Yard Vac to handle pine needles?

[lem0n]

I have about 3/4 acre yard with mostly pine trees. Every spring and fall I spend countless weeks of manual raking, bagging and disposing of hundreds of pounds of pine needles and cones. I thought that there'd be a better way to do this so I looked at walk-behind vacs, however everyone I talked to say they don't recommend using their products to vac and mulch pine needles; vacs are used for leafs mostly as needles are too small to get cut so there's no real benefit or reduction of volume.
Does anyone use their walk-behind vacs to handle needles? I know there're some commercial models like Bear Cat and Billy Goat but they're way out of my price range; I am looking for something along the $800-1000 range..
Thanks in advance!

Dimitri

 

[KentT]

You'll have much better luck using a pull-behind sweeper to pick up pine needles. They're so small in terms of surface area that vacuums won't pick them up very well. Additionally, they tend to get intertwined and stick together, so they need to be raked to pull them back apart.

 

[kenmac]

my ride mower with vac will pick them up ok. I just had all my pines cut . I won't have to worry about those pines anymore

 

[lem0n]

That's what I thought.. Oh well, time to post another topic as I'm torn between Cub iSeries tractor vs Deere's AWS X300 range.
Thanks for your help guys!

 

[turbo36]

That's what I thought.. Oh well, time to post another topic as I'm torn between Cub iSeries tractor vs Deere's AWS X300 range.
Thanks for your help guys!

I've tried pretty much everything for this before going with a JD 455 with high-lift blades and the Power-Flo blower. It works perfectly on the pine needles and anything else on the lawn.

 

[caver]

I had an older "Garden Way" era Troy Bilt walk behind chipper/vac and it didn't like the needles around the one pine tree I had.
The vac bag fill up so fast with leaves that it was just about as much work as raking so I sold it.

 

[natem]

check out the DR company. i have one of the vacs that hitch to the tractor, but they have the walk behind ones two. I love that thing it sucks up anything that it gets a hold of. Check there site out you can get free DVDs that show them in action, also they are a great company to deal with. There is also a six month trial period that you can get and try it out and if it does not work like you want it to, just send it back and get shipping and total price back, you cant beat it.