Jim Elbrecht wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

-snip-

Having run a snowblower regularly from about 12-34, it is damn close to
"just walk behind it" as far as the regular driveway is concerned. Turns
are simply lean to the side while the snowblower is moving.

Was that you that mentioned leaning yesterday? I've been blowing
snow with all manner of blowers- electric, single & double-stage,
1960s vintage to 2000-ish. I'm not understanding what you mean by
'leaning'.

Nope, that was someone else. Snowblowers have long handles, when you
stand further forward behind them you are between the handles, and to
turn you just lean into the handle opposite the direction you want to
turn and it will happily turn while moving, without requiring much if
any arm strength. Learn this technique and you'll find the whole process
less tiring.


Granted I
was also known to be rather aggressive with the snowblower in cutting
down snow banks and other funkiness, which does require wrestling the
machine, but that's not required for basic driveway clearing.

I love the cleanup when you've got 6foot snowbanks on either side that
the blower barely clears. If it hasn't frozen into glaciers I'll
get the electric out and cut them down with that. Otherwise I shave
of edges with the drift cutters and let the overhangs collapse.

I used to simply take the snowblower up on top of the banks to cut them
down and blow the snow further back when they got too tall to blow over,
but I also always blew the snow as far back as I could so the banks
didn't develop much at the edge of the driveway.




Yeah, your method works great for the first pass, but what about when
you reach the end of the driveway?

To turn one around, you need to be able to man-handle 250lbs of dead
weight. Your typical consumer-grade snowblower like any of the MTD and
Airens products have live axles. Both wheels drive equally. They don't
turn for beans.

Every Ariens snowblower I have owned has had a differential and a
selectable differential lock. I typically leave it locked, but it's
certainly available to unlock if you want easier / tighter turns.

Smack myself in the head. I'm with you in the 'it ain't hard work'
camp- and I had completely forgotten that even my 30-something year
old Bolens [essentially a Red Ariens] had locking hubs. I keep them
locked because I have a steep driveway- but if I had one of those flat
little postage stamps I'd unlock them and make the turns easier.

Yep, they're easy to forget when the wheel is caked in snow so you can't
see the lock.


As it is I do very few sharp turns. I do the 'blow forward, then
back up' thing in my turnaround-- and after the first couple trips
down the center of the driveway, I've got a pretty good radius to
sweep around. One hand on the machine is all it takes.

Yep, you don't often need to make tight turns if you think about what
you're doing. Also, even with the differential locked, tight turns
aren't very difficult as long as you push down on the handles to lift
the front end of the snowblower up off the ground so you aren't trying
to drag the skids through stuff.


The hard work for me is walking back up the hill, but at least the
snowblower can pull me a little.

If you have a sufficiently large snowblower, you might get away with
attaching one of those one wheel "boogies" that a lot of landscapers use
behind big mowers.