I'm Aaron Graber with ventrac and today we're gonna go over the ventrac leaf
plow. The leaf plow is one of the simplest attachments in our lineup. It's
sole purpose is to help move high volumes of leaves.
Some of the features that make this possible are the poly bristles on the
bottom, the rubberized containment wings, and the expanded metal in the center
section of the plow that allow the operator to see through to the leaves
they're working with. We were inspired to create this attachment because there was
really nothing available to the true commercial users out there who do high
volumes of leaves and have problems getting by with traditional equipment.
Anybody that's dealt with high volumes of leaves know that with a traditional
backpack blower or even a turbine blower like you can get on a ventrac, there's a
threshold that you can't get past. When you have enough leaves that those
blowers can't keep up, they build a wall of leaves that you can't blow over or
around. At that point the only way to remove those leaves is to bring a vac
truck in or to push them to another area. It's not likely that a leaf plow will
replace a blower in your fleet. It's more meant to work alongside a blower. A
blower does a really good job of clearing the ground completely so
there are no leaves left at all. But it gets overwhelmed when you reach
those high volumes. A plow handles the high volumes really well and helps
relocation, but it's never going to be perfectly clean sweep on the ground.
Because of the need for a blower along with a plow we also design this to be
able to run on the rear of a ventrac so you can run them both in tandem. To do
this on a 4,500 tractor you'll need a three-point hitch in a 3 and 1 receiver.
This attachment requires no PTO or hydraulic stopper. This also means
that you'd be able to run the ventrac leaf plow on any other piece of
equipment that has a category one three-point hitch. All you need is our
three and one receiver to go between the two and you be able to use this
attachment on any of those pieces of equipment. During the development of this
attachment we consulted with various municipalities and large campuses to see
how they would use a product like this and then make tweaks accordingly. One of
the best examples of the functionality of this leaf plow is one of the park
districts we worked within the development. So what they typically do is use a few
vetracs with turbine blowers and they'll blow those leaves into a center
area and then they have a vac truck that drives around and picks up those areas.
And what they were able to do is use the leaf plow to push those leaves towards
the vac truck in more of a central area and keep the turbine blowers working at
their most efficient pace. All while the vac truck stays put and picks leaves up
all in one sho. Ultimately this sped up the operation, reduced man-hours and was
a cost in labor savings for the municipality. The biggest gain in
efficiency you'll notice from the leaf plow is that you don't have to be as
aggressive about chasing leaves as they fall. With just a blower you have to
follow the leaves every time there's a light covering otherwise you'll get
behind and you won't be able to move the pile. If you have a plow in conjunction
with your blower you ever will let more leaves stack up and then you can
actually push those leaves out. So you're sending guys out less times and when you
send them out you're spending less time doing the task.
Operation of the ventrac leaf plow is
very simple. It attaches to the hitch arms on the front of the tractor or to
the rear three-point of the tractor and you run it in float. It's not recommended
to run any weight transfer with this attachment because you want it to be
engaging the ground as much as possible. This leaf plow can be run in high or low
range depending on your conditions and the terrain you're working on. The center
portion of the leaf plow has a 60 inch operating width and the overall
operating with is 78 inches with the containment wings attached. This leaf
plow is 50 inches tall and 28 inches in length. The only technical setup
requirements for the leaf plow are to make adjustments based on your own
preferences and conditions for how the brush contacts the ground. How much space
you leave between the bristles on the ground depends on how aggressive you
want to be and how your turf can handle it. If you have really quality
established turf that can handle it and you want to get as clean a sweep as
possible you can go down to maybe an inch or less of gap. You also want to
make sure that at all times the bristles are nearly vertical to the surface
you're working on. That allows them to catch the debris underneath fling it
forward and provide the cleanest sweep possible.
The pitch of the bristles is adjusted by a combination of the bolts on the hitch
arms and also the adjustment in the caster wheels. As the bristles wear down
you can also lower the whole bristle assembly in the unit so that you get
longer life out of the bristles themselves. When the bristles are worn
out completely you can replace those bristles as a unit and keep your same
leaf plow running. The containment wings are also designed to be replaceable so
that if you have an impact with a tree or some other obstruction and you bend
the wings you can replace those as an individual part. The rubber flaps on the
side and bottom are built to take small impacts because we know not every
surface you're working on is a perfect surface. Because of the soft nature of
all of the contact points to the ground this plow doesn't need a trip function
and it can actually be operated at fairly high speeds forward.
Depending on when you're watching this video, leaves might not be at the front
of your mind but we know that if you have leaves to take care of, there's
gonna be a time in the fall four to six weeks where they're an absolute pain for
you and this attachment will completely change your world and how you manage
those leaves. When there's a huge pile to push, you can push it. With the ventrac
leaf plow. Thank you for watching this video on the ventrac leaf plow. For more
information on this attachment and our other products visit us online at
ventrac.com. Be sure to subscribe to us on YouTube and follow us on all of our
other social media.