Snow Joe Snow Job...

I know it.  I'm a cranky old bastard.  

I guess my problem is that here in the 21st Century, I'm a fish out of water.  I learned a long time ago that time was the really precious thing.  With time, you can buy money, you can buy love, and you can buy some really great experiences.  It just takes time.  Therefore, as Dad regularly told me, I still do it right, because I do not want to have to find the time to do it over.  Do it right the first time, in part because it saves time, but it also saves materials and an awful lot of other things.

Such as sanity.

And I do have to tell you that I'm sure my experience is unique, but the Snow Joe folks sure aren't ready for prime time.  Which is really unfortunate.

I do need to start out by admitting to you that I am definitely not the sort of person who works well with snow blowers.  I believe this is in part because I'm trying to find something that works for me and keeps me on/under budget.  This Snow Joe was my third attempt at a snow blower.  That's right.  Third.

Many years ago, my wife thought she'd found a deal and picked up a snow blower off a want ad or something.  I do not recall exactly, because it was definitely more than ten years ago.  A few parts were banged up, but I loved the general idea of trying to figure out what I could find/make/use to make it work the way I needed.

My primary issue, however, is that I am utterly incompetent when it comes to small engine repair.  Which is where the real irony starts.  Both of my children took "small engine tech" in high school.  They had to provide their own two-stroke engine - that is, think lawnmower engine - that they were going to strip down, rebuild, and then they had to start it.  That insured an A in the class.  There were other ways, but that was a guaranteed A.

So of course, my daughter, at very nearly the end of the whole project, something went wrong with a tool, one of the teachers came over to try to assist, and the tool destroyed the motor.  The teacher admitted this.  And gave her a very high mark for participating, trying to do the best she could, and very nearly succeeding.

Unfortunately, that motor went with the lawnmower I had.  Since it was a very inexpensive lawn mower, and on it's nearly last leg anyway, it wasn't a major issue.  

My son took the same course, but had some better scrounging capabilities, and found a friend who had three or four of the requisite motors, and provided him one.  Which started on the first pull.  Which was far more than could be said about the second snowblower, which still sits in my garage, deader than a doornail.  He insists he knows exactly what needs to be done to get it running.  Perhaps he might.  His more recent experience with much larger, fuel-injected motors, has not granted him miraculous powers over this carbureted beast in the corner of my garage.  Truth be told, though, he also has an old Ford in-line 6-cylinder engine half built on an engine cart in there, as well.  

My latest thoughts were to invest in a relatively inexpensive, highly reviewed battery powered snowblower.  This one, from the Snow Joe people, was only 11" wide.  And light.  Which was important as I had a driveway next to six concrete steps in the front of my house, where packages arrived regularly.  On the side, however, was another entrance where we did a heck of a lot more going - as in going out with the dogs on average 3 times a day every day, more often on nice days, days when tummies were upset, or days when, for whatever reason, we needed to go outside.  That sidewalk started with a large landing right outside the door, about five feet wide by four feet long, down two steps to a sidewalk which ran about 15 feet nice and flat, for the most part, then started a slope up about a foot over maybe eight feet of travel - then another six feet or so to the edge of the street.  Where the plows piled up their icy bits all the time, typically right before I'd take the dogs out to go around the next door parking lot every single night.  

But I thought a good investment would be this $120 powered snow shovel that was 11" wide, I could recharge the battery, and carry it through the house from the front step to the back door as needed.  Anyone who has ever cleared snow - and I know some of you haven't - knows that it's a whole hell of a lot easier to move the snow if it's not been walked on - as in unpacked snow can sometimes be moved by blowing on it.  Yes, you can use a leaf blower to move snow sometimes.  Not all the time, certainly, but sometimes.

And as I'm one of the few here in the house who has the appropriate training and licensure to operate these highly technical snow shovel and ice scraping devices, well, it falls to me.  Which is why I've been on a hunt for a snow "blower" - that is a powered device which I may use to move the snow to somewhere else.

A number of years ago I came up with, but haven't yet built, the tool I imagined I could use with a cordless drill.  It was going to be simple.  I found inspiration when watching a local school clear their sidewalks with a riding lawnmower which had, mounted out front, a pair of spinning brushes.  They were angled slightly off center, so they might brush the snow to the side of the path they were clearing.  And they spun at a pretty high rate of speed.  From the bottom up, that is, to push the snow away.

So I thought if I could get a couple of gears, bearings, a shaft, and a couple of round brushes, I could build my own.  I'd start with the cordless drill up top, and I'd build the thing by basically strapping the drill into position, with a hexagonal shaft attached to a larger, say 3" round, metal gear.  That gear would be meshed with a much smaller gear, say 1/2" in diameter.  That gear would be on a shaft with a 2" gear, which would mesh with a 1" gear.  

My thinking of all of that being that if my drill spun at say 30 rpm, that first 3" gear would spin 30 times a minute.  It would spin the much smaller gear, the 1/2" gear, at 180 revolutions a minute - that is, for every rotation of the larger gear, it would force the smaller gear to spin 6 times.  That small gear, on the same shaft as the 2" gear, would make that gear also spin at 180 times a minute.  The 1" gear would then spin twice as fast - or 360 rpm.  Which is how I figured I would turn 30 rpm into 360 rpm - or twelve times the rotational speed.  This would spin the brushes down on the bottom of a shaft with a rod in it so that the brushes would spin to "flick" the snow out of the way. 

Not perfect, not great for two or three feet of snow at a time, but I will tell you that, as I have lived in Minnesota my entire life, there are perhaps five storms in my lifetime - at least two of which have been identified as "hundred year storms" - that have dropped twenty or more inches of snow in one storm.  Most often, the snow storms we get drop between an inch to eight or so inches at a time.  That's not much, but when they're lined up in serial fashion, so you get 2" of snow, three days later you get another 4", then you get three days, and 6", that foot of snow isn't really a foot of snow.  The first round gets compacted to about half as thick, but it's still the same weight as the original 2".  And the 4" gets compacted to 2, so you're actually looking at 3" of heavy, compacted snow, topped by 6" of light, fluffy stuff.

What does all of this have to do with Snow Joe?  Well, that scenario I just detailed is exactly what happened over the last 2 weeks.  We got two storms - a light dose, a little heavier round, and then we got clobbered with the impossible snow.  That's when you spend much of your life listening to the weather folk who tell you "well, when we get down to single digits, or below, snow is much less likely."  Yeah, that doesn't mean "impossible."  What it actually means is "more snow."

I know, you folks from warm places are going "what's he yammering about now?"  Simple, my friends.  In most cases, snow is often considered to be a measure of moisture in the atmosphere.  Almost everything that falls from the sky begins as snow.  Yep, even rain.  Because you see waaaaay up in the atmosphere, it's cold.  Yes, it can be below freezing at certain altitudes above deserts.  Yes, that's true.  And if you've spent your life shoveling the crap formerly known as "rain" you learn that Eskimos have more than thirty terms to apply to snow.

Here in Minnesota we have a slightly lower number.  A lot of it depends on the ground and lower altitude temperatures.  First off, there's Sleet.  That's when at some point the upper altitude snow turns into rain as it falls through a warm layer of the atmosphere, then re-freezes.  It becomes pellets - which sting like the dickens if you're trying to move quickly through it on a motorcycle or the wind is fast.  Sleet's also a bit of a warning that severe weather may be coming, if it's warm out, because it takes an awful lot of energy to blow water far enough up in the atmosphere that it freezes, then falls, turns into water, then back into ice.

There's hail.  No, it's not precisely snow, but it is definitely precipitation which is frozen and does damage.  Often coming in with tornadoes on it's tail, Hail is another warning shot from mother nature.  Then we have "grauple" - that's a newer term I've only heard recently, and it falls into the land between snow and sleet.  It's pellets, not quite as driven, it stays a pellet when it hits the ground, and can look a little like snow.

We also have black ice, which happens when there's warm air right down above cold ground.  Doesn't matter what the incoming moisture is at 5000 feet, or 50 feet, or even 5 feet.  It can turn to liquid above the ground, then when it hits the colder ground, it turns back into a solid - as in ice.  Which is why some times you do not see the ice on the ground, it's just slicker than snot on a polished doorknob.

Then we get to "heart attack snow".  It's early and late season snow, snow that has a LOT of moisture.  The average inch of snow is maybe a little under an eighth of an inch of water.  That's because we figure normal snow works out to ten inches of snow per inch of moisture.  So all of those folks in the desert southwest, praying for rain, see places like Minnesota, in the middle of the continent, covered in three feet of snow, and yes, that's where we get the water for our ten thousand lakes - three feet of snow works out to about three and a half inches of water, covering the state.  Which is why we like nice, slowly warming springs, that way the snow is allowed to warm slowly, and melt slowly, soaking into the ground, which means adding to the soil moisture, so that when we start growing your food, that's where the water comes from.

But we were talking snow.  The colder it gets, the fluffier the snow gets.  How's that, you ask?  Simple.  Snow is, if you've ever done a bit of research, a hexagonal thing.  Every snowflake has six sides, and is said to be unique.  So when someone does call you a snowflake, thank them.  They're recognizing your unique beauty, whether or not they intended to compliment you that way.

When it's colder, snowflakes often go full 3D, and become thicker.  They also tend to not clump together so well.  Those fat, rotund, heavy snow people you see all over the Christmas movies?  That's compacted snow - much more densely compacted than ten inches of snow equaling an inch of water.  Our most recent snow storm fell during single digits above and below zero - which made it much more fluffy.

Why, you wonder, why I'm bitching about a snow blower?  Pretty damned simple.  Everything that could go wrong with this thing did go wrong.  I'm no expert, I recognize I may be an outlier, but we all have known organizations which produce a wildly popular item and somehow ... well, the popular term when I was a kid was "outkick your coverage."  That is, your organization grows too quickly and does not maintain their original focus on procedures, quality, and good results, and thus the market becomes flooded with crap that wouldn't have passed the QA tests a year or so ago, but it got out the door with your logo on it.

And I think that is EXACTLY what's happened to Snow Joe.  If you have one that's a year or more old, hang on to it.  It's likely a good piece of kit.  If you, like me, just bought one, or are considering buying one?  Don't.  

My Snow Joe came from Amazon.  My wife ordered it, because she's got an Amazon prime account, so she got a good deal.  That is, she got what many folks would have considered to be a good deal if they purchased a working product.  Mine has not - worked, that is.  

Now, I know, some of you are certain I did not Read The Fine Manual or follow the instructions.  I tell you sixty-four times that I indeed looked forward to RTFM and following instructions.  I am one of those people who buys the grill and brings it home and ENJOYS the assembly.  I like the "let's get this put together" steps.  I like making things.  

In this case, the epic fail started when I opened the outer Amazon box with the Amazon logos and the tape advertising their Prime service.  In case seeing the big smile on their own Van delivering the thing might cause me to forget where it came from.   Nope.  So I opened the Amazon box - typically card-board colored, because, you know, when you go through a few million a day, who's got time for fancy decorations?

Which is where the bus screeched to a halt.  The inner box, surrounded by paper AND preciously-bagged air, likely coming from down the road in Shakopee, where Amazon has a huge warehouse right next to the freeway which changes down to a county road when it flows about a half-mile from where I live.  

But that's right - the inner box with the device in it was also plain old cardboard brown.  Not a logo anywhere.  And maybe that's a special nod to recycling, or a cost-saving move, or simple expediency - as in "we ain't got no time for no fancy artwerk shite".  Not my circus.  I just needed a powered snowblower.  So once I opened the inner box, the Snow Joe device, in three "chunks" connected by wires, came out of the box, with a bag of bolts and wing nuts, another bag with what looked to be a battery, and a box, white, with a battery charger in it.

Yes, my friends, that was the sum total of it.  No warranty card, no disclaimer to note that this device might neuter you, eat your 401K if not properly supervised, or it may, if left to it's own devices, burn down your house if allowed to feed willynilly with no proper restraint, on your electrical service.

In other words, if this product was ever subject of a lawsuit, or if the Snow Joe people had never seen a legal challenge or commercial in their entire lives, it's exactly what I would have expected.  Clearly, the Snow Joe people may actually use the remains of their former corporate attorneys as fodder for testing these devices.  Or maybe that's what they want you to think, because in the last two and a half decades, I do not think I have purchased any device allowed to connect to an electrical outlet without a dozen disclaimers advising me not to try things only done by an unsupervised, allegedly bullet-proofed super-avenger-descendant child might pull off.  You know, like sticking bare wires into an outlet to see what goes boom?  

That's right.  There was NOTHING in the way of documentation.  Which was why I was immediately concerned that the device may have been initially discarded from a production line as a failure, but some quick-thinking-profit-only-minded-manager might have plunked it into a box and shipped it to pad the daily shipped totals.  Would I do that?  No, but ever since signing up for their mailing list, I get daily alerts they've shipped over ten thousand units due to such-and-so's sales.  Frankly, if they wanted to impress me, they'd tell me how many FULLY FUNCTIONAL units left the plant.

That's right.  My snow blower blows nothing.  Not my snow, my mind, or ... even an ill wind.  The battery does light up all three pretty green lights, which allegedly proved it's got full power.  Where that power is destined to go, beats me.  Because when I engage the two triggers required to start the engine - look, I've got grass string trimmers that look pretty much the same, key difference being they're orange, not blue, and they work, where this thing doesn't do shit.  But I know there's a safety switch that you have to engage before you can fire up the motor.  These folks who come up with these ideas really don't pass into the real world all that often.  Any halfwit with duct tape can overwhelm the "safety" switch by duct-taping it down.  I would not do that, because I like knowing I have two ways to insure the thing is off.  I don't want to pick it up, accidentally hit the wrong button, and remove half the carpeting from my home by accident.  

Not that this device is going to do squat.

But here is where we go from me generally bitching about the device, and back to bemoaning the entire state of the world.  Yeah, that's right, overly grandiose because I'm just a lame whiner.

Because after both my son and I reviewed my assembly, insured I put everything together correctly (I downloaded the manual from their web site - it assembled exactly the way I figured it did before I downloaded the manual and did it blind.  That's the sort of thing that comes from being over fifty, having put a thing or two together, and some folks having a fairly good background in industrial engineering.  Though I might have designed the whole thing so that the parts plugged AND bolted together to insure the wiring didn't get bent, stretched, and broken).  We charged the battery, took it outside, installed the battery (another kudo to the engineers, because the battery installs ONLY one way, correctly.  I will admit that, with a few tools, some powered, some basic clamps, I might get the battery to remain attached to the device "incorrectly" but I thought it prudent to assemble it according to the way it looked like it should go.  Reviewing the manual later confirmed I did do it right).  

So after two of us semi-intelligent folks did our best to insure we followed the non-existent directions, THEN DOWNLOADED and reviewed the directions and confirmed we had done things right, I gave up.  Yeah, after three days of spending my free time trying to get the damned thing working, I confessed to my wife that it did not work.  My son confirmed we had tried everything.  And yes, before removing all of the covers that were attached by torx screws that my son has at least four different sockets to fit each one, my wife fell back on Amazon, and informed them that the thing no workie.

Which is where irritating point two strikes.  "Here's yer money.  Thanks."  Foolish me, I'd listened to She Who Must Be Obeyed, and disposed of BOTH of the boxes the device arrived in because it was the holidays, we had no extra room to store useless large boxes, recycling was coming the next day, and she wanted them Out Of Her House NOW.  I could hear the capital letters in her direction.  So into the recycling bin the boxes went.  The bags went into the trash.

And we had our money back.  Which does not please me, because dollar bills do not move snow.  Neither does a busted-ass Snow Joe.  So, in stubborn resistance, I pulled up the Snow Joe web site.  I looked for and found the link I needed to use to register my device, and then request support.  As happens so often in these days, I had to create an account, or allow them access to another account I may already have had, if I didn't want to give them my email address.  Sorry, folks, I don't know you from a turd in a hole, I'm not going to give you access to anything else I have, I'll give you an email address which I've had over twenty-five years now, and it's locked down pretty tightly.  About 80% of the spam coming into the account is correctly flagged as crap.  

But I signed up for an account.  And hit Submit after I filled in all of their little boxes.  And got the "should have seen that coming" notice that "we're terribly sorry, something went wrong.  Please try to sign in again."  Nope, it wouldn't accept the second try to sign in.  So I went back to create the account - no, stupid, you can't, because some other person already signed up with your email address.  Well, crap, says I, but being somewhat experienced in the workings of web sites, I did the old "sorry, forgot my password."  Asked it to send me a reset link.  Ah, so sorry, the web site says, that account doesn't exist.

Wait a minute.  I can't sign up for a new account, because someone used my email address.  That someone, yes, is me.  So there's an account in my name, right?  But why you not send me the reset?

Fine.  I drop onto the support link.  I send a message.  I wait for three days, then get a nice email from a lady named Ann.  Whoops, there I go.  Sexist male assumptions, I hear you new kidz yelling at me.  Sorry, my friends, I am married to a lady who is named Ann.  I am certain she is a lady because I have been present for the birth of both children, who came out of her, and I can assure you that should you presume to address her as something other than a lady, you will, depending on the level of disrespect in your tone, range, and her general mood at the time you initiate your conversation, have the best possible outcome of your interaction end with you clutching any soft, squishy private parts, questioning many of your life choices, and seriously considering running for office to create a whole new level of witness protection to hide you, your offspring, legitimate and otherwise, from her and hers, because you know that at some future date the world will be wiped clean of your DNA because that was exactly what she promised to do in very specific and frightening medical procedures.  Not that anything she would say to you would be legally actionable or considered as a threat, because she certainly would explain to the judge that merely describing a medical procedure does not constitute a threat among otherwise intelligent adults, only people of certain levels of mental defect would assume that was what was intended to happen.

So I sent a nice email to this nice Ann lady, who did, eventually (took 3 business days) reply.  She asked me to reply again.  So I sent my respectful message back - and it was rejected because the mailbox was full.

So, my friends, in the end, here, I encourage you looking for a snowblower to look for an established, intelligent organization which does store their inbound emails in cloud storage, rather than directly on a server which might have capacity limits on mailboxes, because if you have a popular product and limited mail storage, you're gonna have trouble.

Like Snow Joe Does.  Do yourself a favor.  Look for another highly-rated device.  Snow Joes may move snow.  I don't know.  I've not seen one that works yet.  Sure, I got my money back, but now I have to try to figure out how to responsibly dispose of a piece of crap which never should have been boxed up and shipped if it didn't fucking work.  Think about the waste.  That's what truly pisses me off.

G'nite, folks, and remember, get to bed early in two days, or those 38 feet on your roof may just be dropping by to allow a fat old man to crap down your chimney.  Hey, spent most of my life on the naughty list.  I know how it works.  Best of luck with that.