Right now it’s January 31st and so far here in the suburbs of NYC it’s been a snowy winter. After any snow storm the first thing I have to do is clear the driveway. My driveway is a hill and it’s uphill to get out of it. Without clearing the driveway cars can’t make it up the hill. If I want to go out I have to get the snow out of there.
I have a John Deere riding mover. It’s an LT155 that I’ve had since the year 2000. It’s a bit old and battered but it still runs and gets the job done. Except for this last storm.
A couple of weekends ago we had two snow storms. On Saturday the 17th I cleared a few inches of snow off the driveway with the John Deere. Then on Sunday another inch or two fell. I hopped on the tractor, started it up, but as I went to plow the engine cut out. I started it multiple times but it wasn’t going anywhere.
Tractors in general, and mine specifically, have a safety switch on them. If there is no weight on the seat and the brake is taken off then the engine cuts out. A dead man switch. That’s what I suspected went wrong. The switch on the seat.
Luckily I had a backup. A few years ago a friend of my mother’s gave me a Toro Electric Shovel. It’s like a mini snow blower. It’s corded so you have to plug it in but I have a long outdoor extension cord for such tools. The Toro is only twelve inches wide and can only handle snow up to around six inches deep but it got the job done. It’s a bit heavy and takes some effort but it’s much better than shoveling. I was happy to have it.
The next thing I did was to order a new seat switch for the tractor. It came in on a day my brother in law was over. He’s a guy who is really good at fixing stuff. We put the seat switch in (an easy task) and then started up the tractor. As soon as the brake was off it stopped running. So much for an easy fix. My brother in law took a look at the tractor and discovered a second safety switch. This one was on the brake. Two dead man switches?!? That sounds like overkill to me.
I went inside and looked on the internet to order a new brake safety switch. This all took place on a Tuesday. That’s when I ordered. The problem was that there was a big storm hitting us the coming Sunday. A once in a decade size snow storm. The switch was coming by post office (there was no option for getting it faster) and the projected date of it arriving was from Friday to Monday. The store posted it on Wednesday but then it sat in a Florida post office for three days. I don’t think it even got out of Florida until Saturday. Needles to say it didn’t arrive in time.
On Friday my brother in law was nice enough to bring me over a big snowblower he had lying around. At first he had to get it started but he did. He showed me how to start it, it was gas powered and had a pull cord, and it started up for me on Friday easily.
On Sunday afternoon at around 12:30 PM I decided to clear the driveway. It was still snowing but there was already six inches on the ground. I went to start up the snow blower but it was about 10ºF out and the thing would not start. Pulling the cord was super hard. It felt like the engine was swimming in molasses. I was getting so tired trying to start the snow blower that I decided to switch to the Toro.
It’a a good thing I went out when I did because by the time I got the Toro out there was probably eight inches of snow. With that small twelve inch Toro it took me two and a half hours to clear the driveway. By the time I was done the part I had started with was covered again.
According to the internet a Toro Electric Shovel weighs 16 pounds. You have to push it through the snow and then drag it back to where you started to push it through the snow again. It’s a lot less work than lifting the snow as you shovel but it is still a bit of work. It’s very tiring on the arms and shoulders but easy on the back.
After I cleared the driveway that first time I was back an hour later to clear it again. I cleared four more inches this time. That took me an hour. After that I took a two hour break and then went back to clear another three inches. As I got to the top of the driveway it was covered in snow yet again so I turned around and cleared the driveway again of one to two inches of snow. That took me an hour and a half total.
After that I was done for the night. It was about 8:30PM as I finished. The next morning I went out for an hour and a half and cleared the last two inches. It took so long because of the snowplow clearing the road and pushing the road snow into the top of the driveway. The show was at least a foot deep and four feet wide up there. I had to skim the 16lb Toro on top of the pile and go across two or three times to move the snow. That still beat shoveling.
This was the most amount of snow we have gotten in about ten years. After the second time I cleared the driveway I went out into the middle of my yard and stuck a yardstick in the snow. It measured 14 inches. After the third time I cleared the driveway I did the same thing. The snow still measured 14 inches despite me clearing three more inches off the driveway. I would say we got about 16 to maybe 18 inches of snow but it’s not easy to measure as my measuring shows.
On Monday I was really tired. I mostly sat in a chair all day and rested up. On Wednesday the part for the John Deere arrived in the mail. On Thursday I put the part on and the tractor ran fine. I went out and cleared the very back of the driveway that I didn’t bother clearing with the Toro. It’s all good now but I sure wish that part arrived on Friday. It would have saved mea lot of pain and effort.