mark-eichin-blogspot-com: Sat Jan 29 21:18:00 2011

Sat Jan 29 21:18:00 2011

Post-XMAS tools - Toro 1800 Power Curve Snow Thrower

Burned out an (admittedly underpowered) older, smaller electric snow thrower after two years, and replaced it with the newest Toro 1800. It's an amusing bit of "we live in the future" that one can use Amazon Prime to get a snowblower delivered before a predicted snowstorm :-) I've now used it to clean up after 3 major snow storms, totaling an "official" five feet or so, just in the last month.

Nice features of this particular snow thrower:

• Extension handle so you can repoint the ejector nozzle while still holding the push handle (you can't change the vertical angle that way, just the relative direction, but that's often all you need.)
• Lots of power (for an electric) - the one that I burned out would stall out in wet or thick snow, the 1800 is usually only limited by being able to push the unit itself - the only thing I've ever had actually stop the blades was a fair sized chunk of solid ice.
• Light enough to carry up and down stairs (so I can easily use it off the driveway from the basement garage, then bring it upstairs for the front sidewalk.)

Annoying "features":

• The grab-bar safety interlock seems to be trying to require two hands; this makes it a little harder to lean and push the unit at the same time, and also fails to leave you a hand free to manage the power cord.
• Louder than my earlier unit - still in the "large vacuum cleaner" range, doesn't come anywhere near a gas-engine blower, but it's still louder than cars on a nearby street.

As far as electric snow throwers in general are concerned, I prefer them over gas-engine ones for noise, smell, and vibration, even if they fall short on snow-berm work (I've generally used a shovel to break up the berm and then the snow thrower to disperse the chunks, which works pretty well.) They're also not necessarily faster than hand-shoveling, especially with a large shovel - but since they don't involve any lifting I am so much less fatigued and strained after the cleanup effort that I don't mind the extra time, and the New England snow storm pattern is usually a day or two of mess followed by at least a day of sunshine to clean up in, or at least it's seemed like that for the last couple of years.

Of course what I actually want is a Robomower-class unit that goes out and starts clearing before the snow has stopped, with a protected (heated?) docking station of some sort, but we're not quite there yet...