A big help in the yard!
Written: Oct 13 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast, efficient leaf removal. Dump leaves from the comfort of your tractor seat!
Cons: Limited hopper capacity, also requires a good amount of space to store.
The Bottom Line: If you have a big yard to clean up, and can't afford a Cyclone Rake, this is a good alternative.
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| gd9704's Full Review: Craftsman 14 Cu. Ft., 42" High-Speed Lawn Sweeper ... |
When my wife and I bought our house, we fell in love with the heavily treed lot. We never imagined how many leaves would fall on the lawn come autumn!
The first fall, I cleaned them up the old fashioned way--a rake and a lawn cart. It took 4 days and lots of elbow grease. Misery, basically!
The next fall, I bought a hand-held gas blower. Better, but I still ended up with huge piles that needed to be carted off to the dumping area. Two full days of work, still a long, tiring experience.
This year I was determined to make this job less of a hassle. I looked into the Cyclone Rake--a self-powered vacuum unit that trails behind your tractor and sucks the leaves out of the mower deck, mulches them and deposits them into a huge hopper. These have a great reputation as being very effective, but come with a huge price tag: $1,500 or so.
A big gas blower on wheels came to mind, thinking I needed more blower power to move the leaves around. But I still needed a way to transport the leaves to the dumping area, so I'd still have to load them up in a cart or on a tarp. These blowers aren't cheap either ($500 and up) and I'd still be picking the leaves up after blowing them into a pile. Still lots of work.
Finally, I decided to get a Craftsman Lawn Sweeper. The sweeper is pulled by your riding lawn mower or tractor, and uses the wheels on the sweeper to power the brushes that sweep leaves into a 12 cu. foot hopper. The hopper is hinged, which allows you to dump the contents from the comfort of your tractor seat via a rope.
The unit does require some assembly. The hitch needs to be assembled and attached to the sweeping unit, and the hopper must be assembled and attached to the sweeping unit as well. Good instructions guide you along. With common hand tools, figure that 45 minutes will be needed to put it together. While assembling, I was impressed with the robust build quality this unit has. It should last a good, long time.
Once assembled, you need to adjust the unit to your tractor or riding mower. This takes a few minutes, and then you're on your way.
I was pleasantly surprised at how well the sweeper works. 95% of the leaves are removed with one pass. If you're a lawn neat-freak, a second pass will pretty much clean the lawn to perfection. I also have an area with pine needles. Figure 2 to 3 passes to get most of them picked up. Still better than sweating with a rake!
The only downside to the sweeper is that the limited capacity means you'll be emptying the hopper on a regular basis. On heavy leaf days, chopping the leaves first with the mower will allow you to pick up more leaves between dumping.
The bottom line is this: For $259 (on sale) this is hard to beat. My lawn is 1.3 acres, and I cleaned it up nicely in about 30 minutes. I have several more cleaning sessions to go before the trees are done dropping leaves, but the sweeper makes cleaning the lawn more of a pleasure than a pain. An additional benefit of buying from Sears is that they have a pretty liberal return policy, and they are good at supplying replacement parts when they are needed.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
gd9704
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Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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