I recently bought my first home. The house came with a yard, which means leaves that need to be raked, and Mr. Neville and I are not very good at that (having lived in apartments for all our adult lives). The part we find most difficult isn’t the raking, it’s getting the leaves into bags. I’m wondering why nobody has come up with something like a vacuum cleaner for this job- something like a leaf blower in reverse, that would bag the leaves for you, sort of like bagging lawn mowers do with grass clippings. Is there some reason why this wouldn’t work?
I have just the tool you’re looking for. It’s a leaf blower that also does suction, and has a detachable bag. It’s made by Toro, and I got it at either Lowe’s or Home Depot. However, it’s just a toy in comparison to real tools: what does an even better job is a bagging lawn mower. Set the wheels to maximum height and it just sucks up everything on the lawn without cutting the grass.
Google lawn vacuum for about a zillion of them.
There are a ton of them out there. However, the most effective ones attach to a lawn tractor so those may not be suitable for small yards.
It not only works, but you can buy one at most home centers. Here’s one similar to what I have. Black & Decker I don’t use mine anymore, but it worked fine. I had the attachment that fit onto a trashcan and had the hose connected to the blower vac. I’d suck them up and the wife would drag the can along behind me.
If your lot is big enough, they make units that tow behind a riding mower and hold a humongus amount of leaves.
You might want to consider a lawn sweeper instead. Sweeper Harder to get into the corners, but a lot quieter.
I’ve got one, and used it this weekend. The Yard Machine. Works on wet leaves, which leaf blowers (even used in suction mode) don’t do well.
They exist. The one we have is convertable between leaf blower and yard vacuum. While these do suck the stuff into a mesh bag, you still have to empty that bag into a trash bag…but it is a bit easier, as you can slip the plastic bag over the catch bag, then open the zipper and shake the junk out as you slide the catch bag out. The one we have shreds leaves and small sticks, which makes them easier to deal with as well.
Unless you have a cyclonic seperator (think Dyson vacuum cleaners) then the catch bag must be pourus. If you can work out a way to make such manageable in a yard, it might be an opportunity for you. All the cyclonid seperators I have seen use a rigid solids catcher, so I suspect the center of the vortex is at negative pressure, which would present problems for a trash bag. (the seperator might try to suck the bag into itself)
The one we have is a Poulan Barricuda. We have the electric version, rather than gas, which googling suggests is no longer made. Kevbabe wanted electric, as she has trouble starting gas powered tools.
So why don’t you see more of them around? I see people raking, and I see people using leaf blowers, but I’ve never seen anyone with something like this.
Maybe that’s what the guy with the lawn mower was actually doing… I wondered why he was mowing his lawn this late in the year. His lawn was free of leaves, but I assumed he had raked or blown earlier. I wonder if that would work with an electric lawn mower like the one we have (we have a very small yard).
All these things you don’t learn, living in an apartment in California (where there didn’t seem to be a lot of leaves around to rake)…
I do too, plus the idea of having cans of gasoline around rather scares me.
Can somebody recommend a good electric-powered non-riding (our yard is small and sloped) leaf vacuum that they’re still making?
Our lawn itself takes up about 1.5. acres out of 2.5 acres in total. We have a ton of deciduous trees as well. I simply mow the leaves with our John Deere lawn tractor. It can plow through leaf piles two feet tall with no issues. The leaves just turn to dust and disappear. There is no bagging or anything. You can do the same thing with a quality push mover as well. I always thought that raking and bagging was a waste of time. Just mow the leaves a you won’t be able to see any evidence of them within a week even for deep piles.
The leaf blower/vacuum is also really good for mopping the floors. You just throw a few buckets of water and floor cleaner over the floor, scrub it with a brush on a broom handle and then blow it down the drain. Everyone at work mocked this idea and then the next week on a lifestyle program the host admitted he doesn’t vacuum - he uses a leaf blower with all the doors open.
Yeah, a mulching mower is the best thing. It reduces the leaves to such small fragments that they break down quickly and form a layer of mulch that feeds the lawn. The last thing you should want is to gather up huge bags of leaves to put into landfills.
Just like in Caddyshack, eh?
I can’t see this one going over well with the cats, for some reason…
If you are going to collect leaves, and you have the space, you should consider composting them. Leaves make great compost, and in the spring you’ll have lots of black gold for your garden.
We had a neighbor who used a leaf vacuum. It had a backpack-type bag that he had to empty into a leaf bag fairly often. It took him at least twice as long as anyone else on the block to get all his leaves bagged.
There are various devices which hold a large leaf bag upright and open to facilitate loading it with leaves. They’re inexpensive, easy to use, and make the job quite a bit easier.
Right now it’s taking us a really long time to do this, we both have to be out there to do it, and it’s frustrating as hell. I don’t know how long it takes anyone else (we don’t exactly watch anyone else rake or bag leaves), but we have the feeling that there has to be an easier way to do this.
I’d actually be OK with a leaf vacuum taking more time than someone who knows what they are doing would take with a rake, as long as it also takes less effort on my part… (The key here being “more time than someone who knows what they are doing”- I’m sure we take waaaay longer than one of them would. If it took us at least twice as long as it takes us now, it would literally take all day) Being a geek, I’m a big fan of easier living through gadgetry.
How much space would we need? We haven’t got much. A small yard was actually a plus when we were looking for a house, among other reasons because even we had some inkling of the vast dimensions of our ignorance when it came to yard stuff.
Composting is another thing I know nothing about because I’ve lived in apartments all my adult life.
You can make a compost heap any size you like… I have an 8’x8’ box I use, but that might be a bit much for a small yard. If you can borrow a leaf mulcher, it will reduce the leaves greatly in volume. If not, just set aside a corner of the yard and pile the leaves there - turn them every now and then, and let nature do the work.
Here is a little article on leaf composting. I’ve got plenty of kitchen compost, so I don’t do it myself, and since we have recycling of garden waste, I don’t feel guilty.
I have a gas leaf blower/vacuum, and I’m not too happy with it. The problem with the vacuum is that the blower is heavy and the bag fills up fairly quickly. I have a small lot also, and in general I’m happier raking. The other problem is that a lot of leaves fall on paths with little stones, so trying to get the leafs and not the stones is a pain in the neck.
Most of my leafs came from a giant tree next door, and my neighbor two houses over bought this house for his daughter and took down the tree, so this year I have very few leafs.
I got the leaf blower as a present, and it is not anywhere near the top of my list. Gasoline operated garden implements are the tools of the devil anyway - I have a push mower and love it.
My advice is to rake, and feel virtuous and quiet.
I just borrowed a fairly new leaf vac from my FIL and used it this past weekend. It looks a lot like the Black and Decker one posted upthread, although I don’t think it doubled as a blower - seemed to be a sucker only. It worked great for me first time - cleared our small yard in record time and it grinds up the leaves when it sucks them in, so less bags.
I will say that getting the leaves out of the attached bag is not super easy, but if you pull a few handfuls out to get them started, it’s easier. I’ll try to poke my head in the garage when I get home to find out the make and model, but I would definitely recommend to all rake-o-phobes like myself 