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Friday, March 04, 2016

Snow Plowing

The first summer after we moved to Idaho, I bought a little tractor.  It's a 13 Horsepower, 2 cylinder diesel tractor with 4x4, a PTO and a hydraulic bucket loader.  It came with a 4ft rotary tiller and a back blade.



The idea was that I could move snow off the driveway in the winter months, and push minor amounts of dirt around in the spring/summer/fall.  Unfortunately, it's under-sized for snow removal.  This compact tractor isn't much bigger or more powerful than a lawn tractor, and it takes forever to clear snow from the driveway.

When the snow is deep, most of the snow rolls off the sides of the bucket.  The bucket fills up quickly, and then the snow goes to the sides as the tractor moves forward.  I end up taking half-runs, which doubles the time it takes to clear the snow.

I've spent 2 hours at a time out in the falling snow on this thing, only to have the part where I started be covered again, and having to quit so that I could go to work.  I finally decided it was time to resolve the snow removal thing once and for all.



This is a cool plow, just a little nicer than the one we have to use at work.  The plow has lift and angle controls inside the cab of the truck of course, but what makes it nice is that you can set it to lift the plow automatically when you put the truck in reverse.  (or lift when you go forward, for back-dragging).  Cool stuff!

Anyway, between that and the new AWD commuter car, I should have the heavy snowfall thing finally covered.

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