Building a Leaf Vac

I have a good sized homemade cart and a 6.5 hp briggs laying around. Figured i'd make a removeable leaf vac system for my cart. The cart is a no brainer, but how would I make the vac. Thought maybe a chaff blower off of an old combine and 6 inch flex plastic tubing would work.

I'm Nuts? Maybe. Then again, I don't see spending $1299 on a plastic cart vac.. just for 5 hours of use a year.

I have one that I will give you if I have it yet.

Rob, I don"t know what resources that you have, or the level of your experience, so alter this as you need. How a vacum works is a blower pulls air from a chamber creating a low pressure side and discharges that air to the surrounding air. Place a 55 gallon drum on your cart. Mount a squirrel cage blower as so the suction is drawn from the top of the drum. You will need to fabricate some type of screening to prvent the leaves from being blown back out the blower. This needs to be heavy enough duty to also prevent the blower from taking the screening into itself. You will need to fabricate a surface to attach the engine and blower, which will most likely be belt driven, ducting from the drum to the blower and a port to attach the suction hose to. I would place the suction port high on the drum, possibly on the top, but better about 10" from the top. I would want the line from the drum to the blower to be about twice the diameter of the suction line, if not more. This is to allow for greater suction. Remember that you will need to empty the drum, so don"t simply affix the engine and blower directly to the top of your drum, and make the line from the drum to the blower detachable.

Watch ebay. I got the blower, hoses and deck boot for $20. Shipping cost $80. I spent another $30 on plywood to build a box that sets in a 2 wheel cart I already had. If you try to make your own, the impeller would need to be balanced. The one in my blower is pretty much a square 4 paddle set up.

I bought one years ago, and yes I only use it about 8 ot 10 hrs a year but it probably saves me 25 - 40 hours of raking.

Yes I wouldn't buy a plastic one for $1300, first of all it is plastic, secondly it probably doesn't work very well.

Keep your eyes on craigslist, I see older steel blowers there for reasonable prices pretty regularly.

What ever you do, have at least a 8-inch intake. Mine came with a 6-inch mower boot and intake hose. I upgraded the mower and the boot to 8-inches and made a new intake flange for the blower. With the 6-inch hose I used to get clogged 3 to 6 times each time I did my yard. Now basically clogging is not a problem.

You don't want the blower on the otherside of the hopper as suggested below - these things work by sucking leaves and what not through the blower.

Also, a barrel is too small. My hopper is about 40 cubic feet. That is a good size, I wouldn't go less than about 25 or 30 cu.ft.

Whatever you do it won't be cheap. 11 feet of 8-inch intake hose cost me nearly $300 ($25/ft plus tax).