The Billy Goat wheeled vacuum
Today we are looking at the Billy Goat wheeled vacuum, which Scott reviews from SA landscaping. You can see Scott’s video review further down the page. Last year I wrote a blog post about the Billy Goat KV601SP wheeled vacuum; you can read it here.
Today we have a new toy out with us. It is the Billy Goat KV601 wheeled vacuum. In the past, we have blown all the leaves with knapsack leaf blower’s. But now we will carry out most of the work with the Billy Goat. We didn’t actually have the Billy Goat wheeled vacuum demonstrated, however, I looked at lots of videos on YouTube and saw the potential.
I will run you through the machine and then we will show you some camera footage of the machine in action. So stay tuned; you’ll also notice we have our chipper with us today as we’re going to cut this willow down. You can see how much it’s grown in a year, around 12 feet or so. We’ll snip those branches down and also a couple of these branches to reduce the size.
The Billy Goat Wheeled Vacuum
So coming back to what we’re here for today. This is the Billy Goat 601 it doesn’t come with a vacuum hose, however, we thought this would be a useful extra.
You Can See More Wheeled Vacuums Here
To change from vacuum sweeper to vacuum hose, we have a cap on here and a bar across the bottom. Without the bar on, it would just suck up like a normal vacuum so you remove the sides and then it turns into the vacuum for the car park. I will show you around the back and show you optional the hose, like I said, this is an extra attachment. It just clips in here, it is a fairly bulky hose, but it does the job. So you just flick it off like that and we go along the car park with it, and then it sits nicely back on the kit. It’s not rubbing on the floor or getting in the way.
There are four large plastic wheels on the machine; this particular model is a self-propelled model. I noticed that it takes a while to get used to the bag; there are some instructions, but it is a bit fiddly. Initially, you can either take the bag off or empty it or just take it off the top here. Just clipping it off and lifting the whole thing off, but it’s not the easiest way. The easiest way is to drop this bag, flick it up, and open it out. And then you can just pull the leaves out under a pile.
Loading A Truck Or Van
However, if you’re loading a van or truck up, then you’ve got to leave that shut. Then you would just clip these top bits off here and the whole bag just slides out the back.
There is a decent chute which is a decent size to get the leaves into the bag. Well, as I said, it takes a bit of getting used to. You must first fold the sides in, do it correctly, and then fold it up. It’s all numbered, so it makes it easier; it’s just a bit of an art doing it for the first few times.
You can see here that I am folding the second flap down, and then it clips back in. So once you get the hang of it, it’s a doddle, but initially, it takes a few sessions to get it set because if you put that side in the wrong place, then the leaves will just come straight out back. So you may remember we did this a few weeks ago and as you can see, just about all the leaves are off the trees now. There’s a little mound where they’ll be blown down there next to the car park. This mound of leaves will just be blown to the grass area’s back. The whole area will be cleaned off. So we’ll get the machine operational with the hose first just to show you the channels of how the hose works and then drop on and take the plate off.
One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that it is self-propelled but I have hardly used the self-propelled function. I have just been pushing it because it’s like a shopping trolley! It really requires minimal effort to push the Billy Goat leaf vacuum, so I wouldn’t bother to put it into drive. So if you’re going to spend the extra money, I would just purchase the push model.
The Billy Goat Works On Wet Grass
On the wet grass, you’ll notice a couple of bits the Billy Goat missed. Obviously, this is a children’s playground, so some areas are trampled on and wet so you have to pass over twice. However, it gets 99.9% of the leaves and debris. To be fair, yes, you would usually have a man going around afterwards with the hose.
As I mentioned earlier, you don’t have to purchase the hose, but it’s a useful optional extra. It would probably almost be as quick for a man to go along with a traditional backpack blower. However, as we have the hose accessory, we are making the most of it. I certainly would recommend the optional hose accessory, as it’s great for getting awkward spaces. It can also pick up rubbish and other debris in public areas.
To Conclude
The Billy Goat garden vacuum is a great asset to any garden or a contractor who is looking to clear leaves and debris. It is great for clearing leaves and debris in gardens as well as for clearing car parks and lawn areas.
As mentioned earlier in this post, the machine is available without the vacuum hose. I feel it’s actually a useful asset that makes the machine more universal.
