frogtog

I put in the vacuflo bagless system a few years ago. Although the suction is good I do not like the bagless system. It is very messy to clean up the canister and the unit whenever the you have to maintain it. Its ok if you only have to empty the bottom "tank" but you have to clean the upper part too. There really is no good way to clean it without getting up there with your hands and brushing the screen and pull out all the gunk. Dust all over. You better be wearing a mask. Terrible. If I knew this prior I would have gladly gone with the bag system. I brought this up to Vacuflo early on but they were not receptive to doing anything. I really wanted to switch to a bag system. I thought I would be saving from buying bags but I would rather do that than put up with the bagless maintenance.

And then theres the hydrostatic drive vs the disc drive.....

My 2 cents. I happen to be in the market for a 2 stage snow blower and doing my online research. Glad I came across this forum. I am making comparisons with Ariens, Cub Cadet and Toro where I noticed the various names they called their drive systems. Ariens calls theirs Disc-O-Matic and the others simply said self-propelled. The engineer that I am got me curious so I googled the terms. I realized then that this is the same old technology used in some lawn tractors. It may be reliable but it IS antiquated. I am quite surprised that manufacturers have not retooled and just made hydrostatic a standard instead of asking a premium price for them. When I bought my JD lawn tractor years ago, my main criteria was to get a hydro drive to replace my gear driven Simplicity. Needless to say I never looked back. The fact the mfrs don't go in to too much detail about the disc drives tells me they are holding back very important information for a consumer to know. I was leaning towards an Ariens at first as I do have a 5hp paddle push type Ariens blower and have been happy with it. They do make a hydro blower but appears to be more than double the price of a disc drive. It looks like I need to do some in depth shopping to see what I can get out there that suits my budget without compromising.