kgrady's Full Review: Craftsman 42" High Speed Sweeper
My husband and I are pretty lazy when it comes to lawn care. We pretty much hate to do it and we have a big lawn. Our yard is also full of, and surrounded by, tall pines and oak trees. The pine trees seem to drop needles several times a year and the oak trees are the ones that never seem to drop their leaves until it starts snowing, making it look like you were too lazy to clean your lawn. This means we need to rake in the Fall and again in the Spring.
My husband bought the Craftsman 42" High Speed Sweeper at Sears a two years ago. We have about 1 acre of lawn that gets covered each year with pine needles and oak leaves. For three years, we mooched off of our neighbors using their sweeper, but we felt it was time to get our own.
I saw the Craftsman 42" High Speed Sweeper on sale at Sears, so I sent a link to my husband suggesting he go to the store and get one. He did so, but as it was getting dark when he got home, we decided to wait on assembly until the next day.
The next day arrived and he started to assemble the sweeper. All went well until some of the plastic screws broke. Also the directions were a little confusing and one of the pieces was initially installed backward. Of course having me, the two kids, and our house painter standing over my husband and offering feedback while he assembled it didn't help.
We finally got it together after a trip to the hardware store to get some replacement plastic screws. Then it started to rain. It rained for days. We desperately wanted to go sweep our lawn, but it just kept raining.
Finally the rain stopped. After using it for a few hours we needed to go back to the hardware store again to get a new bolt to hold the sweeper to the lawn mower. The old one had vibrated out while sweeping and we never found it again.
Since then, we've used the sweeper for four seasons (Fall and Spring cleanups). It does a great job with the oak leaves and the pine needles.
The sweeper attaches to the back of the lawn tractor. The wheels of the sweeper rotate ("power") the bristles that sweep the leaves, pine needles and small sticks into the bag. The faster you drive the lawn tractor, the faster the sweeper sweeps the items in. You will need to experiment and see which tractor speed works best for you. I find speed 1 doesn't really sweep much up and speed 4 can sometimes cause leaves to fly out. You can also adjust the height of the bristles to make sure they're making good contact with the ground to get all of those leaves and pine needles. If a big stick gets into the bristles, you may need to stop and remove it. When the bag is full, you stop, use the attached rope to pull the bag up and the leaves and needles all dump out. I usually do a couple of runs with the sweeper just dumping the leaves into piles and then use a rake to push everything into my mammoth leaf pile in the woods. If you have two people working then one can sweep while the other pushes the leaves into the woods or bags. When there are a lot of oak leaves on the ground, I usually use the mower blades to chop them up so I can collect more in the bag before having to dump them out.
Sears gives a capacity of 22 cu. Ft. (18 bushel capacity). When the leaves are dry and fluffy I find I need to empty the bag more frequently. Usually I get one loop around the yard per bag if it's needles and leaves. If it's just leaves and they're deep, I might only get half way before they start to leak out.
The sweeper does take up a good amount of space in the garage. I shoved it in the back of the garage with the bag tilted up so it takes less room. My neighbor removes the bag from his and hangs it on the wall so it takes even less space, but I'm too lazy to do that as I don't want to have to reattach it in the fall.
You can also purchase a dethatcher attachment to go with the sweeper. This will loosen up the thatch and then the sweeper cleans it up for you -- no need to rake! We haven't gotten that yet, but may do so next spring.
We're very happy with our Craftsman 42" High Speed Sweeper. If you have a big lawn and a lawn tractor, having this sweeper will save you a lot of time when the leaves and pine needles come down.
Craftsman hopper bags assemble without tools, have infinite height adjustment and include a rope to dump from the tractor seat. The gears are designed...More at Sears
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