This electric powered (corded) blower/vac was purchased on 12/1/07. I had raked and bagged my yard twice prior to this purchase, but my two large pin oak trees waited till just a week or so ago to drop most of their leaves. My front yard was literally covered from street to porch about an inch thick. I swear they waited until I was finished the last time just to tick me off...
The specifications and description for this blower
http://www.toro.com/home/yardtools/blowervacs/51599.html
Below (copied from Toro) are some quick statistics:
Maximum Velocity - Nozzle Up to 235 mph
CFM (blow mode) 275
CFM (vacuum mode) 385
Motor Amps 12.0
Weight 7.5 lbs.
UL Listed Standard
Vacuum Capability Standard
Leaf Shredding Reduction 16:1
Warranty* 2 Full Years
I bought this as I really wanted to minimize the time required to do my yard. Let's talk about what is in the box.
The head (or blower) unit is a sizeable red plastic blower. It has the bright red coloring of the higher end Toro units. There is a large handle that runs across the top and back that allows the blower to be carried comfortably as either a blower or as a vacuum. They did a pretty nice job designing the handle. It really fell well to hand when carrying it around. It is a little heavy, not at the beginning, but after carting it around for a couple of hours, you could tell it had some mass. Not bad, but noticeable.
The box includes a blower nozzle (about 2.5 to 3 ft long), and a "focuser", which is a smaller plastic end that you put in the nozzle to make the exit hole smaller. This focuses the air on a smaller area, which makes it a little more powerful. Nice for really putting the pressure on stubborn areas, but leave it off for moving big piles of leaves.
It also includes a two piece vacuum tube that attaches to the bottom of the blower, over the intake. The tube is slightly flared at the end, about 6 inches (or so) in diameter. Finally, there is a bag that attaches to the blower end to catch anything vacuumed up. The bag is cloth, and does a very nice job of keeping the dust and leaves in the bag, while still allowing the air to escape. It has a handle that allows it to hang over your shoulder to take the weight off of your arms and remove some of the stress on the bag where the bag attaches to the head unit.
The switching from vacuum to blower and back is pretty easy. All you do is remove a plastic holder that allows you to attach or detach as necessary. It really is quite simple. The toolless switching is pretty handy.
The good things.
1) It does a really nice job of blowing leaves and such around. With the "focuser" unit on, it can really blow things around. With it off, the unit can push some leaves around. It didn't work quite as well at the lawn guy's Stihl backpack blower, but it also doesn't cost $450.00.
2) It is pretty quiet. Even with the power on full bore, I could still talk to my daughter without yelling my head off. It was much more quiet than either my old hand held blower or my new Shop Vac vacuum.
3) The vacuum works. It can pull really large leaves and clippings without much difficulty. It just sucks... he he he.
4) It has a metal impeller blade with 1/3rd of the blades serrated. It looks like it will hold up for quite a while. Several of the other blowers I looked at (B & D, etc.) had a plastic blade. It didn't seem like much of a deal, until I heard the bark and small rocks the vac pulled up hit the blade.
5) Variable Speeds. It has a rheostat for an on/off switch that lets you infinitely adjust the speed to whatever is necessary. It is continuously variable, not restricted to just a couple of speeds. I thought this was a gimmick to begin with, however, it does allow you to just dial just enough for your needs and works well.
6) It mulches the leaves to a smaller size. My daughter was raking and putting the leaves into a leaf bag while I was using the unit. When she was finished with her bag, I compared it to the bags that I was filling up. My bags were much heavier than hers, indicating that I was getting many more leaves into my bags. The promotional literature says that there is a 16:1 reduction for items run through the blower. I didn't get that much, as my bags certainly weren't 16 times heavier than my daughters bag. It was, however, very noticeable that I got a lot more in my bags than she did.
As a point of reference, I was able to get empty the bags from the blower into a 39 gallon leaf bag three times before the bag was filled.
7) The zipper runs down the entire long side of the bag. It was easy to empty the bag into the leaf bags and the contents emptied quickly.
8) It will pick up some big leaves. There were leaves that were 6 or 7 inches long and 4 or 5 inches wide and it picked them all up. You do need to move the end around a little to free up the opening, but it will pick them up.
Some of the downsides.
1) You need to control the feed rate of the leaves and grass into the unit. It is easy to just stick the vacuum in and start pulling up yard waste. You can let it take too much up and the tubes will clog. The exit hole (where the blower nozzle attaches) is smaller, and will clog if you try to put too much up at one time. On the plus side, it is pretty easy to clean out.
2) It doesn't like wet leaves. It can pull up large sections of wet leaves at one time. If too large a section goes in, the large diameter intake tube will clog. You can pull up wet leaves, just make sure that you are careful.
3) It is corded. While dragging the cord around wasn't terrible, it was less convenient that having a cordless or gas powered unit. However, it does put out much more power than a cordless unit, and is seriously cheaper than a gas unit. Do make sure that you buy an extension cord large enough (the lower the gauge of the cord, the better) to prevent overheating the cord. I used a 14 gauge cord and it seemed to work all right. A too small cord will not let the unit run correctly and pose a potential danger to you.
4) After 3 hours, it seemed to get a little heavy. No kidding...
Final thoughts
This unit works best when you are vacuuming the leaves/grass from a hard surface. The hard surface of your driveway, sidewalk or street allows the unit to pick up the leaves without them catching on the grass. Use the blower unit to blow the leaves to your driveway, then use the vacuum to pick them up. It does work better that way.
This unit works better if you use it regularly to pick up smaller amounts of leaves, rather than using it to move man-sized piles of leaves. It will pick them up, but it isn't a commercial unit. For a residential setting, with access to a wall outlet, this is a good purchase. It is relatively inexpensive, does the job well, and is easy to use.
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