Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

Hi, I'm in the market for a new snowblower.
I have about 140ft of single driveway and I regularly swath out about 400-600sqft of my backyard in the winter. We get a fair amount of snow, and when it comes down, it's fairly easy to get a couple of feet of snow. Usually by the time I can shovel it, it has settled down into heavy snow.

I currently have an old Noma 8HP track drive with low hours donated to me by my dad, but even with the new drive belt, on a decent day I can't even move at the slowest setting - the removal of snow will often consume 4-8+ hours of my week if we have a bad snow week. It's a major beast to turn, and it's jetted way too lean from what I can tell ( have to run it at half choke all when fully warmed up ); by the time I get to my main 40ft drive way, it starts misbehaving a bit from overheating I think.

So, after doing some reading, it sure sounds like Ariens make a nice line of snow throwers which I can obtain from Home Depot. A couple of the models that interest me are the 1130 DLE for $1349 and the 1332 LE for $1999 regular price for now - I expect to see sale prices in the near future.

I don't mind spend $2k on the bigger/more powerful machine, given that the time saved/ease of use/maintenance costs warrant the difference in price. I have plenty of room to store either machine so that is not an issue.

Any opinions on what the better machine would be for me?


Thanks!