With the snow season pretty much done, the clean up of the sand in the parking lots has begun. We run a couple of Bobcats with the bobcat pickup brooms, and kick brooms. A couple of years ago, they purchased an L45 Volvo loader that came with a 10 foot sweepster pickup broom, and an angle kick broom. After a couple of summers of having every Tom, ****, And Harry run the 2 big brooms, they were pretty much junked. They kept ripping the wheel off on the front of the pickup broom, and ruined the drives on the kick. One of the guys in the shop re-designed the kick broom with a set of wheels behind the broom, to keep some of the pressure off it. I am known as an operator that is pretty easy on equipment, so I was asked to use the broom for parking lots this year. All of our loaders have a 3rd valve, but the L45, and my winter loader, an L70 are the only 2 with the electrics for the angle function on the broom. Naturally I took my own loader to do the job. The broom works quite well, it has about a foot of up and down movement, so I set the wheels on the ground, and give myself about 6 inches up, and 6 inches down. The only weight on the brushes is the weight of the broom itself. The angle, and valving is supported by the wheels. I can get about 16 hours of steady sweeping on asphalt before the brushes are done. Does this sound average......
I have a Broce broom self propelled unit... I use it to sweep sand off the roads.(no pickup). I can get almost 200 hrs out of a set of brushes. I did install a couple of automotive shocks on the broom to aid in stopping the bounce in the broom.
Wow. I know prices are a lot different in the States than in Canada, but how much do you pay for a set of brushes.... These are about an 8 or 10 inch plastic bristle, steel bristles in the mix. Not sure how many segments, but they are 550 bucks for a 10 foot broom. I know that the street sweepers here go pretty slow, perhaps I am going too fast. I am running in second gear unless it is heavy material. I thought I was doing pretty good with 16 hours, but 200. The guys on the bobcat behind the asphalt milling machine can't even get 8 hours. I notice some of the bigger paving companies in the province actually have spare brooms along the side of the road on a milling job so they can switch out when they are worn out. If they stop sweeping, the government inspector makes them stop milling. The miller charges by the square meter. If they have to sit because of the contractor, they charge 1200 bucks an hour.
You have to keep the bristles from bending too much. If the broom is pushing down on the bristles enough to bend them, you will begin wearing away the side of the bristles and they will rapidly wear away. You only want the tips of the bristles to contact ground. They will move the debris while flexing and will minimize bristle wear. There are operators that believe you have to lean on the broom to remove adhered mud etc, it just results in excessive brush wear. I have a Sweepster Bucket Sweeper. The manual has the following instructions for checking the proper broom adjustment: Since I'm not on sensitive surfaces, I use a combination of course, fine and steel brush segments.
Sounds like you need to upgrade your broom to a larger one that uses the 10x32 brushes. Even my customer in the dump can make a set last several months. This customer is the hardest I've seen on this poor broom. The wheels fell off twice as it ate the bearings out of the front wheels! I put an oil pan on yesterday due to the drive shaft taking it with it as it went. The larger self propelled seem to be a very robust machine. I know you can get larger broom attachments as well.
I'm only guessing as to the length of the bristles. I rarely do any sweeping. I am the company's graderman. I run loader in the winter, and was asked by our engineer to sweep, as I guess I have a name for myself as being easy on equipment. But I have even got out of the loader several times when I started out to check the position of the broom, and the bristles are only lightly engaged. I can't make it any lighter, perhaps the brushes are too cheap. They buy from LSW wear parts, and I think they sell Keystone products. No one has ever kept track of broom wear on this broom, as it has never been used for this kind of job before. It has mostly been used for shouldering new asphalt, and new asphalt seems to have that oily surface. Plus it is not steady sweeping, so the brushes might last all summer. Perhaps they are not using enough steel.
there definitely a difference in durability in different brands also the larger diameter ones last way longer
Update to this old thread. Been sweeping city streets. Same broom, New L45G. The Sweepster rep was here, and gave the dos and don'ts. Even watched me use the broom. I still only get 20 hours on the brushes..
Where I worked we had a Rosco RB-48, like this one: This was used for cleaning mostly the paved sections of roads in quarry and out on to the highway out front when a truck spilled some product. We would get 300 to 400 hours on a set of bristles. It had a combination of steel and plastic bristles, some thing like three plastic to one steel.