The last few weeks I’ve been watching the groundskeepers at my university clearing leaves with big gas leaf-blowers. It is loud and stinky and they don’t seem to be very efficient. It seems to take several minutes to clear about 20 square feet, and even then there are still quite a lot of leaves left behind. It also isn’t very ‘green’. I wondered what things like this cost.
I thought of the giant fan rakes I see at the hardware store and figure raking with one of these is probably not much harder physically than hauling that big blower around. It would likely cost less. It would certainly be a lot quieter AND it doesn’t emit greenhouse gases. It might even do a better job.
Then I saw this on FaceBook:
WP_20151103_001.mp4Mr. Inventor !!!
This is just the front yard Brian Shreves
Posted by April Medlen on Tuesday, November 3, 2015
I’m pretty sure that with a couple of attachments, maybe even a lighter weight plastic scoop this could be turned into something that works WAY better than those noisy, smelly, gas-guzzling leaf-blowers.
Leaf scoops like the one you show work well on smooth lawns, but not so well when there are rocks, roots, or other irregularities. That’s why the leaf rakes have separately sprung “fingers”—to be able to conform to surface irregularities and still grab leaves.
Leaf blowers are somewhat less effort to use than rakes, despite their greater weight, louder noise, and enormous pollution (the 2-cycle engines they use are some of the dirtiest engines around). Rakes do a better job (less dust blown around, wet leaves moved), but good luck convincing your maintenance people to switch!
I can picture a variation of the plywood that has closely spaced tines on some sort of rollers. That ways you can still push it and it can effectively drive over the bumps, rocks, and other stuff. I like the idea of being able to push rather than pull.
Ah, you mean like the shake-push rake: http://vmeglobal.com/
Yeah! That’s exactly the kind of thing I mean!
Cool!