, I end up with a pile of leaves easily 5 feet high that runs the entire length of my property line (100 feet). In order to rake that many leaves in a time frame that doesn’t invovle me seeing a guy in a red sleigh, I have to move in such a way that I end up with a VERY sore lower back, not to mention my arms, etc. Also, I have a mild tree allergy, and raking the leaves TOWARD myself tends to aggravate my allergies and leave me sniffling and swollen for a day or two afterward.
The backpack will move a lot more leaves. However, I have found blowing the leaves onto a tarp and pulling it to where you want to go is much more efficient (whatever you use as a blower).
I found a refurbished 150BT on ebay for 199, just 50 bucks more than the 125B, so I ordered it. The leaves are starting to fall, so hopefully I will get it quickly.
Finally got to test out the blower today. Definitely no comparison to my old one. It just blasts the leaves with aplomb. I did my lawn and my neighbor’s in half the time it would have taken me to do jus tmine alone. Maybe less.
Not to be insulting but is mowing it 3 times to mulch them more or less time consuming then leaf blowing? I’m assuming you’re blowing them out to the street. I agree with the rake, too much work for serious maple leaf situations.
The reason I ask is that I’ve mowed leaves into a circle before using a side discharge chute and then then gone over the pile repeatedly with the mulch setting to get it down to confetti fertilizer.
I thought about mowing them. I have a riding mower that does a decent job on the grass that I found for $50. Even it bogged down on the depth of the leaves we get, though. And if I mulch them, there are just far too many…I end up with piles of leaf mulch completely covering the grass, and it does not do as well the following spring. It’s just too many leaves, like I said. I have 3 fully mature trees on my property, and so does just about everyone else in my neighborhood. These trees are taller than the power lines, which I assume are 50 fet high or so…
I only blow the ones in the front yard, and I collect, grind, and add the ones that fall in the back yard (much much fewer) into the compost pile.
