Leaf blowers, as their name suggests, are made to blow fallen leaves from one place to another. While this means that they are most useful in the fall, you’re making a HUGE mistake if you leave your blower collecting dust during the remaining 3 seasons!
A leaf blower is a device that simply uses fuel to generate airflow (read this article to learn exactly how). Naturally, nothing limits its use to just blowing leaves and thus, with a bit of imagination and common sense, many alternatives, and even more importantly, actually useful applications, can be concocted and used around your house.
This article is here to provide you with information on these uses one season at a time and provide you sources on how to go about them.
Winter
Let’s kick it off with the very first season of the year, winter. Even though you won’t encounter too many fallen leaves in the wild (unless nobody bothered to clear them away in fall), most places will experience some amount of snowfall.
While there are special devices called snow blowers for dealing with thick snow covers, leaf blowers are sufficient when it comes to shallow snow fall (a rule of thumb is that you can use them on covers of up to 1 inch in depth, however, this will depend on the output of the device ).
Polished, uneven surfaces, such as car roofs, stairs, etc. can be cleared easily, but you might have some luck with your driveway as well, if you own a powerful enough model. If so, leaf blowers will save you a lot of time, compared to hands-on plowing.
Spring
When springtime rolls around and all the snow has melted, you may find that there is an awful lot of cleaning to be done around the house (and that’s without even talking about spring cleaning). And your trusty leaf blowing pal can help you save an awful lot of time in this task as well.
Some of the examples of some of them are:
- Clearing random debris around your lawn, which piled up under the snow.
This stuff might have been lying there under the snow since fall, or has fallen there any time during the winter and sunken into its depths. Anyhow, leaf blowers can deal with it swiftly! - Getting rid of leftover snow and any puddles it results in.
Note 1, clearing puddles can be challenging with some of the less powerful models.
Note 2, clearing large puddles with a blower is futile (as this video can show you). - Collecting leftover cut grass, hedge trimmings and fallen branches.
With springtime comes new growth, and in turn… landscaping. This generally leaves behind a lot of mess, which should be bagged and thrown out right away. Using a leaf blower, all can be easily collected and sorted out. - Clearing cobwebs and any spiders living in them.
Especially useful if you live in areas which are home to poisonous spiders. However, make sure there is nothing in the way, which may be knocked over or blown away by accident. - Cleaning and drying your car, both from the inside and the outside.
This topic has been covered extensively on the internet. Numerous guides have been written, which reach far beyond what I have tried for myself. Check this reddit thread (opens in a new tab) or watch the video below.
Summer
Summertime brings even more opportunities to use your blower! People tend to their hobbies, time lets more and more debris collect all over the place and even in the tidiest neighborhoods, rainfall and storms are ought to add to your troubles.
Regular maintenance of your surroundings is a must and with a leaf blower in hand, you can save plenty of time doing so. Adding to our spring examples, here are a few more I suggest trying out for summer.
- Cleaning your gutters.
Gutters collect dirt like crazy and cleaning them may be pretty tricky. This is why professional gutter cleaning services actually exist and are pretty costly. Thankfully, leaf blowers are phenomenal at doing the same, for free.
To learn more about gutter cleaning, check out our comprehensive guide on this topic. - Cleaning your power equipment.
Power equipment collects dust like crazy, lawn mowers, hedge trimmers, portable generators… pretty much anything lying in the shed for some time will get covered. And the easiest and the fastest way to get rid of it is a leaf blower. Just remember to remove any loose parts to avoid blowing them into oblivion. - Inflating pools and other air-filled equipment.
Leaf blowers are a perfect tool to get around the labor involved in inflating any inflatable utensil, and the cost of a compressor, pump, and other specialized equipment. The trick lies in interfacing the nozzle of the blower with the inlet, since the fit is pretty poor without an adjustment. This can be done in a DIY fashion.
Fall
Naturally, leaf blowers are most useful in fall, since that’s when all the leaves start to pile up and clutter your yard. If you’re not sure how to go about using them, check out this article for a comprehensive guide on leaf blower use . And once you have moved all your leaves onto a nice big pile, you’re welcome to check out our suggestions on what to do with them next!
However, as we have demonstrated above, leaf blowers can be used in many other ways, which apply across the seasons and may be transferred into fall as well.
Final Words
This article has hopefully shown you that leaf blowers are versatile devices with numerous practical uses. But, in case these are still not enough, we have dedicated an entire article to give you even more ways to use blowers – some pretty creative, and in a few cases even bizarre – that you may find handy !
How do you use your leaf blower outside of fall? Let us know in the comments below!
