Yard Force YF8000LS Electric Leaf Mulcher/Shredder with Bonus Accessory Kit, One Size, Black/Orange

As usual there were some negative reviews when I researched this leave mulcher. As usual it worked as designed if used properly. Do not jam the leaves down the chute. A light push will avoid over loading the machine.I used a 30 gallon barrel, instead of bags, to collect the mulch. It fitted great under the machine, with about a 2" gap from the bottom of the machine. The amount that escapes through the gap is insignificant compared to the amount of mulch in the barrel. This saves money and time. I use the mulch.The air filter is easy to clean. It is easy to take off and put on, but I do not even do that. After each full barrel I just do a quick swipe across the exposed filter. When I first used the machine I did not think about the filter until after I produced 5 barrels of mulch and the machine still worked fine. I have thus far produced about 50 barrels of mulch and have not done a major cleaning of the filter.I mulch leaves and pine needles with some small trigs and an occasional pine cone. The trigs and pine cone do not hurt the machine, but they do wear the trimmer line down faster. Due to the trigs I had to replace the trimmer line after producing 5 barrels of mulch. You use 2 trimmer lines to operate and the machine came with 10 extra lines.I bought an extra package of thinner trimmer lines with the mulcher. The thinner lines are real easy to replace, but they last only 2 full barrels worth. The thicker lines require the patience of threading a needle. You can extend the life of the trimmer line by occasionally shaking the mulcher. Not sure if this is a good thing to do.I got the mulcher so as to be able to produce a massive amount of mulch. The mulcher meets my need. Just do not try to jam anything down the chute. The machine is simple and should last a long time.

This unit works great even on wet leaves. I had to stop and clear out the drum more than you would with dry leaves but it worked fine. The string change is easy and quick. I changed to a square line and it chops better than round. The unit comes with safety glasses and leaf scoops which is a nice for safety and utility right outta the box. If you don’t have glasses, don’t operate this or any such unit without them. And gloves. It is fast and reduced several large piles of leaves to a couple barrels of fine mulch. It handled twigs no problem. Pick out the larger sticks to save your string. It passed small pine cones through no problem with out clogging, unlike my leaf blower-vac. This is the most economical unit on the market and with the glasses and scoops a good value. Well see how long it lasts. So far it has saved me about $30 in leaf disposal pickup by the garbage man. 3 more sessions and it’s oaid for. And I get useful soil amendment for the garden. The bag arrangement is not great. They attach with bungee cords. The legs are adjustable. I modified a round 30g trash can to make room for the legs and the unit sits on it perfectly. Problem solved.

I live in Colorado and my yard is full of Elm trees. That means lots of leaves during the fall and lots of twigs to go with them.The YardForce Leaf Mulcher/Shredder is properly named. It did a 5/5 job on the leaves. What used to. take 12-15 bags of leaves was shredded and mulched into four bags. I used plastic bags, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a tight bungie around the bottom that holds the bag in place really well. It's really light, so it was simple to move from pile to pile of racked leaves. It was also easy to assemble and disassemble. I'll be able to store it in my garage in the box it came in easily.I had to change the plastic trimmer lines twice, but that's because of the twigs. Not branches. Twigs less than a quarter inch in diameter. It had a rough go of them. I have a larger chipper / shredder for branches, so I ended up sifting through my leaf piles and chipping up the twigs before throwing the leaves in the YardForce Leaf Mulcher.If you have a bunch of twigs that fall with your leaves, just know that this machine can handle them but you'll be going through trimmer line pretty quickly. Might want to order some extra. If you just have a bunch of dry leaves in your yard that you want to make quick work of, reduce the effort of bagging them, and save a few bags in the process, this is a fantastic tool and highly recommended.

Motor went out but received another one free replacement. Hope this one lasts longer. shipping was fast

Similar to at least one other posted review ... I used this machine once to fill one plastic bag, and it worked great. I was honestly very impressed..The very next weekend -- it ran for about 30 minutes and stopped. It would start again after about 30 minutes of cooling time, but would only run for maybe 5 minutes before shutting off. Very frustrating; we'd raked leaves strategically into piles so we could make quick work of them with this device. Unfortunately we had to do "old school" bagging which took about 5 hours. I have contacted Yard Force warranty claim department and we'll see how fast and quickly they provide a solution; I will report back here. With our Oklahoma winds, it won't take long for my yard to be full of leaves again. So if Yard Force doesn't present a fast and equitable solution, I'll return it to Amazon for a refund. Honestly, for the price, if this shredder had lasted just one leaf season I'd been happy; it did work great the brief time worked. But I never dreamed it wouldn't last past about an hour of use.update: The manufacturer sent out a replacement promptly. Unfortunately the replacement unit did the exact same thing; I barely filled one bag with leaves before the motor overheated and shut down. I will say that the manufacturer was very responsible and I received the replacement shredder in a matter of days. But after the second unit shut down, I returned the item to Amazon for credit. It's been two weeks since I sent it back and I'm still awaiting my credit. Bottom line: I cannot recommend this product.