My cobbled courtyard fills up with leaves from next doors 100ft Lime. I'm sick to death of sweeping them up, I need an engine! Any petrol powered recommendations much appreciated, TVM Simon

You don't want a vac. You end up walking around with a big sack of leaves hanging on your back. Get a blower and a shovel. Best are Stihl, but like anything good they don't come cheap.

Stihl SH85. Both a blower and a vac, when used as a vac the material is shredded into the bag. Ours has done 3 years commercially with no probs.

The wind does a realy good job here and it is free

Aldi £29.99 looks ok .

Thanks Chatters, good point, Makita BHX2500 looking good to me then.

isn't leaf blowing similar to pissing into the wind ?

So many of the 'posh' houses round here are already at the leaf blowers – after all one couldn't park one's (insert despised luxury vehicle brand of choice) on a leafy driveway, could one. So they're all at it, blowing the leaves off their drives and onto the road… where they briefly sit in huge piles then promptly blow back onto their/next doors drive. Fekkin eeejuts. Sure, blow em into piles then bag them up, but don't just make them someone else's problem.

Sounds like you ought to move, the neigbourhoods really goin' down man.

Best thing to do with a leaf blower – collect lots of leaves. Put in a chimnea. Use the leaf blower as a bellows and watch as a 20ft jet of flame burns down that tatty shed your neighbour had.

My cobbled courtyard fills up with leaves from next doors 100ft Lime. I'm sick to death of sweeping them up

If only there was an easy solution to this problem.

second saladdodger…..

cant see the point of leave blowers and vacs

I've got a Stihl BG85 that blows and can also suck, brilliant bit of kit much better than the Husky crap it was replaced with a work.

Think donald was suggesting another excellent stihl product

whispers – Chainsaw!.

Sorry, donald, it appeared to need explaining…

Thankyou one an all, I guess buy quality, buy once is the message (I hate to admit).

I've got a black & Decker electric one. Great for blowing but the throat blocks easily with little twigs. Where I live it gets a lot of use due to the amount of trees.
And the best use is for drying the bikes & motorbike after washing!!