RYOBI ONE+ 18V Patio Cleaner with Wire Brush Edger – REVIEW

Years ago I bought the RYOBI Cordless Leaf Blower and regretted it.  It was light weight, easy to use, and I thought it would give our youngest son a way to help clean the upper deck.  Plus it would be easier than our gas blower which was difficult to start.

The RYOBI had no power, whenever I took it outside, the forest laughed at me.  It died of shame in less than a year.  Needless to say I was not impressed with RYOBI and even though I now owned the original battery plus a battery upgrade I was not interested in replacing the blower with the same model when it died.  I did not toss the batteries and charger bonus points for past me.

Enter the RYOBI ONE+ 18V Patio Cleaner with Wire Brush Edger.

Before moving here I had always looked with envy on homes that had beautiful paver patios, sidewalks, driveways etc…  When we bought this place I thought my dreams had come true I now owned a large paver turn around and it was beautiful.  (The people we purchased the home from had a son who had a lawncare company.) Little did I know just how difficult this was going to make our lives.   We tried everything, power washing, vinegar/dish soap/water mixes, weed killers, weed blockers, locking paver sand that turns to concrete once you wet it, putting down tarps to back the weeds in the sun, we even tried fire.   That’s right a propane tank and flame thrower head.

On the left is what the pavers looked like with nothing done to them at all.

On the right is that same section of pavers two weeks after spraying with weed killer.

 

The weed killers take forever to work and then weeds would just grow right back again.     I would have to wait till it had been drier weather so that the weeds were thirsty, and wait till later in the evening so that all the birds and insects were less active.  The birds pick up the little stones on the pavers and the butterflies like to rest on them.  As you can see from the pictures above the weeds die or at least look sick but it still looks awful and you have to remove the dead bits by hand.

We would even pull weeds by hand out of the joints which was tedious and you were still left with new weed seeds blowing in.

The power washer would clean out the joints but all the dirty water would just pool in the low spots or wash into new areas.  Plus the water hoses were kind of a pain they dragged through the landscaping and got stuck on things.

The flame thrower while satisfying was not efficient.  You had to stand there applying flame until the bottoms of your shoes melted.  You do a small patch and then you lug the propane tank to a new place to do another small patch.  It wasn’t fun, never in my life did I think I would type the phrase flamethrowers are not fun.

Two years ago we took paint can openers and sat on the ground digging out all the dirt in the joints.  Then using the shop vac to vacuum up all the dirt so that it could be dumped out in the woods rather than just blowing back into the freshly cleaned joints.  Once the joints were cleaned we then put in fresh paver sand.  It took FOREVER we never even got the entire thing done and we certainly never got all the joints filled back in with paver sand.

I did the small sidewalk section with a type of paver sand that once put in you wet it and it becomes hard like cement.  It is expensive and tricky to work with because you cannot let that get on the pavers or anything else because once wet it cannot be swept or blown away.  Because of the cost and fear of the mess I used a cup and gently poured only in the cracks doing it this way meant I had very little cleanup before I got to the wetting.  I liked it and was ready to do the entire thing.  Until frost heaves caused the pavers to move and that made cracks in the joints which then filled with dirt and grew weeds.  Yes, we could have just kept working on this every year to repair it but at that point I was pretty discouraged.

This year as I was gearing up to once again do battle with the pavers.  I thought, there must be a better way.  One morning I had the brilliant idea of maybe an angle grinder with a metal bristle brush would work!  Sure it would mean sitting out there all summer and struggling with extension cords but maybe just maybe this would be the answer!  As if in answer to prayers Youtube offered up the RYOBI ONE+ Patio Cleaner with Wire Brush Edger.

You can buy this with batteries or without the price difference is about $80.  On it’s own the unit is around $100 with the battery and charger it’s about $180.

When I say we have an issue with the pavers I’m not talking moss.  I’m talking the forest is trying to take over.

This doesn’t happen once or even twice a year this happens every few weeks or so.

The battery that came with the unit lasted 30 minutes and that amount of time did not get much of the turn around done.  However, this is a marathon not a sprint and I’m okay with doing it a little bit at a time plus I have multiple batteries and chargers.  I found the bigger battery and it lasts longer than I do.  The unit is heavier because that battery is heavier and it lasts an unknown amount of time.  Unknown because I got  tired and stopped before the batter ran out.

The unit itself is light weight so light it feels like cheating.

It’s whisper quiet.  Easy to start you just hold down the grey button on top and squeeze the trigger.  Once started you just hold the trigger to keep it running.

It does jitter a little on the pavers mostly because I was using just one hand and in places I needed to use two just to keep it from bouncing.

There were places where the wire brush went in deeper than others but for the most part the wheel on the other side keeps things pretty consistent.

How do you know if I have the wire brush part is in the groove?  You can’t see it because of the cover over the top there is an arrow on the cover.  Line the arrow tip up with the paver joint and your good.

Some people think that the handle for two handed use is a little low and it is but you don’t always have to use it.  When I do I have much better control.

It does want to walk on you almost like it’s self propelled but it’s so light that getting it under control again is not a fight.

I was wearing sandals and shorts without eye protection and  the dust and rocks and bits of whatever it kicks up can hit with enough force to make you wish you had pants on.  My sandals were filled with dirt when I was done.  Eye protection might not be a bad idea.

Everything that you clean out of the joints just sits on top of the pavers so you need to go back and blow it away.  Not an issue but something to be aware of.  If you don’t get all the debris blown away it will either blow back into the grooves or wash back in if it rains.  Working with another person is nice because one person can be cleaning the pavers and the other person can be blowing the debris away immediately.  The added benefit is that the person doing the cleaning can now clearly see.  With all the dirt sitting on top of the pavers it was difficult to see what I see needed to clean out.

It will do tall weeds although in some areas I had to go back over them multiple times to get all of the weeds out.  We have not had rain in about two weeks and the ground is bone dry.  This thing works even better under those conditions.  I was once again covered in dust and dirt but I was able to get a lot more done in less time.  The weeds were not as well anchored in and came up a lot easier.

My overall reaction to this tool is joy pure joy.  I’ll let you know if it holds up longer than the leaf blower did.  Truthfully if it only lasts a year I might still be willing to spend another $100 on a yearly basis to just keep buying them.  I think we have spent more than that on a yearly basis just on weed killers and I’m much happier not using them.

This is the little sidewalk bit that we did a month ago.

You can see it is still pretty clean.  There are a few little weeds but I’m not sure if we missed them or if they are new starts.  Point is it will be two seconds of work and they will be gone!

This is a longer view of the paver area and as you can see it is a mess.

This is after cleaning that section and blowing off the debris.  It took me maybe 20 minutes or so to get it to look like this.

The photo on the left is before cleaning and the one on the right is after cleaning and blowing debris away.  The pavers have moved a lot over the years.  They are not level and the gaps vary from a small 1/4 inch gap to almost an full 1″.  There are low spots were water tends to pool.  What probably needs to happen is to pull them all up, redo the base, correct the slopes so that water drains off of them and probably put in an actual drain then lay them all down fresh.  This is not what is going to happen because we don’t have the money to pay someone to do this and we have a lot of projects higher up on the list.

Would I recommend this product to someone?  You  bet, it gets a big thumbs up from me.

Still a question about what to do once the gaps are cleaned out. I might try some of the tips  from this video