Ken M
Member
A pull behind trailer with a vacuum would be nice...but I don't have one of those. I do have a leaf blower...and a trailer...and a yard with a lot of leaves...hummmm.... I googled the web for ideas and couldn't find anything like this so I cobbled up a prototype to see if this would work. The basic idea was to connect a hose from the mower deck discharge back to a trailer. The deck on my old tractor really has a lot of wind but I suspected that it would not be enough to push a heavy load of leaves up and back to the trailer. I tried. It didn't. When I built the deck attachment I added a 3" coupling to the front to attach my blower. I rigged up a shelf attached to tractor body to isolate it from the deck movement. The blower just sits in a pocket on the shelf. No tie down was needed. The blower tube just slips into the flex hose so I can just lift off the blower and use it if needed. I had the discharge tube attached nicely to the trailer but there was too much swing when turning corners and not enough flex in aluminum flex pipe. It really needs plastic tubing but it's way too pricey. I finally made a bracket and attached most of it to the rear of tractor. It now needs a flexible cloth tube to accommodate the swing of the trailer. Trying to just prove the idea I taped together some empty cat litter bags to form a "flexible" discharge. I thought that was a nice touch. Actually, after the stiff bags got beat up a bit they worked ok... but only for an hour. For the trailer I thought I would need to build a box to hold more leaves. For a quick container I had an old roll of welded fencing. It just made a loop around in the trailer...good enough for a trial run.
So, what did I learn?
1) The leaf blower really pushes the leaves though the tube. I do find that if I mow over a thick pile (of pin oak) leaves the discharge opening of the deck will occasionally clog but not the discharge chamber. I'm not sure why that happens. A stick in the blower hole will clear easily so I will add a better clean-out opening. Possibly a smooth curved discharge chamber would help? That would be more complicated.
2) It would be more durable to have a plastic discharge tube but I think that appropiate hose is crazy expensive. My version may last a year or two. I will sew a cloth tube for the discharge end so it will be more flexible. The discharge tube is the hard part of this project.
3) The trailer "box" made of wire fence was rediculessly quick and easy and works well. Lift off the tailgate and pull the fence off the trailer and all the leaves slide out with it.
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