Last year I had to pay someone $350 to collect the leaves in my yard. This was in December when they were eager ly work, and after heavy negotiating. This year I wanted to find a more sustainable solution. I decided to use a blower/vac in combination with the LeafPro by Worx. Question was, which blower/vac and can I actually get this system to work? After a lot of research and video watching, it became clear the Toro UltraPlus was the best option. The CFM and MPH balance was best of available blower/vacs. I was very concerned there would be enough suction to collect all the leaves easily, but that needed to be balanced with the blowing aspect. The trivacs have higher CFM but the MPH are low. So would it blow well enough at a distance? The Sunjoe had slightly better CFM than the Toro but much worse MPH. The Toro impeller design looked way better than the Sunjoe too at grinding. I was thinking about the Worx Turbine Fusion but people said the impeller grinded too much and the dust was terrible. The other issue was connecting this thing to the LeafPro. I read the "universal adapter" could slip off and I should try to get the older version which had plastic connections specifically for other brand models (which turned out to be totally unavailable). Maybe it was just better to get a Worx blower instead? In the end, the reviews of the Toro were all so strong I decided to go for it and risk the LeafPro not working with it. Thankfully, the connection worked perfectly and was really tight with no real risk of coming off! The next issue was what to use on the other end to collect the leaf mulch. Most people were connecting the LeafPro to a garbage can. I didn't have one right sized for use with 55 gallon trash bags and didn't want to buy one unnecessarily. I saw someone had used this system with a Leafmate paper bag funnel and it worked for them, so I decided to try with the Leafmate designed for varying sized plastic trash bags. It also worked brilliantly! I was able to keep it on its side at first to collect the mulch and then after it was nearly full I turned it upright to collect the rest. The Leafmate just slides up the bag to hold the opening and connection to the LeafPro. This system was able to reduce a 20-30 bag job to less than 5, and what took 3 people half a day of tiring work took me 1.5hrs of blowing and 2 hours of vacuuming and I was not tired at all. These three items cost me $140... a total win! Tips: -Dont try to suck up too much, the vac will clog -The Toro can handle sticks and other non-leaf debris you may encounter (see photo), but it's better to remove them from the pile by hand as they can create clogs -When you do get a clog, try turning off the vac and just tap the tube against the ground the dislodge whatever is in there. Turn it back on and half the time it'll be able to suck whatever was in there out -Point the exit hose of the LeafPro away from you and downwind. A moderate amount of dust comes out of the mesh cover. -The weak point in the system if the LeafPro mesh cover. It will stay on the Leafmate pretty well because it has a good rim it can wrap itself around, but mulch will collect in the mesh around the rim and it can get pulled off. Collect your leaves close enough to the bag and you won't pull it off by mistake (happened to me on the last bag, luckily it's easy to just revacuum up the debris).
