Thomas Edison would love our leaf removal breakthrough. Leaf blowers would not impress him. Why? They:
Edison advised, “There's a way to do it better—find it.” We did; we created a way to remove leaves from lawns without an engine or motor that is so efficient it can outperform leaf blowers, sweepers, and even tractors pulling powered lawn vacuums. We can do it without pollution, dust, vibration, or noise: our method is quieter than raking. Noise isn't just an annoyance: researchers found that it adversely affects physical and mental health as well as increasing the risk of dementia.
Leaf Magnets™ superbly remove leaves even in challenging cases, such as thick matted layers compacted by a long northern Michigan winter. Our method is better than every alternative, all of which have significant drawbacks, as summarized in this chart:
Lawn vacuums can ingest thousands of cubic feet per minute of air, thus they expel thousands of cubic feet per minute of air—all laden with mold, disease-causing germs, allergens, and toxic substances. Unless the leaf covering is thin, they typically push leaves that quickly accumulate in front of the nozzle (a phenomenon termed bulldozing) instead of sucking them up. Among their many downsides are a need to operate them slowly. Leaf Magnets™ utilize a new principle of leaf pickup enabling them to operate at any speed; they can be pushed or pulled, or towed by tractors or ATVs (“four-wheelers”) for exceptionally rapid leaf removal.
Want to save even more time? Leaf Magnets™ are so easy to use they can be operated by dogs: we can turn leaf removal into a game dogs love with you participating or not: you could be inside watching TV or working.
Lawn sweepers are usually pulled by tractors because their brushes waste energy, which increases the force required to spin them. That force often jams wheels so they skid (even on dry lawns; on wet ones: good luck), tearing up yards while removing few or no leaves, as shown below with orange arrows showing the sweeper's path and black arrows highlighting skid marks:
One of the many other drawbacks of lawn sweepers is that they are speed-sensitive, performing best in a fairly narrow range; exceed that, and leaves can shower into a plume passing over the collector, falling back down on the yard.
Mowers are OK if you have few leaves and lots of time. Rakes also move each leaf over and over again, creating blisters and sore muscles faster than clearing yards.
Leaf Magnets™:
As poorly as leaf blowers perform in perfect conditions, they're even worse in windy weather or when leaves are wet. A slight breeze (3 mph) can make leaf blowing more difficult while 6 – 9 mph can waste oodles of time as leaf blowers launch leaves into the air, often scattering them in unintended directions.
Until now, there's been no superb way to remove leaves from lawns or forests (leaf litter fuels forest fires: 1, 2, 3). If you care about health or the environment, or just want a remarkably better way to collect leaves, it's time to borrow a page from Edison's book and turn over a new leaf with a quantum leap in leaf removal.
If you are a qualified investor or manufacturer, or want to develop your local economy, we're eager to demonstrate what we invented. This is the first time in history something without an engine or motor (and optionally without a person) can outperform powered alternatives. Edison would be amazed. Needless to say, it leaves leaf blowers and lawn vacuums in the dust.