Saving the environment and back muscles with a lawn sweeper

robakerost | Feb 12, 2010 |

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I hate to rake leaves; I mean I really hate it. It most certainly is a result of a childhood chore I was given every autumn. Every year as summer began to fade; I was tasked with removing all the leaves that had accumulated between our yard and the neighbor's fence. To me this was a great injustice since (from my calculations) 80% of the leaves fell from our neighbors trees. It would only be fair that I would be responsible for only 20% of the leaves.

As I grew up and ultimately owned my own house and yard, I still hated raking leaves. Not only did I despise it, but it also killed my back muscles. After a long weekend of raking leaves my back would be sore for a week. A few years ago I discovered an amazing piece of yard equipment known as the lawn sweeper. If you hate raking leaves as much as I do, you may want to check out one of these.

Before owning one, I've seen lawn sweepers sitting around at hardware stores or in peoples yards but never realized what they were or how useful they could be. If you've never seen or used one, they're basically a sweeper that you push or tow across your lawn.

A push lawn sweeper is moved much like a lawn mower in that you push it. As it moves across the lawn, brushes attached to the wheel axle spin and sweep up leaves, small sticks, and even pine cones and needles into a hopper. Lawn or yard sweepers come in all shapes and sizes and price ranges, but a small push sweeper can be purchased for around $100. The hopper or hamper that catches the debris (which usually holds from a few cubic feet to over 16) can then be detached on some models, dumped or emptied into a yard bag or compost pile.

Push sweepers work best for smaller lawns and even though their manually powered, they're still a lot easier on the back muscles since you're not bending over as much to gather up the leaves to bag.

Another great benefit of the push sweeper is the fact that it has zero carbon emissions. With the environment such a big deal these days, reducing our carbon footprint as much as we can is important. Leave blowers are infamous for carbon emissions and their loud operation. Some cities and municipalities have even banded the use of leave blowers due to their extreme noise pollution.

If you have a garden or lawn tractor, you may opt to check out the tow behind lawn sweeper. Obviously from its descriptions, a tow behind sweeper is pulled or towed behind a tractor or other powered vehicle such as an ATV. These work best on larger lawns and can save you hours on picking up leaves, sticks, and other debris. Even the tow behind sweepers like the agri fab lawn sweeper can be purchase for around $270; pretty reasonable if you ask me.

Regardless of which type of sweeper you purchase, you'll want to keep a few things in mind. Firstly, all sweepers work best on a mostly level lawn and one void of big ruts and hills. Secondly, none of them work extremely well at picking up wet grass or leaves. Thirdly, you'll want to be sure you have enough space for storage. Some sweepers fold up for storage but most of them take up quite a bit of room in your garage or lawn storage shed.

So if you're tired of raking leaves, and none of us are getting younger, then you might consider adding a lawn sweeper to your arsenal of lawn and garden tools.