It's all relative but it sounds like A Lot to me!

AWESOME! Funny how they will get used up faster than you think :) Some people mow leaves with a mulch mower, too. With all those hours you are putting in, consider a mask and hearing protection. Boy are your flowers going to be pretty!

mustard, the mask is probably a good idea. There's some nasty stuff caught in your nostrils after 5 hours of leaf shredding. The shredder isn't too loud, but I've considered using some hearing protection if I keep doing so much at once.

If you can make the trash can idea work, please report back and tell us how you did it.

A couple of years ago I had the same idea so my husband (who thought it was a brilliant idea as well) fixed up one of our 32 gal. rubbermade garbage cans by cutting a hole in the center of the lid.

Were we surprised when we started sucking leaves and got a shower of them all over us when the force of the sucker/shredder blew the lid off the can and the leaves everywhere. We tried a couple of times with one of us holding down the lid even. The force was just too strong. That was the end of our experiment plus the fact that we ruined a perfectly good lid.

I still think it should work in theory but maybe our cans were to small. Maybe something like a 96 gal. one (like from waste management) might work. We weren't going to go buy a bigger can just to try it :-)

Val

PS - I'm sure we gave the neighbors quite a show LOL

Maybe there need to be vent holes near the bottom and sides so there isn't so much pressure for the air to come back out the lid. I can also drill holes in the lid and top of the trash can and use baling wire to hold it on tight. I'm sure I can rig something up.

Im trying to recall but last year there was a leaf blower that had a slightly extended hose that went to a large bag that stayed on the ground it was much larger the the one you carry around on your shoulder. You would be limited to how far you went best idea would be to rake the leaves to one section of your yard before starting. But it the larger bag would mean not having to empty it as often ie extending the working time. You could likely make a bag out of burlap and sew togther with twine.

The exploding can-o-leaves story is priceless. I am surprised you did not see that coming though. If you push 500 cubic feet of air per minute into a plastic can without an outlet, where would you expect it to go? Something is going to bust rapidly! LOL

I'll tell you one thing I just want to shoot the people that rake up the leaves and burn them.

When half the canopy drops get out there and mulch them in the yard. Then go out again. There are very very few trees that drop all their leaves in 1 day.

I actually took the blower and blew some leaves from the neighbor's yard into mine so I could mulch them in. Great for the earth worms.

Tox - glad you liked the story. My husband and I have routinely tried to entertain our neighbors since we moved here 4 years ago. Laughter is after all the best medicine. :-)

Remind me sometime to tell you the one about the pickup truck and the tree limb LOL

Val

PS - We never once thought about the force of the air inside the garbage can, our only thought was "We're tired of caring around that G*D D**N bag!"

Oh crap...

caring = carrying

Val

PS - When will we be able to edit!?

whaas - I agree about people burning leaves! Saturday I saw a whole crew of people raking leaves onto a tarp and hauling them to a burn pile. Its actually less work (and less stinky smoke) just to run them over with the mower.

Here's an idea. I have a 'dust extraction' system in my work shop.
Works on a venturi principle, but as a suck system. Two outlets in the top, one sucks into the outside of the pail, and the center hole leads off to the suck end. Use a shop vac as the suck side.
It drops all the larger particles into the tub, while the fine stuff gets filtered in the suck end. Then it's a simple matter to bag or move the results.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cyclone air device

Just another idea. You could by a machine like the one I have. It's a self propelled, shredder, chipper, vacuum. with an attached bag.
I walk round the yard sucking up the leaves, which are chopped up into the bag. Will take 8 bags down into one. It's then a simple matter to empty into my compost bins.
Expensive, but then so is time.

Here is a link that might be useful: Time saver

I tried this set-up and it worked reasonably well for a quick mock-up:

Place the plastic yard bag underneath the seating area of a seat-less cane chair.
Pull the top of the bag up through the chair seat area.
Secure a tube of 1/4-inch hardware cloth to the top-side seat of the chair (the chair back helps with this).
Allow the bottom of the tube to extend through the chair-seat area into the bag below (just a bit).
Temporarily, but securely attach the bag and the tube together.
Secure a lid to the top of the tube (I used a cardboard circle).
The lid has a hole in it that accommodates a 4-inch diameter flexible aluminum dryer duct.
Stick the leaf-shooting end of the leaf-vac into the duct.
Carefully suck up moderate amounts of leaves with the leaf-vac, to see where the unit needs to be re-secured/reinforced
(I put my unit together with wire-ties and rope.)
Once you get this set-up working, you could put wheels on the chair legs and move it to where the leaves are.

The hardware cloth allowed the air to escape, while depositing the leaves into the bag below.
I had to go slowly because my construction skills were not up to the task. ;)
It took me lots of tries to get it so that it wouldn't fall apart from the force of the air.
I got about 4 bags of leaves done and then was getting dark, so I disassembled it.
I had all this stuff sitting around so it didn't cost me anything.
I got the seat-less chair from beside somebody's trash can.
Some day I hope to put together a better one.

Re: Beeman's cyclone air device, Grizzly Industrial sells the same type of thing for about half the price.

http://www.grizzly.com/products/30-Gallon-Dust-Collection-2-Stage-Cyclone-Separator/G3376

Fits on top of a garbage can. I have one in my shop too. :-]

Ran the lawnmower over a dozen bags from the neighbors and my yards. Made a windrow 8 feet long 30" high 24" wide, it is pretty impressive, very happy with my haul. Neighborhood trees are just really starting turn colors; most still have a full canopy of leaves.

Soon there will be more

I built a semi-circle with shade cloth. I pile the leaves in front and run over them with my riding mower. When the pile gets to big I just move the net semi-circle forward.

A similar obsession but an alternative approach. I collect hundreds of bags of leaves every fall on my way to and from work in my small pick-up(about 25 miles one way). I've constructed a specific rack for the truck bed to contain as many as 40 bags. In my garden, I built 4 enclosures that each consist of two 100' wire fences, 4' high, 3' apart, attached to 6' rebar sunk 2' deep. The ends are made of the slats from dismantled pallets. I use more slats with holes drilled in them to connect the rebar at the top to prevent it from spreading apart. Each fall, I empty one of these enclosures (the oldest one) of leaf mold, and fill it with that years' leaves.

The newly constructed leaf-fences from a distance resemble a long brown stone wall. After decomposing the first year, stuff starts to sprout there - young trees, bittersweet, what have you. I harvest what I want to keep and uproot and compost the rest. After four years, what started as a 4' high wall of leaves is about 16" of fine leaf mold.

As you can infer, I have extensive gardens and the luxury of space. I do own a shredder, and it's a wonderful tool, but what I don't have is the luxury of time. The solution is to provide myself time by working with volume, without sacrificing too much horizontal space. This is, by the way, an excellent way to increase garden space - once the leaves have decomposed, the soil beneath has been thoroughly worked and fertilized by an abundance of worms, and needs little preparation to become another of my 30" wide by 100' long garden beds.

If you've ever worked with 4-year old leaf mold, you're drooling about now.

"you're drooling about now"

You had me at "I collect hundreds of bags of leaves every fall".

;-)

Your leaf enclosures are intriguing.

Lloyd

My sister has the greatest set up I can think of. She raises chickens. She has a large, fenced enclosure that is divided in half. Each year, she collects 3-4 hundred bags of other peoples' leaves, plus a few loads of manure from the nearby fairground. She dumps everything on one side, and lets the chickens live there for a season. They scratch and eat bugs and defecate and mix everything together. In the spring, she switches the chickens to the other side and plants her vegetable garden in the rich compost they've created for her. Everyone is blissful.

I thought I would update. I tend to overschedule myself with hobby projects and house remodeling projects, but I have purchased a flexible hose to ductape to the leaf blower. I am using a 35 gallon free black trash can I found at the recycling bins. I am going to drill a hole in the top and wire the hose to the lid. I will wire the lid onto the barrel and screw small holes all up and down the sides to let the air out but small enough to keep most of the leaves in. That should cure the problem of the lid blowing off. If this set up works good on my freebie trash can, I might purchase a 55 gallon trash can on wheels for $15 but want to experiment with the freebie first :-)