By Mike Saxton – Manager of Ecological Restoration and Land Stewardship at Shaw Nature Reserve

There are certain tools/pieces of equipment that once you have them, you wonder 1) why didn’t I buy this sooner? 2) how did we ever get by without this? I think a PTO driven blower for firebreak prep is one of those tools.

Here at Shaw Nature Reserve, we have 19 miles of hiking trails and gravel roads, many of which serve as firebreaks. Whether blowing mowed tallgrass and clearing leaves from trails, a PTO blower saves time and resources.

Our roads are 12ft wide gravel then a 3ft mowed green shoulder. We then do a fuel reduction line, mowing down tall grass prairie with a 5ft Woods mower deck. We blow the mowed debris into the unit. We have essentially a ~28ft wild break along our gravel roads. Pretty sweet! Blowing off the fuel reduction line isn’t critical but it sure feels good on a windy day with low Rh.  

We have a few miles of woodland firebreaks. While we can blow them off in advance…we still have to make a return trip day-of to ensure the breaks are clean. More leaves always come down & high winds can move leaves back onto previously blown roads/trails. The morning of a burn can be hectic with loading equipment, checking and rechecking gear, making maps, etc. The ability to have 1 person head out on a tractor and clear/check miles of woodland fire break is a huge resource saver. It would take 2-4 people with backpack blowers to achieve what 1 person can do on a tractor.

We have had a buffalo turbine PTO blower for 7 years. It has performed well for us. Bill Kleiman wrote a blog post back in 2020 about various ways of blowing/clearing fire breaks

• Airflow is ~10,000 CFM (a nice Stihl backpack blower does about 900CFM at 195 mph)
• Air speed is ~175 MPH  (if you walk in front of it…it’ll blow your feet out from under you)
• Requires 20 horsepower at the PTO
• The cone rotates 360 degrees with an electric switch. But you have to throttle all the way down in order to overcome the force of the wind to turn the cone with the electric motor.
• The unit is long which can make slaloming through trees difficult. It’s tricky when going over really uneven terrain because it’s so long and thus easy to bottom out.
• Purchase price in 2017 was $4,800.