I moved tons of snow over the last couple of days with my little B7100. Sometimes you forget how much work it can do. We got about 20" of snow, so I cleaned everything twice, so that I didn't have to try and do it all at one time.
It got pretty warm yesterday, so you can imagine how wet and heavy it got. Our church parking lot needed cleaning (which is about an 1/8th of a mile from me), so the head trustee started working on it with a NHTC30/loader (which has a set of my stabilizers on it). I drove the Bota down there, figuring that I couldn't do much with the heavy work, but I could clean up behind him. Well, as we got into a rythm of things, me with the blade turned backwards and pushing in reverse, I could clear snow, too. As a matter of fact, I could clear a swath as fast as he could with the loader, cycle back faster because I have hydro and his is gear drive, and be halfway down the next row before he got started again. We cleared the entire parking lot by dark, and I could have kissed the Kubota. It did as much work as that 32 horse NH. Dean knows how to operate it, but the differences were;
1) The time effeciency of a hydrostatic transmission
2) He could push and scoop, which I couldn't do, but my four foot blade was faster than his five foot bucket, because once moving, I could increase my speed; he couldn't without clutching and losing momentum.
3) The Kubota, because it was smaller, was more nimble. I could move around faster.
4) The turf tires did at least as well as the R-4's on his tractor, if not better. Lots of biting edges help in snow/slush.
This wasn't a race; I am certainly not trying to shame Dean or the NH. I was amazed at the effeciency, effectiveness, and amount of work accomplished by a little old 16 hp tractor. This was a 100 car parking lot, and a daunting task. I fully expected to not be able to accomplish much, and instead did as much work as the bigger tractor. I couldn't do what he did (push and lift), but he couldn't do what I did (move fast and nimble).
The hydro never wavered, and I only burned about a half a tank of fuel.
Probably the best $3000 I have EVER spent.
Another member was supposed to bring a skid steer up (mine is down with a fuel problem, otherwise that would have been my tool of choice), but we did so well, Dean called him and said not to bring it.
, one in the morning with a 3" nail then a second this afternoon,cuase unkown
