- Hi, I'm Parris and, like most people,
fall means a yard full of leaves.
But, here in Central Texas, we have leaves, part two,
when the live oak trees lose their leaves
at the start of spring,
so I'm looking out and it's almost snowing
with the leaves falling out of the tree.
Now, it doesn't usually bother me.
I just look out at the yard and say,
"My, that's a lot of leaves,"
but this year I thought I would try something different
with a device that's like a vacuum.
It will actually suck up the leaves
and there's a grinding portion of it
that grinds the leaves into little pieces like mulch.
There's a bag if you want to collect them,
but I'm not really interested in having the leaves taken
out of the yard.
If I wanted to do that, I could just rake them up
or have someone in the family rake them up,
put them into bags and put them out as yards waste.
The city will collect them and compost them.
But, that's what I want:
I want the composted leaves to be in the yard,
both to fertilize the trees and the grass.
So, this year's experiment is trying out
this piece from Black and Decker.
(gentle guitar music)
♫ Epic Review Guys
- Now, this three-in-one unit from Black and Decker,
the BV3100, goes for just under $50.
I picked it up over at Lowes.
Yes, it is also a leaf blower which I have issues with,
leaf blowers, at least how they're used around here
where people don't use them
to put all the leaves in a pile to collect;
they just blow all the leaves
out into the middle of the street,
so when the wind comes up,
they blow into everyone else's yard.
So, I'm not a fan of leaf blowers and I know this is one,
but I'm gonna be using mostly, at least,
the vacuuming and the composting function
to see if I can improve some of how my yard looks.
So, instead of having fully intact leaves lying
on top of the grass, they can be mulched up
into tiny pieces, ready to biodegrade
and provide some fertilizer for the lawn and the trees.
If you're interested in this device,
I'll put a link to it down below this video.
The other reason I bought this is because we have
a solar panel installation on the roof
and, the last couple years, squirrels have built nests
up underneath between the panels
and the shingles of the roof, lots of leaves and twigs
and we have a roof leaking problem
that the people tell us is mostly from those nests causing
the water that flows down the roof to back up
and form a pool which then sits there
till it soaks down through the roof.
So, before the squirrels get busy with year number three
of building nests, I want to take this leaf blower
and blow out the leaves and twigs
that they've put under the solar panels.
I'm not going to include that in this video,
'cause I don't think that same use would be
of interest to so many people.
Here's the heart of the unit.
Now, they do have bigger, more powerful units you can get
if you have a larger yard or acreage
or a bigger space you're going to be working with.
This is supposed to be right for the average city lot
which is about an eighth of an acre.
The next size up is for a quarter acre, and so forth.
It comes with the large fat tubes
for doing the vacuuming and the smaller tubes
which you assemble and attach for doing the leaf blowing
and the bag to collect the mulched leaves.
Oh, and it looks like, so I can wear this over my shoulder;
I'll really look professional, out there.
On top is the power and speed switch.
You can choose between the 150 mile an hour
and 250 mile an hour winds.
It will blow out 300 cubic feet of air per minute
and the device itself weighs about seven pounds.
It took just a few seconds
to attach the leaf blower utility.
To use it in Vacuum Mode, once you've shut it off,
unplugged it, made sure that the fan's no longer spinning,
you can press a button, here,
(latch clicking) open this up,
and then the larger tubes will connect, in here.
I feel like I'm going to war, here.
Okay, this in its, in all its unwieldiness is
how it's used as a vacuum to pick up the leaves,
grind them up in here and put them into this bag.
I think I am ready to go and here's what I'm up against.
These, by the way, are my electronic Tiki torches.
If you missed my review of those, I'll put a link to it
at the end of this video
and I'm gonna do a follow up, this month,
on how these are working out.
So, here is my leaf situation.
Now, this is an electric mulcher-vacuum-blower,
so it's supposed to be quite a bit quieter
than the gas ones, but I don't think, by any means,
it's gonna be quiet.
See if this ends up pulling me across the yard,
let's go to level one.
(motor whining)
Touch the leaves.
(leaves crunching) (vacuum whining)
That did mostly fill the bag up
(leaves rustling)
and I don't know that I got as much mulching action
out of that as I was expecting.
They're a little bit chopped, but I was thinking
I was gonna get a lot smaller pieces than this.
(leaves rustling)
The box advertises a 10 to one mulch ratio;
what would take 10 bags, before,
should now fit into one bag.
I'm not seeing that kind of compression
with the mulching job it's doing for me.
For a side-by-side comparison, I've poured out some
of the contents of the mulching bag, on your left.
On the right is what's originally still sitting in the yard
and you can see the leaves are broken up
into smaller pieces.
I don't see that 10 to one compression, though.
I poured the mulched leaves back into the spot
where I vacuumed up the original leaves.
I thought it was gonna be finer powder
and little grains I could pour in, water it
and then it would wash down between the blades of grass,
but I don't think that's happening, either.
Maybe at the higher power setting, it'll do a better job
of grinding it up.
Let's go for level two.
(motor whining) Whoa!
(leaves crunching) (vacuum whining)
All right, another full bag in that short amount of time.
Well, I think it sucked it up faster,
but I don't think it ground it any finer
than on the lower speed.
So, that's really not doing what I want it to do.
I suppose I could go through the cycle again
of vacuuming it up and having it ground up a little smaller,
but that seems like and awful lot of work.
I think, maybe, this is why people get frustrated.
They try to use the leaves as a mulch in their own yard
and, in the end,
they just put on the leaf blower attachment,
turn it on high. (motor whining)
(leaves rustling)
(coughing)
I think I'm wearing more leaves
than actually got blown around the yard.
Well, leaf blowing is more fun than raking.
I may end up putting them into the lawn waste bags
and putting them out for the city to compost.
While I think this Black and Decker three-in-one unit did
what it's supposed to do,
I think my expectations were just a little too high
that it would really mulchify those leaves
and turn them into all tiny little pieces.
There is some compaction, though, going on
because I'm sure I could fit a lot more
of that ground up leaf material into a yard refuse bag
than I could before with the full-sized leaves.
In an case, I will be using its leaf-blowing prowess
to help clean out the leaves and twigs
that are jammed under the solar panels on the roof.
I'm waiting for Jimena to get home
before I climb up there, just in case I fall off,
there's somebody to look out the window
and say, "Hey, look at that."
I was using it with one hand,
because I had one hand holding the camera,
and, even so, it was still, it's not that heavy
and it was fairly able to point where I wanted it to go,
so I'm sure with two hands
and the bag slung over my shoulder,
I'd be able to go through and work the yard pretty easily.
The bag, as you saw, filled up pretty quickly,
but I do have a very thick layer of leaves.
This Black and Decker electric BV3100
three-in-one mulcher, vacuumer, leaf blower
is a pretty good deal, I think,
even though it didn't do exactly what I wanted it to.
I'll put a link to it down below this video.
You can keep checking back for that follow up video
on my electronic Tiki torches and other videos
or you can click that Subscribe button, down below.
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See you on the next review.
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