All the snow that we can blow ... on a budget
December 7, 2018 6:09 AM   Subscribe

We've unexpectedly been given (actually, my husband won) a $750 gift card for Home Depot. We'd like to turn this into a new snowblower. Can you help us pick one that, uh, doesn't suck?

Here are your parameters:
- Must be available on homedepot.com
- Must be no more than $800
- Must be gas powered

We have a fairly short urban driveway (about four cars long in total), but we also need to clear sidewalks on the front and side of our house. We live in Maine, and can get up to 12"+ of snow at a time, although more often this will be used for snowfall in the 5" - 9" range.

We are strongly considering this Sno-Tek model, which seems to be popular and well reviewed, but neither my husband or I are mechanical people and I'd value your input.

One other thing - my husband is 6' 6" tall, so something he can use without hunching over is good.
posted by anastasiav to Shopping (14 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I live in California, and have never touched a snow blower, but the Wirecutter recommendations are always well regarded. They love the Toro SnowMaster 724 QXE, from homedepot, at $750.
posted by blob at 6:28 AM on December 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


Ditto the Toro 724. Live in Mass, got it last winter, and loved it. I'm 6'3" and it was comfortable for me to use.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 6:40 AM on December 7, 2018


Somebody on MeFi recommended Snow Joe electric snowblowers. Some have batteries, some require a cord. Amazon shipped me the wrong one - it had a battery, but was able to clear a recent fairly wet snow. I have returned it and they shipped the correct one, so of course it hasn't snowed (you're welcome). Quieter, much less pollution, no maintenance, gas, pull start. I use an electric lawn mower, in 10 years I have cut 1 power cable. My driveway is longish but I have no sidewalks.
posted by theora55 at 6:47 AM on December 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


After having a snowblower with electric start, I would never buy one without it again. Since Home Despot does not offer any reasonably-priced units with that feature (both are over $1200, and one has tracks, I would sell the gift card for $700 cash and go to Ace Hardware and get this Craftsman unit for $680 that has it.

Honestly, the worst part of snow blowing was futzing around with priming and choking and pulling pulling pulling. It was like a nasty Dr. Seuss story that was sweaty and exhausting. Now I plug in the cord, fiddle a bit, and wrr wrr wrr boom!
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 6:51 AM on December 7, 2018 [3 favorites]


I am ... skeptical ... of the idea of an electric snow blower in Maine. My 8 HP gas unit can move 12 inches and is clearly working hard to do it, and 8HP is around 6000 watts, which is at least twice what you can squeeze through an extension cord. Has any reader used one of these on deep heavy snow?
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:03 AM on December 7, 2018 [8 favorites]


Seconding Gilgamesh's Chauffeur's recommendation to get an electric start. The snowblower is only going to be used a few times a year, and otherwise will be sitting someplace cold. It can sometimes take a lot of yanking on the starter cord to get a cold snowblower started up.

I can remember from the halcyon days of my youth in the Boston area when we would have a snow day. Inevitably my mother would make me get up early, saying something to the effect of, "Go help your father clear the driveway. He has been been trying to start the snowblower for 25 minutes and he is... um... a little agitated." I'd go out to the garage where my red-faced and furious father would have tired himself out pulling on the starter cord to no avail. Meanwhile, all that effort would have warmed up the motor and I'd be able to get it started with one fierce pull by my 16-year-old self. You'd think that would improve his mood. But nope, it sure didn't. Granted, pull-start snowblower technology may have improved in the intervening 30-odd years.
posted by slkinsey at 8:00 AM on December 7, 2018 [5 favorites]


Response by poster: Gilgamesh, theora55 is my neighbor, so she's using one in Maine. However, we don't have any way to plug in an electric snowblower outside without hundreds of feet of cords.

FYI, both the snow-tek we were looking at, and the Toro Snowmaster have electric start, so I'm not sure why you think HD only has expensive ones.
posted by anastasiav at 8:04 AM on December 7, 2018


I have a several years old 24 inch Craftsman model similar to the one in that wirecutter review, and it worked well for my sidewalks and a couple hundred feet of paved alley over 7? years. It has always started on 1st or 2nd pull, but I also sometimes use the electric start, to make sure it still works.

that Sno-tek looks nice to me, the auger drive gear housing looks pretty robust.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 8:55 AM on December 7, 2018


If you want to have some $$ leftover, you might consider this Troy-Bilt for $600. We've had it for a couple of years in the White Mtns of New Hampshire, and it's been great. Also of note: after I sucked up a dog tie-down leash (that's plastic-covered steel cable to you and me, Russ) into the augur, the Troy-Bilt support people were AMAZING in getting me the parts I needed and all the service manuals I could handle. I seriously couldn't believe how helpful they are. Not sure if their competitors are like this.

NB: do not suck up steel cable into the augur.
posted by nosila at 9:37 AM on December 7, 2018 [3 favorites]


I assume I will need to clear snow a couple times during a storm, which I do by hand currently. The one they sent did clear 5-6 inches of pretty wet snow, though not necessarily with ease. The chute clogged a lot; I carried a wooden spoon to unclog it. In retrospect, I suspect I should have gone to at least the next most powerful model. The plug-in versions are slightly more powerful than the battery ones, but they do make pretty strong battery-driven snow throwers.
posted by theora55 at 10:01 AM on December 7, 2018


Another vote for Troy-Bilt here. Do be aware that the spout is *ahem* a little suggestive
....oh.....slo-mo.....
posted by tardigrade at 11:11 AM on December 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


Go for the largest engine available in your price range. The manufacturers no longer state horsepower as those numbers were often bogus in the past, but the 291 cc engine in my Ariens handles heavy snow fairly well. A 200 cc engine can struggle with wet snow.
posted by leaper at 11:16 AM on December 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


I've been using a Troy-Bilt 2410 for a couple of years, and it's been adequate for everything Northern MA has thrown at it. Your budget would let you buy an even more capable machine.

I also have a corded Sno-Joe, which I use to clear the deck. It does that, but it's an ergonomic disaster. The handle is angled so it's really hard to keep the trigger depressed, and it keeps shutting off. Then, I have to move my hand to squeeze the safety lockout and the trigger. It is annoying, and becomes a strain.

Besides steel cable, other things you don't want to wind up in your snowblower auger: doormats, toys, pets, Sno-Joe power cords ...
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:38 PM on December 7, 2018


I have a lifetime's experience with snowblowers. It's the substantial snowfalls when you really need to use a snowblower, so it's important to select a model that is up to the job. That means, don't go too small. You'll regret it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that snowblowers need occasional maintenance and repair. Even if you're confident that you can do the maintenance yourself, parts may break when you're using the machine, so that's when having a local repair shop that can pick it up and maybe even drop off a rental while they fix your blower is critical. Find a place nearby that does small engine/yard equipment repair and find out what brands they work on. You don't necessarily have to buy the snowblower from them, but you'll want to know if they can provide you with support when you need it.

My main concern with the Snow-Tek model is that you might have difficulty finding parts and anyone willing to work on it after a few years. I've learned that the smaller brands have a shorter useful life in terms of replacement parts availability and finding places that'll work on them. There is nothing more infuriating than owning an expensive machine that would otherwise have years of life still in it, except that a crucial part can't be found locally (when you need it, you need it NOW) or is no longer available because the company stopped producing replacement parts for that model.

The Snow-Tek is typical of most snowblowers in that it uses shear pins to protect the auger if/when something gets into the chute and obstructs it from turning. A shear pin is designed to fail, stopping the augur from turning and protecting it from damage. If you're clearing the bottom of the driveway after the plow went by, there might be icy snow boulders in the mess that obstruct the augur - the shear pin breaks. Or you might run into a good-sized twig or a newspaper buried inside the snow. When this happens, you trundle the machine back into the garage, knock out the broken pin(s) and replace with fresh pins. Meaning: you have to buy shear pins and keep them on hand. And hope that they're still available for your model ten years from now, because a make-do replacement pin might not fit right, might not break at the right time.

Which is a roundabout way of getting to my suggestion: go with a Toro, a national brand with an excellent reputation. Specifically, look at the Toro PowerMax 824, which meets your budget requirements, and is also available from Home Depot.

The PowerMax snowblowers don't use shear pins. The augur is designed to slow down when it starts to bind, and to stop entirely if it is blocked from turning. That means you don't have to stop to clear out wet heavy snow, you just walk a wee bit more slowly and let it adjust itself. If it encounters a branch or an ice boulder, the augur will stop turning - that's your signal to turn it off and clear the chute. No shear pins to buy, store, and desperately search for.

The PowerMax also has a joystick-style chute handle. This is so much easier to maneuver than the conventional crank-style handle on the Snow-Tek. Its chute is made from a plastic designed to be extra resilient even in extreme cold - which means, when the augur flings some small ice boulders through the chute, it won't break.

And parts and service for Toros are so much easier to find, because it is a national brand that's been around forever.
Thus, I would go for the Toro over the Snow-Tek.

If you've never used a snowblower before, something to be aware of: the augur gets its power from the engine via a belt. As the years go by, that belt will start to stretch, and as it stretches, the amount of power the augur has to expel the snow decreases. Eventually, your powerful machine (flings snow 40 feet!) might only be able to throw the snow 10-12 feet, or even less when the snow is really wet and slushy. That's the sign that it's time to replace the belt, after which your snowblower will perform almost like new again. (Belts occasionally break, too - another reason to have a local parts supplier.)

Final piece of advice: whatever model you end up buying, look into buying snow chains for the tires. No matter how rough and tough the tires look, they will bog down in snow on slopes and it's a royal PITA dragging a heavy snowblower that's stuck spinning its wheels. Even on a flat surface they'll enable the snowblower to move more smoothly and make your job easier. Expect to pay between $40-$80 on average for a set of chains - oh, and make sure you can buy some for the model you want.
posted by Lunaloon at 5:43 PM on December 7, 2018 [4 favorites]


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