"Bob F" wrote in message
...
Jim Elbrecht wrote:
"Bob F" wrote:

Robert Green wrote:
"Bob F" wrote in message
...

stuff snipped

I have an outside air hose by the back steps. A quick "scan" with
the blaster nozzle gets all the crud out of the tread of my shoes
before I go inside after gardening. I probably use more air on that
than anything else. The 10 foot copper pipe, adjustable end nozzle
gutter cleaner runs a close second.

What great ideas. I was looking for an excuse to buy an
auto-retracting air hose to mount below the porch and now I have it.
Tell me more about the air powered gutter cleaning wand. Home brew
or COTS?

Home brew. Air fitting and ball valve on one end of a 1/2" copper
pipe. On the other end, a female thread fitting. Into that I screwed
two threaded PVC street ells and a nozzle I made by heating a few
inches of copper tube and clamping it around a nail, then pulling
the nail out. The 2 street ells allow the nozzle to be pointed any
way I want, and can form a "hook" that helps guide it along the
gutter edge.


Thanks for the inspiration. That sounds a lot less wieldy than the
cob job of leaf-blower, vac hose, and 2" PVC that I use to get up to
my 20foot high gutters.

And it might even work a tad better on my maple & oak droppings.

A 20 foot length of 1/2" copper will be unwieldly with high air pressure.
Even
the 10 foot one I have can get out of control when the air flow is on if
I'm not
careful. The copper can flex quite a bit.

Yes, I recall making a wand for the hose that was about 16' long and getting
my first face full of muck. That puppy sure did kick. The problem seems to
be that to make it rigid enough not to flex, you would have to make it too
heavy to use. I was going to try finned tubing to see if that added enough
rigidity to make it useful, but I never was able to find any. (This was in
the dark, pre-Internet days of the early 80's.) Besides, the backslash
ended my enthusiasm for power flushing the gutter.

--
Bobby G.