Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

  I recently moved into a house in suburban NY (Suffern) with a paved driveway of about 300 feet with a slight grade down to the garage.  Mostly single car width, one pull off spot of triple width and triple width for about 25' in front of the garage.  Plenty of room for throwing snow into the trees on either side, EOD is a cul-de-sac.  I am limited to the big orange box for my snow blower purchase (cashed in all my credit card points for $500 in gift cards when they were on sale at 20% off).  Right now I am leaning towards the Toro 726 OE, but wanted to ask the advice of the experts. 

  To me it looks like this $999 model is identical to all of the other models except it does not have power steering (free wheeling), and it has a 205cc engine and no headlight.  Is this the only difference, or are there other factors in the construction/materials that I should be worried about?  Toro has a comparison PDF here:http://www.toro.com/home/snowthrowers/gastwostage/tsn_490-8117NA_10_launch_ss_cen_lo.pdf and it only mentinos the above.   I have never used a snow blower before, but I am making the call that at 33 years old, I can still muscle the machine around the turn at the EOD and garage, should only need to make 5 or six trips up and down the long driveway.  Is this a crazy assumption?  Will it be miserable to make the turns, or no big deal for a healthy guy.  Also assuming that 205 CC Briggs & Stratton will get the job done.

  If anyone has made a similar choice, please let me know if there are other factors I should be considering, as you can see, I am pretty clueless when it comes to the snowblowers.  I also have a 6spd Jeep Wrangler, but after looking into plows a little bit it seems like it is going to be well over $3k to do it right, and might impact the front end life of the Jeep.

Thanks a lot,
Dan

Hi Dan, well my driveway is about 220 feet long has a huge EOD that's at least 30 feet wide that's a lot of sushy crappy crusty salted snow. Then I have a 40'x45' section off of that. My Toro 1028 does all that in about 1.5 hours. I have to get down to bare tar. So I tend to go slower. If I didn't care about leaving snow behind, I'd raise the scraper blade and speed it up. But I wanted bare tar because it's going to warm up and make the entire driveway icey, then snow again. Also I have an incline and that factors in. My EOD is much bigger than it looks in the videos. I have to throw it to one side because if I throw it too much towards the mailbox there isn't enough room and the rocks are small over there so they are hard to see. Generally, the slower you go the cleaner the driveway. I run in 2nd or 3rd gear depending. I haven't had it bog down even trying in higher gears with like 10 inches of snow. But it doesn't get it super clean either. Much better that it's done a bit slower and nice clean tar showing. If you don't have an 85 year old aunt who has broken her hip once already, go faster. Plus you have a 4x4. We don't, we drive too much and the gas would kill us on long hauls. I also like to feel I'm controlling the machine and walking too fast can be slippery.

My advice is to buy a slightly bigger machine than you need rather than one that is a bit too small for your needs. If you are doing a 200+ foot driveway and not a lot of narrow walkways the larger machines are an asset. If you have a lot of cars and narrow walkways to manuever through get a smaller machine. 24" versus 28" isn't that much bigger. My driveway isn't flat atthe bottom near the garage so if it was 48" wide it would miss a lot of snow. I could get away with using an Toro 826, but I prefer the 1028. The huge EOD is a factor for me and my 84 lb. wife can easily use it as well.