Cheap vacuum shredders

[Why Not Indeed]

They start around £45 from the usual places, eg:

Terratek Leaf Blower Electric Garden Vacuum and Shredder, 35L Leaf Bag, 3000W | eBay

ULTIMATE POWER – The Terratek powerful 3000W Leaf Blower is the essential garden power tool for tidying lawns, patios, driveways and more. Super max air speed at (167mp/h/270km/h). EASY TO ASSEMBLE, EASY TO USE: Easy to use Blowing selection/ Vacuum selection.

www.ebay.co.uk

My intended use is for shredding fallen leaves and prunings, eg bits of ivy, to speed up composting/use for mulching.
I am going to assume they're not great at that kind of price, but just how not great are they? That bag swinging around with a load of wet leaf mulch in is probably going to be pretty tedious to drag around and empty.
Also none of the listings show the mulching mechanism, ie what parts there are that would need renewing.

 

[JohnD]

You can run a lawnmower over leaves. It will shred them, and collect into the box if you wish, though better left out to dry first.

 

[blup]

Wet leaves cannot be vacuumed effectively imo. Better to use a decent blower and mow them up as said.

Blup

 

[Why Not Indeed]

The leaves are basically always wet. There might be a handful of days a year where some of them are dry, but if these things don't work with wet vegetation then it's not going to earn its keep and I won't bother.
I do already mow leaves if they're there, I just thought one tool that collects + shreds would be a time-saver.

 

[foxhole]

The leaves are basically always wet. There might be a handful of days a year where some of them are dry, but if these things don't work with wet vegetation then it's not going to earn its keep and I won't bother.
I do already mow leaves if they're there, I just thought one tool that collects + shreds would be a time-saver.

You can vacuum up leaves but shredder in these machines is just a thin plastic blade so really only there to aid compression of leaves collected .

 

[Burnerman]

I had a petrol Ryobi machine and it wasn’t a success.....it wouldn’t handle twigs and the bag became very heavy with wet leaves. The moisture used to spray out on my legs too.
It’s a blower and shovel now, or my Billy Goat machine for large areas.
John

 

[morqthana]

The moisture used to spray out on my legs too.

Don't tell Donald Trump.

 

[morqthana]

The leaves are basically always wet. There might be a handful of days a year where some of them are dry, but if these things don't work with wet vegetation then it's not going to earn its keep and I won't bother.
I do already mow leaves if they're there, I just thought one tool that collects + shreds would be a time-saver.

 

[StephenOak]

It is a bit more nuanced than people have said. I have a largish garden and plenty of mature trees, so I collect c. 2 cubic metres of leaves per year.

I have three machines, two vacuum / blowers and one (cordless) blower.

You can run a lawnmower over leaves.

Only if the leaves are on the lawn, or they are very close to it and can easily be moved there.

The leaves are basically always wet. There might be a handful of days a year where some of them are dry,

I find that rather surprising. We have had a lot of rain recently but it has only taken a couple of dry days for most of the leaves to be dry enough to use a machine on. Blowers work much better on dry leaves than on wet ones.

but shredder in these machines is just a thin plastic blade

Not true. The leaves are sucked in by an impeller and hit that with the intention of being reduced in size.

In my older vacuum this is plastic but is quite chunky and does a reasonable job of breaking up dry and brittle leaves. The other one has a metal impeller with actual blades on it. This reduces leaves to postage sized pieces.


Like with many things it is a matter of using the right tool in the right place. My garden is on the side of a valley and is very steep. The lawn is at the top and there is no way I am carrying c. 2 cubic metres of leaves up there in order to shred them! So I mostly use the cordless blower to move them down the numerous flights of steps. When doing that I blow leaves off of the nearest bits of the adjacent banks onto the steps as they would get there in short order anyway.

At the bottom what I do depends on how dry the leaves are and how much extra stuff there is in it. If it is dry and mostly just leaves then I will get a (corded) vacuum out to suck them up and shred them.

The biggest problem I think is that the diameter of the tube is suck that many non-leaf items (twigs, bits of stalk, whatever) will catch on both sides and then the tube then fills with leaves. As the bottom of a pile will have more non-leaf items I always just pick that up by hand.

Out the front I also use the cordless blower to bring the leaves together and what I do next depends upon the time of year. Next door to me there are mature field maples and the leaves from these are big enough that some will catch in the tube on their own. So if there are lots of those I just pick up by hand.

 

[foxhole]

The vacuum I have has a thin plastic blade .

 

[robinbanks]

I do already mow leaves if they're there, I just thought one tool that collects + shreds would be a time-saver.

I own both a 56cm mower and a leaf vac/shredder. The mower is about twice as fast as the shredder is, at sucking up leaves and shredding them over the area of garden that I process. I use the mower on hard areas too, and if leaves are wet I'll usually blow them or rake them with an oversized leaf rake into a long trail a mower wide, then run over them.

All this said, I have a lot of 75mm ducting left over from an MVHR install and I do think about taking my spare, unused mower with the knackered handles, bending the blades so they're more of a fan and building an adapter for the bed so that it resembles a large, petrol powere Henry hoover that I can plug one of these 30m long, 75mm hoses onto, thereby creating a giant, mashing leaf vacuum that I can leave where I want the leaves and then walk round with the hose end sucking all the leaves up..

Something to try when the more important jobs are out the way, but if you have the time to fiddle with things like building a leaf transporter, let me know how it goes?

 

[Why Not Indeed]

I find that rather surprising. We have had a lot of rain recently but it has only taken a couple of dry days for most of the leaves to be dry enough to use a machine on. Blowers work much better on dry leaves than on wet ones.

I don't think I actually want to blow the leaves anywhere, it's straightfoward enough to rake them up. It's the collection/shredding I am interested in.

It could just be my perception about how much time leaves are dry for, but I've measured ~500mm of rain since the 1st Sept [ie, about the point where I get interested in leaves], at most 3 days in a row without rainfall, and if it's ever dry for long enough then the chances are that the wind has blown them away somewhere else anyway. But I'd never really paid attention to them until the idea of collecting leaves for leave mould came about.

It was only going to be of marginal use anyway, probably for a few weeks a year, so if it's not effective with wet leaves then it's no use to me.

 

[StephenOak]

The vacuum I have has a thin plastic blade .

That is very different from

shredder in these machines is just a thin plastic blade

The latter is saying that this is true of all machines.

I don't think I actually want to blow the leaves anywhere, it's straightfoward enough to rake them up.

Personal circumstances vary a lot, partly what I was getting at by saying it is nuanced. I have lots of areas where it would be very awkward to use a lawn rake, also awkward to use a corded blower. Hence I use the cordless blower quite a bit.

I've measured ~500mm of rain since the 1st Sept

That is a lot. Just under the 20" which is around the typical annual figure here.

if it's not effective with wet leaves then it's no use to me.

IME, they are, at best, of limited use with wet leaves.