Two weeks ago I watched a video review of a push sweeper. The guy reviewing it was using it to keep a 3,000 sqft warehouse clean. The main thing that caught my attention was its ability to pick up fine dust, the dust that causes you to go over the same spot multiple times with a fine bristle broom and smack it on the floor to get the dust out of the bristles. All of this adding to the time and effort to sweeping up the shop or garage. To this point I generally hit the floor with my electric leaf blower once or twice a week, then maybe once a month I'll sweep to get the edges, corners and all the fine dust. My shop will take 30-40 minutes depending on how carried away I get, so I decided to try a push sweeper.
There are quite a few to choose from, ranging from $100.00 to $5k before you get into the units that have water tanks. I chose the Karcher S 6 Twin, mainly because I have had good luck with Karcher products and it was the only "residential" unit I saw that you could buy replacement parts/brushes for.
When it arrived (Amazon Purchase) the box was in pretty rough shape.
Before opening it I found this black trim piece sticking out the bottom of the box, I wasn't sure what it was for or where it went because the unit was mostly assembled. Later I found this seal inside the dust bin and realized the black trim held it in place along the bottom edge. The problem was the end of the trim piece had clips that were broken off and it wasn't going to hold the seal in place properly.
The paperwork that came with it had a white warning sheet that detailed if you had a problem, not to return it to the store but call their 800 number which of course was a Mon-Fri help desk. Because this was a Saturday, I went ahead and put it in with one end not secure and pushed the broom one pass about 40' through my shop. In the lower right corner of this picture, you can see the seal sticking up because the trim piece is not connected there. The dust and debris are from that one pass.
In the upper left corner of this picture you can see all the fine dust on top of the sweeper, this is the side with the bad seal.
I was able to get ahold of Karchers help desk a week later when I remembered to call. They sent me a parts breakdown and even through the dust bin has at least four separate parts on it, the IPC showed it as one assembly. I sent them the picture of the broken piece and two days later I got an entire new dust bin. I definitely cannot complain about their customer service.
I have swept the grass clippings of the sidewalk, the garage once (1100 sqft) and the shop twice probably around 1500 sqft of area that can be easily swept.
So far, I am really impressed with how well it gets fine dust off smooth floors, and how quickly I can cover a large area. I think because of that I am likely to "sweep" more often. It does struggle a bit with wet grass and large items. I doubt Ill use it much for grass because I have a backpack blower that is much quicker and just spreads the clippings back over the lawn vs needing to dump them somewhere.
Overall, even though I have only used it a few times to this point I am very happy with how it works. It also folds quickly and can be hung from the handle at the front end or just stood against the wall on its end.
One other thing to update on is my wife's Cadillac ATS was rearended about two months ago. The insurance company totaled the car and that put us in the situation of needing to get her a car fairly quickly. She really had her heart set on getting a Cadillac AT4 which I was against being its now a last year vehicle along with the AT5 and AT6. I let her test drive one with the condition that she also drove a Lyriq or an Optiq. She has range anxiety with electric vehicles, once I talked her though that, she settled on the Optiq, it wasn't really a hard sell it has so much more power than the AT4 and the features were much better making the AT4 seem very dated.
Its 350hp all-wheel drive, based on its weight it's about the same level of performance her ATS was. We carpool to work and drive about 40 miles a day, which if my math is correct currently costs about $1.45 a day in electricity. To this point the 110-volt charger that came with the car has been more than adequate to keep it charged. I did purchase a level II charger though to take advantage of my electric companies' rates from 11pm to 5am of just over .05 kWh. I still have mixed feelings as well about it mostly its depreciation, it's very much a technology driven item and could easily depreciate very quickly. So far though we really like it.
No pun intended.
