New garden, more leaves..

Recommendations for a blower/vacuum upto about £60 please 🙂

Lawnmower?

Can’t do the gravel driveway with a lawnmower…

Good point!

If you had to design something that did the least amount of useful work, made the maximum amount of noise, and used the most energy in so doing,  you would be hard pressed to beat a leaf blower. Better off with a rake, 2 bits of cardboard and a wheel barrow. There. I’ve said it now 🙂

You can but it gets noisy/messy

Stihl do a battery homeowners one that’s suppose to be pretty good for £100 IIRC.

Will find a link……………….

https://www.stihl.co.uk/STIHL-Products/Blowers-and-Vacuum-Shredders/Cordless-Li-Ion-hand-held-blower/276258-1584/BGA-45.aspx

I’ve got a handheld petrol and a backpack petrol and they are ace, but I do big gardens.

Very useful for bonfires and BBQs if they need a bit of help getting going :O)

And these are rather good too;

https://www.screwfix.com/p/spear-jackson-leaf-grabber/95262

As for Welshfarmers comments well………………………..

A tank of fuel generated 12 bulk bags of leaves last week in 2 hours (that’s bagged and dragged as well)  Totally inefficient :Op

I had a black & decker blower/vacumn and it would not recomend them to be honest. It took a while to set up, blow all the leaves into a pile then take it all apart to convert it to vacumn. The bag filled up really quickly (didn’t have a shredder built in) and needed frequent emptying.  After a few uses I gave it away and now use a rake with 2 dustpans (step up from the bits of card)

The OH just bought a MacAlister one from B&Q, aside from the blower tube (the skinny one under the big thick vacuum one) blocking it did the job. Corded though, but only £40.

I thought it would be more faff than raking them manually, but it does do the gravel driveway a lot easier, and blows leaves out of the flowerbeds without making a mess of the bark chippings. So £40 and saves me an hour or two each time I rake the leaves up byt turning a morning’s job into an hour or so.

Take a look on Gumtree etc, I picked a pretty much brand new Flymo one up for £40. At that price, it was worth a gamble and it actually works really well I’ve found.

I had to buy one recently as well.

Ended up with a Ryobi corded one from B&Q which was something like £80 down to £50 in the sale.  Suction is very impressive, need to knock if off full power otherwise it sucks stones up as well.

Seems up to the job.

I’ve got a fly-mo one. It’s much quicker than a rake and it can get in round the back of the shed and even underneath (stops the rot). It was pretty cheap (less than £50). In suck mode it picks up too much in the way of stones.

had a few and returned them all aprt from the bosch 60 quid one ive now got.

sucking leaves is useless on most of them. especially if they are wet.

petrol is best but troublesome and heavy. battery is pointless as it just doesnt have enough power. Decent corded one is the way to go.

You got me looking at these and there’s a battery “Titan” on screwfix for £50 that gets good reviews.

I have an older Black and Decker – it has a shredder.  2 second job to switch from blower to vac. Wouldn’t be without it TBH. Used every week.

We had a real leaf issue until about 2 Christmases ago (the massive tree fell down on Christmas Day) and where our house was, it would pile up.  Usual raking got the majority, but in the hard to reach areas and boarders, then the vac was great. Leaf problem is somewhat less now, but after some nob driver broke my spine, I tend to use the blower more, just to shift the leaves off the grass/paths, and let the wind move the rest!!  It’s great for collecting all the mess when trimming plants down – remove the wood, then hoover up all the leaves.  The blower is also good for blowing leaves and crap out of the garage !!

Got my Flymo corded one for £10 off Gumtree and it works a treat picking up leaves from the gravel and flower beads where I can’t just rake them up. People are always giving up on them as noisy and/or don’t work so there’s lots about on 2nd hand sites.  I wouldn’t even consider buying a new one.

I managed to get a Flymo one off Facebook marketplace for £20. Rude not to at least try it at that price.

We have artificial grass and no real problem with leaves, but we have 2 rabbits and the straw and hay gets blown everywhere and is a real pain to sweep out of the grass and get picked up.
The rabbits also use the whole garden as a free run occasionally so plastic grass gets covered in rabbit droppings that aren’t going to go away by themselves!

The Fylmo does a great job of picking it all up with no fuss. I was a bit surprised when it managed to pick up the dogs tennis ball though! (luckily it doesn’t have a shredder). I try not to use the blow function much, in a small garden enclosed by 6ft fences it’s too powerfull and stuff just goes flying up in the air.

I got a Makita DUB182Z a couple of weeks ago. It takes 18V Makita batteries which I already had. Cost £60 for the body only.

I have a small lawn and small gravelled areas and it is a daily task in November clearing leaves from them which I have to do in the dark on an evening…. the blower is no replacement for a rake and a broom but I have decking and borders and bushes with lots of nooks and crannies and the blower really helps for that. It is best for the gravel and concrete and a bit harder work on grass (fake).

I have a 3.0Ah battery and it lasts about 20 mins. Just about long enough. I’ll probably get a 4.0Ah battery so it lasts a bit longer.

In summary the Makita is fine for awkward areas in small gardens but use it sparingly.

PS it only blows. I pile up my leaves in the borders and just let them rot.

i have a bosch one that is a PITA to switch from suck to blow. the old flymo was much better as you did this with the flick of a switch. it aint great at either sucking or blowing either. i get the majority with a rake and use the blower to pick up any stragglers