Please help. I need to know how good garden vacs/blowers/shredders are for
dealing with loads of leaves. The leaves tend to get pretty wet and soggy
before you can get them up. Do these electric garden vacs cope with
moisture and quatities of leaves. How easy is it to empty the sacs and how
heavy are things for a 73 year old woman?
Fiona

"Rory" wrote in message
...
Please help. I need to know how good garden vacs/blowers/shredders are
for
dealing with loads of leaves. The leaves tend to get pretty wet and soggy
before you can get them up. Do these electric garden vacs cope with
moisture and quatities of leaves. How easy is it to empty the sacs and
how
heavy are things for a 73 year old woman?
Fiona

If you get one, get one with a shredder. MIne doesn't have one and is a
complete waste of time, it fills up in seconds and takes longer to undo and
get out the soggy leaves than just picking them up. Much better off with a
pair of those huge 'hands' you can get for picking up leaves for a few quid,
or just a rake. Over a large area of gravel I can see it might be better but
I dont have that problem.

--
Tumbleweed

Remove my socks before replying (but no email reply necessary to newsgroups)

"Rory" wrote in message
...
Please help. I need to know how good garden vacs/blowers/shredders are
for
dealing with loads of leaves. The leaves tend to get pretty wet and soggy
before you can get them up. Do these electric garden vacs cope with
moisture and quatities of leaves. How easy is it to empty the sacs and
how
heavy are things for a 73 year old woman?
Fiona

We have quite a large garden with lots of nooks and
crannies - our Flymo Vac is great at getting in all these places where
waterproof gloves were the norm in the past. The really good bonus over a
rake is that ours does shred them and makes really good leaf mould ready for
the next autumn when you want to use the bin again.

Emptying the bag is a bit of a dull chore and it does get quite
heavy if the leaves are wet - not heavy in that a 73 year old couldn't
manage, but heavy as in tiresome. You can get round this by emptying more
frequently but I'm lazy and try to squeeze in as much as possible before
emptying ;-) My main grumble is relocating the bag back on the machine
after emptying.

Of all the gadgets we have (and there are many), this seems to have been one
of the most useful and reliable. If you get a Flymo one though, make sure
the bag is on properly before you start again after emptying - if it isn't,
it won't work
and you'll try all the stuff like changing the fuse in the plug, checking it
hasn't tripped on the main switchboard, swearing at it etc etc..... (damn
experience!!)

Good luck
--A

Personally I think you want to hire a gardener who has his/her own petrol
vac/blower. I can't see many seventy-somethings being able to carry a
blower/vac around for very long, let alone empty it when it gets full, and
everything else that goes with it. (IMHO)

Dave.