What to do with all the leaves, is the most nagging question for homeowners at the end of the fall. If you simply leave them on your lawn, they can cause die back over the winter. For a heavily wooded lot, raking is going to be too grueling and time consuming a task for most homeowners. Composting can be an option, but may take up too much space in a small yard.
AUGUST 2011Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=1561617If you constantly have a lot of big twigs and branches accumulate on your lawn every year with no convenient place to toss them, then you should consider getting a home chipper in addition to the leaf vacuum. Go to a good lawn equipment or home store to find the help needed to make the right decision on a chipper and other equipment for your unique situation.Wendy MacDonald wmacdonald@familyfeatures.com 1-888-824-3337 ext. 235 http://editors.familyfeatures.comMost municipalities ban burning, and require leaves for hauling to be bagged in the large lawn refuse paper bags. This can very time consuming.* Brand reliability varies by product. Manufacturers often have strengths and weakness in different product categories. GE, for example, has made very reliable cooking appliances, but its refrigerators with icemakers have been repair-prone. John Deere's lawn tractors have been very reliable, but its self propelled lawn mowers have been significantly more repair-prone than other brands. And LG has made reliable plasma TVs and clothes dryers, but not reliable side-by-side refrigerators.Drain the gas and disconnect the spark plug. Clamp a piece of wood to the deck to keep the blade from turning. Turn the blade bolt counter clockwise to remove it. If there is resistance, apply some penetrating oil, wait 15 minutes and try again. Remove the blade and mark the bottom side so you can put it back on correctly. Clamp the blade in a bench vise and sharpen with a 10-inch mill file. Use long strokes and work from the center outward. Use the same number of strokes on each side and keep the same angle. Balance the blade on a balance tool -- it's an inexpensive pyramid-shaped tool that can be found in most hardware stores. If one side of the blade hangs lower than the other, grind off excess metal from the end of the blade -- not from the part just sharpened. Reinstall blade.Tip 4 - Be Careful about the Use of the Leaf VacuumThe full report on repairing or replacing appliances, electronics, lawn equipment, and home exercise gear, appears in the August issue of Consumer Reports and online at www.ConsumerReports.org.* The 50-percent rule still stands.Consumer Reports recommends that a replacement should be purchased if the repair will cost more than half the price of the new product. Replacing electronic gear might be less costly than most people think because prices are steadily dropping in some categories. Major appliances, on the other hand, are getting more expensive and they usually have long service lives, which is why Consumer Reports generally recommends holding onto them longer than electronics.Tip 2 - Getting Serious about Leaf Grinding Equipment* Extended warranties don't deliver. Based on Consumer Reports' survey, appliances usually don't break during the extended-warranty period, normally after the standard warranty has expired, but within two to three years of purchase. Even when breakdowns occur in that time the median repair cost isn't much more than the median price of a warranty. And if a product doesn't break the extended warranty is just a waste of money. A computer might be an exception, especially if you travel frequently and take the device along for the ride. Make sure the warranty covers accidental damage and extended tech support."Letting grass grow tall and then removing more than 1/3 of the leaf blade is called scalping and can damage the lawn," said Ben Hamza, Ph.D., director of technical operations at TruGreen. "Be careful not to mow grass extremely low as you can damage the lawn by cutting into the crowns of the plants."Though consumer goods have become more complex and contain more electronics than a decade ago, the 33 products featured in the survey aren't failing more frequently. But when things go wrong, they tend to go horribly wrong. Consumer Reports National Research Center found that more than half of the products that did break stopped working altogether, and another 30 percent still worked, but poorly.
Even with the right equipment, leaf shredding can be a big job. The equipment can be expensive, so think about how much dedication you want to give this DIY project over the years before investing in the equipment. You might want to weigh the above against hiring a professional.
Author: Max Sheppard
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