Product Preview: Toro Power Clear 180 gas-powered snow blower

If you're in the market for a new snow blower—perhaps one tested for our October 2009 report on snow blowers (like our full ratings, available to subscribers)—you probably don't want to wait too long to buy one. One morning soon enough you'll wake up to find your driveway and walks blanketed by a thick layer of snow that needs removal. Just ask the folks in Colorado who were recently greeted by a major snowstorm.

At the 2009 Green Industry and Equipment Expo, outdoor-power-equipment makers announced many new electric- and gas-powered snow blowers, one of which in particular caught my eye: the Toro Power Clear 180 (shown), which costs about $400 and is sold at Toro dealers and some Home Depot stores. The 180 is one of several Power Clear models Toro announced, and we hope to provide our first impressions of it soon.

The single-stage, gas-powered Toro Power Clear 180 replaces the Toro CCR Powerlite 38182, which we had judged a Don't Buy: Safety Risk because it and the similar 38172 lacked a key safety feature, a handlebar control to stop the auger when released. The Power Clear has a bail that stops the engine as per a voluntary industry safety standard, and releasing it should eliminate the safety risk associated with the 38182/38172. (The company has discontinued the 38182 and 38172, though they might still be available through some online retailers and on eBay.)

The Power Clear 180 has some other enhancements over the 38182/38172. It's powered by a four-cycle overhead-valve engine and provides an 18-inch clearing width, 2 inches wider than that of the 38182/38172. As with other single-stage snow blowers, the design of the Power Clear keeps the blades in contact with the ground, propelling the unit, and this model has a locking deflector on the chute, which means the snow leaving the chute stays at the set height. Finally, both the chute and handle on the Power Clear fold down for easier storage.—Ed Perratore | e-mail | Twitter | Forums | Facebook

Essential information: Check out our free buyer's guide to snow blowers for more details. And to find the right model for your home, use our interactive feature "Snow Blowers: Which Is Right for You?"

Tip of the Day: Drain the carburetor bowl on your lawn mower to protect the engine

As we covered in "Is Fuel With an Increased Level of Ethanol a Problem for Small Gas Engines?" there's growing concern over the effects that gasoline-ethanol blends like E10—that's 90 percent gasoline and 10 percent ethanol—might have on small, nonroad engines on lawn mowers and tractors and other outdoor power equipment.

If you're concerned about the possible effects ethanol might have on your gas-powered mower or other equipment that will sit for long periods in storage—including a string trimmer or leaf blower—remove the remaining fuel from the tank and then empty the carburetor bowl before you stow gear for the winter. The simple project will help keep your gear in good working condition.

Even if you've run your equipment dry as part of your usual end-of-season maintenance steps, some fuel can remain in the bowl of the carburetor. If you don't drain the bowl, you might see some of the telltale white residue and related corrosion associated with ethanol blends. Four-cycle engines in particular seem prone to the buildup, although two-cycle engines can also suffer from the problem.

To empty the carburetor bowl in your mower:
• Run the engine dry, then let the machine fully cool.
• Locate the carburetor bowl. It's a cylindrically shaped device with one or two bolts on the bottom (shown). If there are two bolts, the off-center one is a drain, which you can use to get rid of any fuel without removing the bowl; place a container beneath the carburetor and remove the bolt. Any fuel present should trickle out.
• On some engines, such as the Tecumseh carburetor shown, the single bolt is for removing the carburetor bowl itself. Also while holding a container beneath, remove the bolt, pull off the bowl, and drain it. Wipe out the inside of the bowl.
• Whether or not you need to remove the bowl, it's a simple task to drain it and tighten everything back up.—Ed Perratore | e-mail | Twitter | Forums | Facebook

Essential information: If you're in the market for a new snow blower, read our latest report on single- and two-stage gas and electric models and updated free buyer's guide and ratings (available to subscribers).

What's new on ConsumerReports.org: October 2009 home-related content

Tests that reveal the pros, cons and long-term costs of pellet-burning stoves and solar water heaters headline the new Energy Saving and Green Living Guide that we've published in tandem with these stories from our October 2009 issue. Among the key findings:

• Pellet stoves and solar water heaters. Our Alternative Energy overview reveals how both pellet-burning stoves and solar water heaters could reduce heating costs. But their high prices ($1,300 to $3,900 for pellet stoves; $2,200 to $6000 for solar water heaters, not including installation) and in the case of pellet stoves, higher operating costs (burning pellets is more costly and more polluting than burning natural gas) can lengthen payback times. Both also require upkeep and maintenance. Ratings of pellet stoves and an interim report our solar water heater testing are available to subscribers.

• Simple energy savings. Cut your Energy Bills lists more low-cost and cost-effective ways to reduce your utility bills, including specific tactics for heating and cooling, water consumption, and electricity use.
 
• Tracking federal incentives. See qualification criteria, installation costs, and annual monetary savings from the many energy-savings products and projects eligible for a 30 percent federal tax credit. We also describe how energy audits (done by private firms or on your own with help from government Web sites) can spot home energy wasters.

• CFLs now offer savings and style. Choosing the right compact fluorescent lights is another great way to cut your electric bills. They've been showing up in more and more fixtures, and our ratings (available to subscribers) include models that will work in conventional lights and recessed and track lights, outdoor and flood lights and porch/post lights.

• Readers share mattress ratings. When it's lights out, tap into the wisdom of 17,444 Consumer Reports readers who shared their ratings of the best mattress brands and retailers.

• Vacuums for tough times. Our report on Vacuums rates the performance of both the high-powered high-end and low-priced (but still well performing) models that manufacturers are rolling out during this recession.

• Standout shower towers. Our tests of shower towers revealed three models that could provide an invigorating spray while staying within federal water-consumption regulations and avoiding surcharges imposed by some utilities for heavy water use.

• The scoop on a robotic gutter cleaner. We unleashed the iRobot Looj 155 robotic cleaner on some sections of leaf-clogged gutters and found its promise exceeded its performance. Subscribers can read the full report here.

• Snow blower problem. We found a Toro snow blower that lacks an essential safety feature and gave it our Don't Buy: Safety Alert rating. But safe and cost-effective blowers did abound in our new ratings of 17 models (available to subscribers).

• Green dishwasher detergents wash out. Our tests of three phosphate-free dishwasher detergents also proved disappointing, although you can find capable phosphate-free performers in our August 2009 review of dishwasher detergents.—Gian Trotta | e-mail | Twitter | Forums | Facebook

Essential information: Find our more about upcoming increases in federal incentives for energy-efficient appliances.

Tip of the Day: How to avoid injuries when shoveling snow

As I found out a while back, it's pretty easy to hurt yourself when shoveling snow. My sciatica flared up after I shoveled out from a December snowstorm, laying me up the week after Christmas and dampening my New Year's spirit. While the photo shows me and my daughter in a prepain moment, I'm still limping around a bit several weeks later.

To avoid the apparent mistakes I made, follow our advice so that your wintertime shoveling doesn't become more than just an annoying chore. (You'll find some eco-friendly ways to get rid of snow in this story from The Daily Green.)

First, make sure that you're in good enough physical shape to tackle the task. "People don't appreciate that snow shoveling is a very vigorous form of activity," says Mary Fran Hazinski, a registered nurse and the senior science editor for the American Heart Association's Emergency Cardiovascular Care Programs.

Hazinski urges you to take the AHA's online self-assessment test to gauge your risk of a heart attack before attempting intense exercise like shoveling. Meet with your doctor to discuss troubling results and, if necessary, to develop an exercise program that will prepare your body for strenuous activity. In the meantime, you can hire someone else to shovel or plow your property.

Even fit folks need to maintain proper shoveling techniques and procedures to avoid the chance of injury. Snow shoveling and ice removal results in about 31,000 injuries annually, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

"First of all, do not smoke or drink caffeinated beverages before shoveling snow. These stimulants increase heart rate and cause blood vessels to constrict, so that not enough blood will reach the muscles, and you'll be even more susceptible to cold and fatigue," notes Silvana Fix, D.P.T., a doctor of physical therapy with Spine and Sports Rehab in Fairfield, Connecticut. But do drink water before, during, and after you shovel to prevent dehydration and muscle cramps. Here's more smart advice from Fix:

Clothing
• Dress in layers that allow ease of movement.
• Wear a hat to prevent body heat loss; waterproof boots with soles that provide traction; and thick gloves to keep your hands warm.

Tool of the trade
• Use an ergonomically designed snow shovel with a curved handle, which helps keep your back straighter and reduces strain on your spine. Be sure the shaft is long enough so that your back stays straight when shoveling.
• Choose a shovel that gives you the option to push or lift snow, and apply a bit of silicone-lubricant spray to the shovel blade to keep snow from sticking to it.

Can a deicer damage my driveway and harm my plants?

We've been slammed by several nasty winter storms recently. I don't want my driveway and walks to turn into dangerous skating rinks, but can snow-melt products and deicers damage those surfaces or harm my grass and yard?

Snow-melt products and deicers are designed to weaken the bond between the ice or snow and the surface and not to completely melt all the wintertime stuff that Mother Nature drops on your property. After snow melt/deicer loosens the bond, you should shovel off or sweep away the snow or ice to prevent it from bonding to the surface again.

As for damage to your asphalt or concrete driveway and walks, snow melts/deicers usually aren't the culprits. Those surfaces usually are damaged by freeze-thaw cycles and not directly by chemical reactions between them and snow melts/deicers. Still, these products do contribute to freeze-thaw cycles by creating water from frozen precipitation. When snow or ice melts, water can penetrate into the pores of asphalt or concrete. When that water refreezes, it expands and exerts pressure on the walls of the pores, causing pieces to spall, or flake off. You can reduce this problem by applying a sealer to asphalt and concrete surfaces in the fall.

When it comes to the vegetation surrounding your driveway and walks, applying snow melts/deicers too frequently or too heavily will increase the likelihood you'll damage plants and grass. To minimize the harm, in early spring if seasonal rains don't arrive, flush the soil around the areas you treated this winter with a good dose of water.

Use snow melt/deicers sparingly and according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Essential information: Find out which snow blowers have stood out from the pack during our preliminary tests.

My snow blower ate my newspaper

I usually can't start the day without eating up the latest news, even with the heavy dose of doom-and-gloom coverage in recent months. But recently I decided to spend a few minutes clearing several inches of snow from the driveway with my new snow blower before I tucked into breakfast and the morning paper.

Soon after I cranked up the snow blower and began clearing the driveway, I heard a sudden Phthwb! just before the engine cut out. "Phthwb? That's an odd noise?" I thought. I made sure the blower was stopped before I peered down the chute only to see that day's edition of The Wall Street Journal, scrunched tightly in its tattered protective bag. Unfortunately, my snow blower had gobbled up the newspaper, which was fully buried by the overnight snowfall.

Unfortunately, I hadn't followed the advice I'd doled out a few weeks earlier about how to safely use a snow blower. You're supposed to remove everything from the area to be cleared to avoid clogging the chute and damaging the snow blower. So much for dispelling sage advice.

But once the snow blower had ingested the Journal, I did do things right before I extracted the paper: I shut down the machine, removed the ignition key, and made sure the auger and impeller had completely come to a rest before I wrestled the paper free. As you can see from the photo, I had to get my daily dose of depressing news elsewhere that day.—Ed Perratore

Essential information: If you're in the market for a snow blower, read about our preliminary testing and our last report on snow blowers. Also check out our interactive feature "Snow Blowers: Which Is Right for You?" to find the right model for your home.

Tip of the Day: Use a gas leaf blower to clear light snow

Over the last couple of weeks, at least three coatings of light, powdery snow fell on my house in the New York City suburbs.

For such scant accumulations, pulling out my spanking new 24-inch snow blower—which I bought based on our preliminary testing—would have been overkill. So I put another new toy to work: a gas-powered leaf blower that replaced an electric model I'd used for more than 13 years.

Within 15 minutes each time, I was able to clear two cars (including my elderly neighbors') and my walk, deck, and driveway all the way down to the stone and asphalt. Plus, the leaf blower cleared what a big snow blower can't—the front steps. (Leaf blowers are best suited to light-snow accumulations of an inch or so.)

Using a leaf blower this way isn't always appropriate. When the temperature starts climbing toward and above 32°F after it snows, everything gets wetter, and a blower won't be as effective. There are also some precautions to take. The manufacturer of my new machine notes that when you clear snow with a gas blower vac, you need to inspect the air filter for snow and ice buildup and the air-intake grid to keep it clear of ice and snow.

What's more, "There could be instances of ice forming inside the carburetor venturi that would cause future running problems after prolonged running with high humidity or blowing wet snow," says a Stihl spokesperson. Stihl also advises against using an electric blower even for dry, powdery snow. If you do use an electric model—as I occasionally used to, given the right snow—for safety's sake, be sure to plug into an outlet with a ground-fault circuit interrupter.

One lesson I did learn the hard way is that my new gas leaf blower runs hotter than my old electric. One day when I lifted the blower to clear off the deck rails, I grabbed its engine instead of the blower tube. Let's just say my pinkie fared better than the glove.—Ed Perratore

Inside CR Test Labs: Snow-Blower Workouts

While Mother Nature has dumped a decent amount of snow on the Consumer Reports headquarters this winter (as you can see in the video, right), early on in the testing cycle for snow blowers, the white stuff was limited.

In mid-December, testers began preliminary work using wet sawdust, since it can simulate the consistency of snow, feels like snow, and acts like snow when it meets a snow blower. Project leader Peter Sawchuk and technician Bill Taylor directed the machines through a lane covered with 6 inches of wet sawdust then measured how far the sawdust traveled.

In another test, Sawchuk cleared what he called a "plow pile," an 18-inch-high x 30-inch-deep mound that simulates what municipal plows push up against the edge of your driveway when they clear the streets. The dense pile represents the toughest challenge a snow blower faces—fail to deal with this snow-and-ice heap and it could linger until spring—and performance here is a good measure of how well a snow blower works.

Other initial tests for the snow blowers included workouts at a local skating rink, whose Zamboni produces lots of ground-up ice when it resurfaces the skating surface.

The testing crew also brought the snow blowers to a private airstrip in upstate New York. They ran the machines through their paces on a 30-foot-wide airstrip and had the more capable models clear a 220-yard-long path from a county road to the airstrip itself. While we won't publish our full report until next fall, here's what we can tell you so far:

Two-stage models are more powerful—and pricier. On these machines, a fast-spinning impeller behind the auger (which cuts into the snow and channels it up through the chute; every snow blower has an auger) adds more height and distance to the throw. The wider the impeller, the better a snow blower can tackle a heavy snowfall.

Promising models in preliminary testing have been the 30-inch Troy-Bilt Storm 3090, $1,100, which has a wide impeller, and the 27-inch Ariens Deluxe Track Sno-Thro 927 LET, $1,000. The Troy-Bilt (shown with Sawchuk blowing sawdust) has a joystick with which you control the snow-throwing direction and angle. This feature can be helpful, though we're finding cranks to be more precise. Both models have four-cycle engines that are less likely to stall out when the blower ingests too much snow at once.

"The Ariens is built heavier than the Troy-Bilt, but that makes it more difficult to maneuver," notes Sawchuk. "The Troy-Bilt's maneuverability, plus the way it dug under compacted snow, has made all the difference for us." He adds that the 28-inch Toro PowerMax 828 also being tested shows promise, though at $1,700 it is expensive.

Other impressive models so far include the 26-inch Yard Machines 31AM63EF700, $700, and 24-inch Craftsman 88955, $580, both four-cycle, two-stage models made by MTD. (The Yard Machines 31A62EE729 and Troy-Bilt Storm 2410 Snow Thrower are virtually identical to the Craftsman.) These have performed nearly as well as the Troy-Bilt and Ariens models and are less expensive.

For smaller driveways, the 16-inch, two-cycle, single-stage Toro Power Clear 221Q 38583, $680 (shown), and the 20-inch, four-cycle, single-stage Honda HS520AS, $800, have been impressive. The two-cycle-engine Toro has the edge in power.

We're also testing corded electric models, which so far we don't recommend unless snowfall in your area is typically a couple of inches or less and you need to clear only a deck or walk.—Ed Perratore

Essential information: Read our report on snow blowers and use our interactive feature "Snow Blowers: Which Is Right for You?" to find the best snow blower for your home.

Forum Friday: Blowing hot and cold

Last week, product reliability was a hot topic on our Appliances and Home & Yard forums. This week, we noticed some nice reactions to recent reviews, ratings, videos and blog postings:

Several members are weighing in on the pros and cons of gas furnaces that use a variable-speed blower motor.

At the other extreme of temperature, our new video on snow blowers (right) came out just in time to provide fodder for the "Snow- which blowers throw farthest" and "2 stage snow blower" discussions that have recently sprung up.

We've also just published a First Look on the new Hoover U6485-900 upright vacuum, and a "Hoover WindTunnel vs Kenmore Progressive" discussion has fans of each vacuum making their cases.

Tip of the Day: How to safely use your snow blower

As of mid-December, the area around our Yonkers, New York, home base has received only a dusting of snow. But other parts of the country have already been dumped on, which means that millions of folks have schlepped out their snow blowers. These wintertime workhorses can certainly make easier, faster work of driveway and sidewalk clearing, but as with any outdoor power equipment, they pose some inherent risks.

So before you crank up your snow blower, read and follow our safety tips and these from the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute:

• Read your owner's manual thoroughly and understand all of the recommended safety procedures before starting your snow blower.
• Before the snow hits, remove doormats, sleds, boards, wires, and any debris from the area you'll clear to avoid clogging the chute and damaging your snow blower. These objects will be hidden from view once they're buried beneath the snow and could become dangerous thrown by the snow blower and could potentially injure bystanders.
• Handle gas carefully. Avoid spillage by using nonspill containers with spouts. Store gas in a clean, dry, ventilated area—never near a pilot light, stove, or other heat source. And don't smoke around gasoline.
• Don't let your kids operate the snow blower. And keep people and pets away from the area you're clearing.
• Don't clear snow across the face of slopes and use extreme caution when changing directions on slopes. Don't try to clear steep slopes.
• Never run the snow blower without good visibility or light. Be sure of your footing and keep a firm hold on the handles.
• If you have to repair your machine, remove an object, or unclog built-up snow from the auger blades or chute, always turn the snow blower off and wait for moving parts to stop. When cleaning snow use the supplied snow-removal tool or a broom handle, and never put your hands into the chute or near the auger. If you need to work on the machine, disconnect the spark plug wire or, for an electric snow blower, unplug the cord.—Ed Perratore

Essential information: Read our report on snow blowers and use our interactive feature "Snow blowers: Which is right for you?" to find the best snow blower for your home.