I ordered this chipper shredder after studying the reviews, thinking it would serve my purposes reasonably well. After the first use, I am quite pleased.
I have six trees in my back yard that litter my lawn with sticks and small branches every winter, and spring cleanup has always been quite a chore. Collecting the mid size branches (many of which are about one inch thick) that fall to the ground every year is one thing; packing them up for the trash pickup is the real chore. In the past that has meant cutting them up and packing them into lawn and leaf bags so the trash service will take them. Ugh... time consuming and generally a job that is no fun at all. I was hoping the chipper shredder would save the the trouble of cutting them up with my loping shears and pruning shears, and bagging them. This unit did quite a nice job for me; I was very pleased.
Assembly: not too much to do here except assemble the wheel frame and wheels, which went smoothly and quickly. I am a bit concerned that the screws that attach the wheel frame to the unit did not snug up as I normally would expect them to; they behaved almost as if they were stripped. Since this happened with both screws, I wondered if this was intentional, part of the design, for some reason. We'll see if I have any problems with the wheel frame remaining secured to the unit. I did not experience any problem along these lines during today's first use--the wheel frame seemed to be secured in place as I wheeled it around the lawn.
Usage: I collected branches and twigs, both medium and small, and put the unit through its paces. It performed well. All the branches laying out on the lawn were dry from sitting there over the winter. The branches that were reasonably straight went right through the shredder with no problem, and were reduced to very small chips; an excellent result, just what I was hoping for. The small twigs were reduced to smaller twigs--maybe three to four inches in length--which is entirely acceptable to me, for my purpose, which is to get all this lawn waste substantially reduced in size and comfortably into trash bags.
The twigs that were irregular in shape would not flow through the chipper readily, as did the straight branches. This is where the paddle/pusher comes in handy. I found I could take a small handful of twigs, position them at the intake, and push them through with the paddle. Once I got some confidence with the paddle, this process of pushing the twigs through became quite easy and quick. You can indeed push the paddle with confidence, the design of the unit is such that the paddle, even when pushed to its maximum extent, will not contact the spinning cutter. Once I starting using the paddle with some reasonable effort, the irregular shaped twigs went through with ease. I found I used the paddle quite a bit during this first usage; it became an important part of the routine of using the machine for me.
A few notes: the unit does nearly everything I need it to. I do wish it could handle branches of a bit larger diameter, but in all fairness, it does seem to handle the branches for which it is rated -- that is, up to 1 1/2 inches in diameter. The unit does the job for which it is designed. The paddle is a real plus: as an experiment, I trimmed a couple branches from one of my bushes--branches that were very irregular in shape. Getting on those with the paddle and pushing them through the intake with some reasonable effort, that did the trick, the machine shredded them right up. The unit is not any louder than any other lawn care equipment I own. Only once did it jam today, and the processes of freeing up the jam is quick and easy: unscrew a knob, push back the shield/cover, and it's easy to clear it. No problem at all. It ran just fine on my heavy duty extension cord, and the large wheels make it easy to cart around the yard to the various branch piles I had made. I wore my safety goggles, and I do recommend this, for sure: the machine is designed such that the chips do reliably feed down through the unit, but all the same, wear the goggles. Basic safety rules call for goggles when using a piece of equipment like this, so why not take this simple precaution?
If the unit holds up and keeps performing like it did on this first use, I will change my rating to five stars. It had a five star performance today, but I need to see a few more of those five star performances before I give it a five star rating overall. I also want to see if the wheel frame holds up over time and stays securely attached to the unit.
For the price, I'm quite happy with this piece of equipment after this first use. I think I would have to spend about three times the money to get something more substantial in terms of capacity, and for the most part, I just don't need more capacity than this unit will accommodate. I did have a few ends of branches that I judged to be greater than the diameter for which this is rated (1 1/2 inches). When I got to those thicker ends, I opted to just toss them into the trash instead of fussing with them and stressing the unit beyond its rated capacity. No big deal at all to toss a few 8 inch long, thicker end pieces into the trash can. And speaking of the trash can--I like the flexible collection bag supplied with this unit. It sits under the discharge chute and collects the chips and small twigs, and when it gets full (it has a good capacity, by the way), since it is flexible, it is easy to pick it up by the handles and empty it into a large trash container. Overall, without this shedder/chipper, I estimate I would have had 10 to 12 large lawn/leaf bags full of cut-up branches and twigs. Having shredded them, I had only two small bags of wood chips and very small twigs (the twigs that passed through the cutter were still reduced in size, to about 3-4 inches in length)...instead of 10-12 bags, I had two small bags, just as I had hoped.
Again: 4 stars for a nice first outing with this machine, and if it repeats this performance a few more times during the season, I will up the review to five stars.
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Amazon Customer
Works as advertised. Works well.
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Should be clear they it does not work on green yard waste without plugging up.
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