If necessity is the mother of invention, laziness is the grandaddy.
I have almost a half acre which gets covered in oak leaves during the fall. I have to get them all to the burn pile on one end of the property which usually involves blowing them into separate piles and transporting each pile to the burn pile a bit at a time.
I figured there has to be an easier way to do this. I used a leaf blower/vac, a 4" flexible hose, and an insulation disposal bag that I had leftover from another project. It works pretty good. Actually better than the vacuum does with the shoulder bag probably because the airflow isn’t as restricted.
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Red would be proud. Once you vacumm those bad boys up, have you considered composting the leaves? It sounds like you have room to have a discreet compost heap behind some trees.
Patent it! An ideal alternative to regular leaf blowers if they will be banned (I hope).
Out of curiosity, what necessitates moving the leaf litter at all? Asking genuinely, not trying to rain on your triumph–very cool setup. Just want to mention that leaf litter provides several natural benefits as part of its ecosystem you may not be aware of:
-It provides shelter and food for ground insects that enrich soil and feed birds over winter
-Butterflies and especially moths (who also pollinate) rely on leaf litter to protect eggs from the elements over winter. We don’t see nearly as many fireflies as we used to due to loss of their habitat when leaf litter is removed
-It acts as natural mulch, leaching nutrients and decomposing into additional top soil layers, as well as conserving water by moisture retention
-Energy/fuel is expended to collect and move the leaf litter, on top of negating all the above
I’d love to know if there’s a unique circumstance in your situation that requires the use of collection and burning rather than natural decomp, I’m certainly open to learning something new.
Good question and all valid points.
There’s a few reasons for removing the leaves. One being pest control. Another being that they’re a fire hazard (especially relevant since we’re currently under one of the worst droughts in decades).
There’s also the matter of keeping peace with my neighbors who won’t appreciate all my leaves blowing into their yards or potentially plugging up their drainage culverts and flooding their basements, which around here is a very real possibility.
Burning them is just a matter of convenience but now you’ve made me think I could actually spread them in the woods behind the house and maybe that would be a better way of handling them.
Reverse your sucker and suck them out of the bag and spread around the trees. Assuming the bag is porous enough to do this.
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I thought the same thing when I bought my house with a ton of trees around but If you don’t remove the dead leaves near your house bugs and rodents start coming closer and closer to your home and eventually inside.
If you allow leaves to pile up near a structure it also accumulates more moisture that’s not good for the foundation.
If it gets dry where you live it’s a fire hazard.
Also if you leave a huge pile of leaves apparently it kills all the stuff under it. Oops. Lol
They said half acre so that sounds like a lot of land but my lot in 1/3 an acre and it’s just a normal lot with a house. I also have oak trees.
bugs and rodents start coming closer and closer to your home and eventually inside.
That’s some incredibly poor build quality problems!
Well I need this to vacuum all the old insulation from my attic.
In my experience the small Harbor Freight dust collector works pretty well for this.
