Among the many “joys” of home ownership is the never-ending cycle of home maintenance. Since fall is the time when many homeowners find their lawns and driveways buried under a thick layer of brown, red, and gold, I thought it would be worthwhile to post a brief review of the Toro Ultra Blower Vac that I use to manage leaves at my home.
My main leaf battle takes place next to my driveway. A large tree on the corner of my lot drops probably hundreds of thousands of leaves at this time of year, spread out over at least a month. For the first year after buying our home I did my best to manage the leaves with brooms and rakes, but after two seasons of that I was ready for… more power.
After doing some research I found the Toro Ultra Blower Vac, which I paid $75 for on Amazon (it’s currently $70 at the time of writing). The Toro Ultra Blower Vac fit all my criteria:
- It’s electric, so no nasty fumes or gasoline to deal with, relatively less noisy, and fewer parts to break.
- It is powerful enough to take care of all my leaf and fir needle-clearing needs.
- It’s lightweight and relatively compact—easy to store in my garage.
- It cost less than $100.
Here’s a video I made this weekend, cleaning up the season’s first leaf dump.
In this video I’ve compressed about forty-five minutes of leaf blowing and vacuuming into roughly three minutes. With rakes and brooms this job probably would have taken me two hours. I’ll need to do this almost weekly for the next couple of months to keep up with all the leaves this tree drops. I definitely consider the Toro Ultra Blower Vac to be $75 well-spent.