I guess it's a seller's market now.

[johnridley]

I tried to sell our snowblower a few months ago, but just got hagglers that wanted me to give it away. Today I posted it for sale again (on the discussion board at work) and it got bought in a few minutes.

Then I went out and shoveled the driveway.

I know for a fact that I cleared it way faster with a shovel than I could have with a blower, and it's probably something like 1/10th the work I do every day to ride my bike to work. Our driveway is about 80 feet long. It took I think about 20 minutes to clear.

Comments

[mrs-sweetpeach.livejournal.com]

"I know for a fact that I cleared it way faster with a shovel than I could have with a blower"

This morning I happened to notice that my next door neighbor began blowing snow off his driveway and sidewalks at the same time I began shoveling my way out to the car. He seemed to be struggling to keep the machine from stalling and I saw him futzing with the part the snow comes out of several times. I used jebra's long-handled grain scoop and cleared off our driveway, walkway, and the sidewalks in the time it took him to do his driveway, a path the width of his snow blower up his walkway, and 3/4 of his sidewalk. I took pity on him and shoveled the remaining quarter. I was in my car and driving to work before he was.

The other thing I like is that shovels are a lot less noisy.

Not to mention my neighbor looked cold as he struggled with his machine. What with the physical labor of shoveling, I didn't get as cold as he looked.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

If there's < 8 inches of snow or so (almost always around here) I love "dozer" type shovels. These are the kind that start at a very shallow angle then swoop up to past vertical. They're made of slippery plastic. If you push them forward relatively fast, they actually throw the snow in front of them. I shovel a single path the length of the driveway first, then turn around and start back; with each step I start with the shovel to the right, handle in my right hand, and push to the left, swiveling around my left foot, ending with my right hand and shovel extended fully to the left. I do about a 16" width every 3 seconds or so; it only takes maybe 5 minutes to work back down the driveway. Usually I put my starter track on the windward side so most of the piled snow is on the leeward side, to reduce drifting. Today it was a bit deep so I went back over it again, and trimmed up a little on the other side.

My blower actually starts easily and runs fine, but just the act of getting it out of the garage, putting gas in it, getting it started, turning it around, backing it up at the end of runs, and putting it away when done takes half as much time as it took me to do the whole driveway, and it doesn't clear snow much faster than my shovel does even when it's actually moving forward and blowing.

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

Gosh -- that's not my experience at all. I shoveled on Monday, and it was, I'd guess, under 3 inches of accumulation. I figure our driveway is about 70 feet long (haven't measured) -- 2 cars wide near the garage, only 1 car wide at the street -- and then there's the sidewalk across the front, across the short front of the neighbor's house, and up to the door -- and it took me an hour and a half. That's about normal. If there's a lot of snow it can take me well over 2 hours. After a few days like that with the spouse stuck at work a half-dozen or so years ago I said "you owe me a new back". We got the electric snow-blower instead. I did it all this morning, granted, probably not quite as well as I'd have done with a shovel, but all of it (ranging from 2 inches to about 9 I'm guessing) in about 45 minutes. And my back isn't killing me.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

That's more like me too. The driveway is about two cars by two cars. Six inches of snow, like this morning, would take me two-three hours. I spent 20-30 minutes this morning with the snowblower, and I didn't feel like I was going to die.

But, John's insane. It's one of the things we like about him. And this gives him something to talk about with Tullio "The Shovel" Proni.

[drsulak.livejournal.com]

My primary tool is a "Yooper Scooper", designed for scooping about a 1/2cu yd at a time. I can shovel my driveway with it very quickly.

Yet, I broke down this year and got a snow blower. Our first snowstorm was a foot of wet heavy snow, on top of 2 inches of slush. Then the temp plunged. The snow immediately froze to the metal - it was like shoveling sticky clay. Sadly, I had to admit defeat...

But, anything less than 8 inches of snow, the Yooper Scooper is faster.

[mbcrui.livejournal.com]

The heck with the Yooper scooper. We've had between 6 and 8 inches a day, sometimes that's what's there in the morning and at night. We have a "Plow Guy". Since Jan 15th, he's been coming two or three times a day. We shovel the steps, he gets the rest. We've had to have the village come and remove the snow between the houses twice so the plow guy has a place to put snow. Ha! The snow was so deep...

[jebra.livejournal.com]

This might be one of those "horse vs. sprinter" situations. You know, where a good sprinter can outrun a horse in a 100-yard dash, but gets overtaken quickly after that. There's probably some cubic-foot figure, under which shoveling tends to be faster. Fortunately, our driveway isn't very wide or very long. Consequently, I couldn't ever see getting a snow blower for our place.

And it's some of the only exercise I get.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

That's certainly true, but for me at least, it's not going to happen until sometime after I get pretty tired, or if someone has larger snowblowing/pushing equipment than me. I can move snow faster with a GOOD shovel (not ANY, but GOOD) than my particular blower can move it. This is not true if there's a LOT of snow or if the snow is wet, and I have to lift the snow rather than dozer it (dozer blade, non-sticky snow; push fast and the blade throws the snow up and forward). Of course, the blower has a hell of a time with wet snow; if it's really bad I'll use the shovel anyway because the blower just bogs down and gets clogged with ice.

I will say that before I spend the last year-plus riding my bike to work every day, there was no WAY that I could do the whole driveway at full speed without stopping to let my heart stop threatening me, but it's not a problem anymore. But I'd decided to sell the blower before then anyway.

I think this particular blower is just a bad size; it's not a little "thrower" type single stage that you can horse around; it's too big and heavy and it moves under its own power or not at all, so you have the overhead of putting it into reverse to turn it around, changing gears, etc. And it's too small to be faster than shovelling.

The neighbor has a big John Deere 400 series tractor with a big mounted hydraulically powered blower on the front. Yeah, he can kick my butt clearing driveways.