Little Wonder (29") 205cc Walk Behind Litter Vacuum

Regardless of whether you buy the push or SP Vac, you will have the same problem (I own both). The nozzle will consistently pop off the pins designed to hold it in place. At first, I thought my crew was being too rough so I used it myself all day and found that the nozzle will bounce off the holding pin with just a little bump or knock which you can't keep from happening. On my push vac the problem was so bad I drilled my own hole and ran a bolt through a new hole and secured it myself. On my SP Vac, I used a small clamp on one side but now realize I need to clamp the other side or drill holes and secure it with a bolt and lock nut.
On the push (non-SP) vac going left and right is quite difficult and rough terrain (like a yard) is a non-starter. Little Wonder should install swivel wheels on the push vac. I have a set on order and plan to convert it to swivel wheels just like the SP Vac.
Finally, the metal on the bracket that holds the discharge bag in place is so cheap that it broke on both vacs. In both cases, I purchased thicker metal and replaced the cheap metal provided by Little Wonder.
I reached out too Little Wonder to provide some product feedback but they didn't seem interested in feedback from an owner-operator in the field.
Don't get me wrong the vac does what it purports to do, but the cost is such that one isn't expecting to have to make modifications to get it to perform well.

I bought this Little Wonder HPV about 3 years ago, I use it commercially as I own a Lawn and Garden Maintenance business, I have 2 commercial properties One 6 acres and the other 5 acres, fulll of Maple trees and Oak, this has saved major time in leaf removal, I noticed many are saying the knozzle keeps hitting the ground, well it is not rocket science that is what the adjuster is for! raise it up an ich and away you go, both pavement and grass no problem at all, there is no other professional vacuum on the market that works as good as the Ltttle wonder HPV !

I'm only posting this review because I found other peoples reviews to be so helpful, and felt I should return the favor.

My wife and I bought a house a few years ago in an older neighborhood because we wanted full grown shade trees around our house. While we thoroughly enjoy all that shade, the downside are all the leaves and acorns those trees produce.

The first year we used a leaf blower to round up the leaves in piles around the yard, then use our bagging lawnmower to pick the leaves up. The mowers bag would quickly fill up, we would have to dump that in a larger craft paper bag our city requires for lawn waste, each paper bag taking 3 or 4 mower size bag loads to fill it. After collecting all the leaves on the ground this way, we would have to go back with a rake to gather, then shovel up all the acorns. Then we would pull a cart around the yard to collect all the bags and set them by the street. We bagged around 115 of those large craft bags of leaves, and 12 bags of just acorns (didn't fill the bags but half way since they were so heavy).While it was a pretty good system, it was labor intensive, the mower didn't pick up acorns, and it didn't do a very good job shredding leaves so we had a lot of bags sitting by the road every weekend. The weekend work effort is around 6 hours for two people and even longer if I have to do it myself.

I did a bit thinking on how we could reduce the number of steps (translation I'm a slacker and always looking for an easier way to do things), and optimize the whole process and decided a yard vacuum with integral shredder was what we needed.After some research on yard vacuums and from the feedback from numerous websites, pretty much all of them would pick up leaves, the problem was the acorns. I got conflicting information regarding that topic but most folks said the Little Wonder yard vacuum seemed to do better than most. I found a good deal on one locally the beginning of summer, an older 2004 Little Wonder HPV that was in remarkably good shape. Since it was still summer, I had to wait until fall rolled around to put it to the test.

One of the reviewers on here complained he couldn't push it around. Clearly this was an operator error, had he adjusted the nozzle intake a little higher off the ground (it is easily adjustable by the way) his problem would have
resolved itself. And yes, if I put the nozzle flat down on the ground, the vacuum is plenty strong enough to fix it to one spot and it is all I can do to push or pull it. I have two grand daughters, 9 and 12 years old, both normal in stature for their ages, and they can push it without too much difficulty when the nozzle is adjust properly. Of note, it is more difficult to push up hill, and stop going downhill so if you have any grade to your yard, I'd recommend going with a power propelled version. Mine lacks that feature and in some parts where I do have a little slope, I do notice the extra effort to control it and I don't let the grand daughters operate it except in level areas of the yard.

So Fall has started, and mostly acorns are falling now. Our grass is cut at 3.5 inches and in front we have a Texas Live Oak with small acorns. One pass at full throttle and it gets 90 percent and even in deep grass it still does a pretty good job, so I take another pass from a different angle and that usually gets the rest of them. In our back yard we have a White Oak with acorns about 3 or 4 times the size of the ones in front. With the same throttle and nozzle settings, it gets 60 to 70 percent in a single pass. I usually have to make a couple more passes at different angles to get the rest, since the grass is kind of tall and tends to lay over the acorns in one direction more than others keeping the vacuum from being able to get to them, but usually it get almost all of them in those few passes. Of note, I don't have to do the whole yard this way, only under the trees that produce acorns.

So instead of setting the cuttings out by the street, we have decided to try composting, mostly so we can recover the dirt the vacuum pulls up with the leaves and acorns. Dropping the bag at around 3/4 quarters full (about 6 bushels) I can see the it has done a very good job shredding the few leaves that have fallen so far, and busting up the acorns as well. Now I can do the front yard, driveway and backyard in about 1 hour by myself, and only expect it to take 2 hours once the leaves start falling. I estimate I was having to stop and dump the bag on the lawn mower 12 to 15 times to the Little Wonders 1 full bag since it is much larger, and clearly does a better better job of shredding leaves.

My only three complaints
1.) If you have fresh dirt on the ground, the vacuum is going to pick it up. This isn't too big a problem since I'll get it back along with new dirt once the composting is done next spring.
2.) Takes up a lot of space when it is not being used.
3.) Wish the nozzle adjustment could be controlled from the operator position instead of having to stop and adjust it. Depending on grass depth, lumpiness of your yard, roots and such, fine tuning the nozzle on the fly makes a world of difference.

I hope my review was helpful.

Thanks!

First off, this is the first lawn vacuum that I've ever used. I rented this locally and am simply posting the review here for the benefit of others before making a purchase.

In short: the HPV works but has numerous flaws. The suction is powerful, the build quality appears to be solid, etc. However, you absolutely cannot push this thing on grass. Even on level ground, the nozzle digs in. I struggled for a half hour and in the process cut up parts of my yard trying to move forwards. Note that this had nothing to do with lack of self-propulsion - the "self-leveling" nozzle just rubs against everything. You can FORGET pushing this up even the slightest grade. As a 28 yr old male in good health, I was totally surprised by how physically exhausted I was after just a half hour (and how little I had vacuumed).

After that, I walked backwards and pulled for the rest of the day. It was still a frustrating experience, though. The unit is heavy and it took all my strength to pull it up a 5 deg. grade. That's not even the worst part, though.

I am absolutely baffled why the nozzle points 100% downwards. Obviously that gives good suction, but when you have leaves that cover grass you need something that can grab the leaves in front of you, too. This is apparently a symptom of most lawn vacuums on the market, although some models do have raised nozzles which helps. Even a first year mechanical engineering student would realize that you can not make a nozzle flush to the ground and expect to pick up many leaves. I would be tempted to make my own damn lawn vacuum with a nozzle (that grabs leaves from below and in front) if I didn't have a full-time job.

So, as I was pulling the HPV backwards I would have to rock it up and down to actually pick up the leaves, and THEN hope it didn't jam. Even on full power the darn thing would jam up every time I went straight through a section of leaves that covered my ankles. Seriously? Now, I did have *some* rain yesterday but the leaves were practically dry, and I cleared the branches prior to running the vacuum. Even after walking through my yard for hours, my boots are bone dry on the bottom. There was no reason for it to jam so often.

Lastly, I don't believe that reduction ratio. Most of the leaves weren't cut much. That brings me to another point - it took me about ten tries to get the hang of putting the bag back on without potentially giving my neighbors chuckles as I performed various gymnastic acrobatics to prevent the bag from slipping to snap it tight. Is it so hard to put a hook on the other side while I'm snapping the latch on the back?

Given all of that, I'm definitely disappointed in the performance of this model - though to be fair, I suspect I'd be disappointed in most models on the market, due to the appalling oversight in lawn vacuum nozzle designs.

To it's credit, it ran reliably and did eventually clear my yard of leaves. Unfortunately, my back and neck are quite sore. Next year I'll just have a lawn care company take care of this, unless I design my own version!

My house is covered in trees. In the fall, the Red Oaks shed in the spring the live Oaks shed. Oh, and then there are the acorns. I forgot to mention all the @#%^ Crab Apples that drop, rot and stink. For me, yard care is leaf and tree-trash management more than lawn mowing. I've been in this house almost 16 years. Usually, I use a blower and blow the leaves into dark corners and the street. You know, out-of-sight, out-of-mind always with the intention that I'd rake them up some day. Which I would do maybe once a year. You get the picture. I'm 55 years old and too tight to hire my yard work done and too lazy to do it right. Hell, I give myself my own flat top, change my own oil and have even stitched myself up once. I finally got tired of leaves and trash piling up and delved into the question of a vacuum. I conferred with the neighbor down the street whose sons once had a commercial landscape maintenance business. They said they had tried a BIlly Goat and not to waste your time with it. They recommended a Little Wonder. I check it out on the interwebs (you know, user reviews like this one). Sounded like it would work, but #$%^ it sure is pricey. I mulled it over, back and forth. For that much I could hire my yard done. I finally closed my eyes and hit the "Buy It Now" button.
The thing showed up four or five days later. I assembled it which was simple. Fired it up on the first pull and set to it.
All I will say is: WHAT TOOK ME SO LONG?
If you're sitting on the fence, jump off and get it. Period. The thing just works.

I did not purchase one of these, but did rent one of this model to clean up debris from my yard after we were hit by a tornado. We had picked up the large debris manually, but had smaller pieces of glass, wood and drywall (1") we had raked up out of the lawn with a dethatcher that we hoped a lawn vac could pick up. All-in-all, I was pretty disappointed in the performance of the unit.

Starting it was a struggle. It was a rental, but the unit appeared to be in good condition and regularly maintained. The large fan is directly connected to the engine, so spinning the engine and fan with the pull start cord is quite a chore, even for a healthy, active guy like myself.

Once running, the engine ran well, and the noise and dust weren't too bad. Some dust would occasionally shoot up around where the bag attaches, but a little adjusting seemed to always resolve any sealing issues.

The suction performance of the vac was the biggest disappointment for me. Granted, my situation was pretty unique in that I was trying to pick up smaller debris and not leaves, but the bulk of the material we were picking up was the grass/thatch that we had raked up. We found we got the best suction performance we could out of it with the suction head down as close to the ground as possible. While the suction was better that way, it made it pretty hard to push (much like when you have a vacuum hose sealed on a hard, flat surface). It would pick up most of the thatch, but not much of the glass, twigs, drywall pieces (1"), insulation, etc. Eventually, we gave up on the vac and just went back to using a push-mower with a bagger on it. I can't say it did a perfect job either, but did pick up some of the lighter debris that the vac didn't, and seemed to pick up the thatch just as well, if not better.

For what it's worth, a neighbor used a similar "BG" lawn/litter vac and found similar, disappointing results in suction performance.

I can't say how this unit might do on leaves or solid surfaces, but as far as trying to pick up debris, I certainly would not recommend this one.

This vacuum really cleans up the yard, it is spotless when it is done.

For me, I have enough grade in the yard that it is more work for me to push the around then to just rake leaves the old fashioned way. If this were self propelled with an electric star, I would be much happier. Also, while I have just less than a half acre, this is rated for an acre or more- I can't imagine doing that much land with this vacuum.

Note: I'm a single woman, not especially strong.