Snow blowers: they’re really not cheating

Over in the US, where some areas get more snow, more often, than we do in the UK, snow blowers and snow throwers are a much more frequent sight than over here.

Your average Brit can’t shake the feeling that it’s cheating to let a machine take the strain – they’d rather toil away heroically all day with a shovel, only to see their work covered up by another snow storm half an hour later.

But using a snow blower makes a lot of sense if you have a large area to cover – a corner property with a lot of frontage, perhaps, or a long drive. And if you suffer from backache at the best of times, or if you’ve been warned not to put your heart under too much strain, doing it the hard way is unquestionably a bad idea.

It’s in circumstances such as these that a snow blower comes into its own.

Of course, you’ll have to make a judgement call about whether you get enough snow in your area to make the cost worthwhile but, if it is, you’ll find a variety of sizes of machine available – from household size to ones big enough to tackle a commercial premises.

Most snow blowers have little in common with the hand-held leaf blowers that their name resembles. Instead, they’re more like lawn mowers. Some are self-propelled and some require pushing – but all are a lot less trouble than a shovel!

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