Agri-Fab 45-0492 44" Tow-Behind Lawn Sweeper, 25 cu. ft Hopper Bag Capacity; Leaf & Grass Catcher, with Adjustable Brush Height and Dump From Seat Handle

UPDATE: I received a great e-mail from Agri-Fab's customer service manager, John, regarding the below suggestions. John offered me a hat and t-shirt as a thank you. Not a hat/t-shirt person and wondered if a replacement hopper bag might be possible. Not expecting to receive this thank you gift, it was a huge surprise to find it on my doorstep this morning. Agri-Fab's customer service is the best that I've ever encountered. I fully expect that future versions of the product will most likely incorporate some or all of the below suggestions. Thank you, John!This is a great back to the century item that makes yard clean up a breeze. With about 1/3 of an acre, it took us less than 2 hours to sweep up all of the leaves with one important modification to the sweeper. Replacement parts are readily available from this US company and especially important for the brushes and bag, which will wear with use.For utility, it receives 5 stars. HOWEVER, see our below hacks to make it function as it should...There are some serious design flaws that require modifications to make it perform as expected. The most important design flaw is with the unit itself. The front of the plastic enclosure is too far off of the ground even when the brushes are set at the lowest setting. It kicks some leaves/debris out the front instead of all into the rear hopper. The fix is super easy, but Agri-Fab needs either a significant re-design for this sweeper to work as expected or leave it as is and manufacture our fix below as a bolt on solution. The fix?We cut a piece of rigid rubber 3.5"W x 26" long and bolted it to the front bottom about 0.5" above the bottom edge. This corrected the problem completely and doesn't interfere with the sweeper doing its job. Now the sweeper deposits 100% of the leaves/debris into the rear bag. It even sweeps up our crab apples.Next design flaw - the handle is way too thin to grip properly and a blister maker. We modified it with some high density foam zip tied to the handle. No more blisters and much easier to grip.3rd design flaw - the sides of the plastic brush enclosure are flimsy and should have metal plates to make the sides rigid and prevent the handle from eventually tearing away from the unit because the plastic cracked. We anticipate that the sides will fail - they hold the handles and stand in place - and we reinforced our with metal plates bolted to each side.Last design flaw and an irritating one - the metal ends of the bottom stand have 2 plastic caps supplied by the mfg. They fall off. Once lost in leaves, they're impossible to find. There's no reason to ever remove them, so we glued ours. But, for a few pennies Agri-Fab could have these permanently affixed at the factory instead of making the consumer do it.Finally, replacement parts are expensive. We think that it gilds the lily to charge $69 for a replacement bag made only of tarp plastic. C'mon...In Agri-Fab's marketing materials, they asked for a chance to make it right. It will only be right if they send us free of charge a new, re-designed unit and lower the cost of replacement bags. We received a free replacement and have no quibbles with this level of customer service. With the above hacks and a replacement bag, we now expect years of service from our lawn sweeper.

Right off the bat, you need to do something about the front of the device. It will spit a good amount of debris forward as opposed to into the bag. Simple enough fix, I took two pieces of heavy duty duct tape and stuck them onto the area in front of the brushes, that helped a lot. Construction is easy enough.Works better than expected on small sticks. Chewed up leaves without any problem. I have 5 full grown trees on my property that drop a ton of seeds in the spring and a ton of leaves in the fall. Wasn't ideal for the helicopter seeds but I did cut my lawn two days prior to using it, I should probably use it immediately after a cut. That said, I did buy this for fall leaves, so I'll see how it goes. Anything it did on the spring debris is a positive.Not ideal if you have an uneven lawn, but you can make it work. Finding the right height is crucial.It is a workout. But I hate raking and it beats raking in my opinion. If it is too hard to push, you probably have the brushes too low. Once I found the sweet spot I was able to cruise pretty well.Regarding the helicopter seeds, it doesn't do terrible on them. But you probably want to get on then as soon as they fall. The longer you wait, the more they sink in towards the ground, the harder they'll be to uproot. On my first use, I got about 40% of the seeds. Second pass got about 20%. I'll cut the rest with my mower.All in all, not a bad product as long as you get your height set right and understand what it is and isn't capable of. Well built for sure.

I thought this sweeper worked very well. It doesn't pick up every little leaf/twig, but it does a really great job of picking up most easily. I read a lot of mediocre reviews for this before I bought it, so I was skeptical, but it's better than many reviewers give it credit for.Make sure to adjust the height correctly. That's the most important thing, and it's very easy to do. You should be able to feel the brushes brushing the ground. You want that to add a little resistance to your pushing but not so much that it's difficult to keep the sweeper moving. Level ground also helps as plenty of other people have mentioned, but it works fine on hills and slightly uneven ground.I disagree that it's only for light jobs. Our house backs up to a wooded area, and we get tons of leaves. But I could raise the sweeper to its largest height and pretty much tackle any pile of leaves. You won't get it in one pass by any means, but go over it a few times, lowering periodically if needed. It'll work. I actually think piles were easier than a large, light spread of leaves.The hopper is plastic and it fills up quickly. I don't get why this is a common complaint. It's a leaf collector. You want to it collect quickly. If it was any larger, it'd be unmanageable. It's a good size for transferring into a trash can/bag. You can fill up the hopper in about a minute, so you will spend most of your time emptying the hopper rather than sweeping. But that doesn't mean the hopper is too small. That's just how fast the sweeper works. As for the plastic durability, I haven't had mine very long at all, but it seems durable enough. It's made out of material like a common tarp, and we're just temporarily holding leaves here.The assembly isn't bad. Set aside an hour and you probably will be done early. The instructions aren't that difficult. You need some basic tools, really just a couple of wrenches. A hammer and needle-nose pliers will make your life much easier on the palnuts.This sweeper doesn't 100% pick up everything or eliminate the need to own a rake. In fact, it really works best if you rake leaves into little piles or rows that you can sweep over. My wife raked into rows that I swept over and we finished both of our seriously neglected, leaf-covered, not entirely level lawns in about 2 hours. That was 6 completely full 39 gallon trash bags of leaves. That would have been an all day project before.Clearing your lawn still takes some work, but this provides a massive reduction in the amount of that work. And it really doesn't take a ton of storage space when you're finished with it. It's easy to use and very effective. I highly recommend this product.