The most important factor you should consider when buying a snow blower is what needs the machine must meet. More specifically, how much snow will you regularly be clearing and from what size surface will you be clearing it from?
Answering these questions will help to determine how wide of a snow blower you need (known as clearing width) and, just as important, how high your snow blower should be (intake height).
Before we get into specific sizes and types of snow blowers you should consider, let’s quickly define clearing width and intake height.
The clearing width of a snow blower refers to the width of its auger housing and, as a result, the width of the path it will clear with each pass. The more clearing width a snow blower has, the fewer passes it will need to clear your driveway and the less time it will take to finish the job.
Intake height is the height of the auger housing and determines the amount of snowfall a snow blower can handle. If you’re clearing relatively deep snowfall on a regular basis throughout the winter, you’ll likely need a larger intake height.
So, when taking those two important specifications into account, how wide and how high do you need your snow blower’s auger housing to be?
Below we’ve laid out what you need to know about clearing width and intake height in single-stage, two-stage and three-stage snow blowers.
SINGLE-STAGE SNOW BLOWER Clearing width: 18-22 inches
Single-stage snow blowers typically have a clearing width somewhere between 18 and 21 inches and tend to have an intake height of no more than 13 inches. Therefore, these types of snow blowers are ideal for clearing up to six inches of light snowfall down to the pavement on small, smooth driveways, walkways and pathways.
If you’ll be using your snow blower in these types of conditions, consider a single-stage machine. With a clearing width of 21 inches and an intake height of 13, the Troy-Bilt Squall 208E is the perfect single-stage snow blower for these conditions.
You could use a single-stage snow blower on a bigger driveway that consistently gets up to six inches of snow, but it might take longer than you want to clear the entire surface.
TWO-STAGE SNOW BLOWER Clearing width: 20-38 inches
While single-stage snow blowers have a relatively small range of clearing widths, two-stage snow blowers can offer a number of different clearing width and intake height options.
Two-stage machines can start at as narrow as 20 inches, which would be good for smaller driveways that get up to a foot of snow regularly, and can be as wide as 38 inches so larger areas can be cleared efficiently.
If you need your snow blower to clear up to 12 inches of heavy, wet snow from a longer driveway, a two-stage machine with a clearing width between 24 and 28 inches and an intake height around 20 inches is worth consideration. Look into a machine like the Troy-Bilt Storm 2435, for example.
However, if you need a more powerful snow blower that can clear more snow (up to 18 inches) faster, there are two-stage snow blowers with clearing widths of 30-plus inches and intake heights of up to 23 inches. If this sounds more like the machine for you, check out the Troy-Bilt Arctic Storm 34.
THREE-STAGE SNOW BLOWER Clearing width: 24-30 inches
Three-stage snow blowers might offer fewer clearing width and intake height options but they’re able to remove more snow faster thanks to the machine’s third stage: a 12-inch accelerator that breaks down heavy, wet snow like fresh powder.
That added auger means a three-stage snow blower with a 26-inch clearing width and an intake height of 21 inches can clear up to six more inches of snowfall than a two-stage machine with the same specifications. The accelerator also allows a three-stage to clear winter’s nastiest snow and ice up to 50 per cent faster than a two-stage snow blower.
So if you’re clearing a long driveway or a parking lot that gets a lot of snow often, three-stage machines with a clearing width between 24 and 28 inches and a 21-inch intake height, like the Troy-Bilt Vortex 2800 XP, are worth a serious look.
