Anyone got one? What brand? Do they work well enough to be worth the trouble (vs raking)?
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I guess it depends on what you plan to do with the leaves. I'm not especially fussy about my lawn, so I usualy just run my mulching mower over the leaves as I mow. If the result looks bad, I'll use the bag. Everyhting goes into the compost pile. The mower does an effective job of significantly reducing the volume of the leaves.
Sorry, no direct experience with the yard sweepers I've been temped--but I always talk myself out of it in favor of my current slothful ways..
My wife likes to bag the leaves, to use on her roses. And she says the mower chops them up too much for this.
I just saw that Menards has these on sale. It's a small one (25" wide, 30 gal capacity) and it might not be very sturdy, but I don't think I've ever seen one for less money ($60). It might be worth a look.
Here's a link to their sales paper this week--I don't know if it will work.
http://menards.inserts2online.com/customer_Frame.jsp?drpStoreID=1
I visited Menards today and they hardly have any lawn equipment -- no sweepers.
(And the link doesn't work.)
I have had one for a number of years but since my trees were cut down a while back, I haven't used it in a while. It looked something like the Esselte shown on this link:
http://www.nextag.com/lawn-sweeper/stores-html
It was pretty good, but not particularly great. I seem to remember that it worked pretty good if the leaves and twigs were on the grass, but not so well if they worked their way down a bit. Certainly quicker than raking. If I had a lawn that had some trees that shed a lot of leaves, I would certainly buy another one. It was also good for a very moderate workout if you pushed it fast enough...
It kinda p!sses me off -- I visited Sears (20 mile round trip) and the sales droid just gave me a funny look when I asked for a lawn sweeper. Went online with Google, though, and I found several pretty much identical units in the $125 range. Picked a Sears model (since it was a couple of dollars cheaper, likely cheaper delivery, and I'd be able to pick it up at the store) and went to order it. Low and behold, it comes back "There are 2 in stock for local pickup. You can pick it up in 2 hours." So the store had them all along, just didn't know it.
By ordering online I actually got about a 10% discount, but still with tax I paid about one and a quarter, and never saw the Esselte unit that's cheaper and looks to be a bit better built.
Anyway, I got the unit and the wife loves it. (She was out using it yesterday afternoon while I was in here dinking on the computer.) It's a little lightly built, and was missing a couple of minor parts, but it seems to work well (until you get a twig caught in it). Remains to be seen how well it will hold up.