also

[rmd]

assuming i get a job soon enough to profit from my severance payout, i am totally buying a snowblower of some kind before next season. (thus making sure that we have no appreciable snow that year, presumably, because weather likes to be funny like that)

Comments

[cz_unit]

Just a thought: Buy a strong one. Just as a data point, we have 10 inches of wet, heavy snow on the driveway. With the Elec-trak+snowblower I'm pulling close to 400 amps at 36 volts when chewing through it at a good speed, which equates to a raw horsepower of about 15 at stall speeds.

Given that a gas engine rates HP at high RPMs and given the losses in belts and transmissions this would equal 25-30 gas HP. So get the biggest one you can man-handle around.

C

[rmd.livejournal.com]

actually, the constraint isn't my ability to manhandle the snow blower, but the width of driveway + truck so I can get the snowblower from behind the truck or car to the front of it. I haven't measured the exact space available, but it's on the order of 24" with the truck parked tight against one side of the driveway.

[cz_unit]

*nod* That makes sense. The Elec-Trak has a 42 inch auger, so it's pretty big but my theory is to move the cars to the top of the driveway, blow out the driveway, then roll the cars downhill and go between them to get to the top.

Updating my numbers, I was pulling 575 amps at 30 volts at just below stalling the auger speed. So about 23hp while chewing through the 2 foot packed street-plowed snow at the top. That's a lot, but derate if you are only doing 24 inch swaths.

Wow.

C