Having a completely portable blower, with enough output to do the job of removing debris or clearing off an area, is REALLY handy!
We’ve recently bought the DeWalt® DCBL722 Axial Blower as a bare tool - without a charger or battery. The unit costs $149 and is part of the DeWalt® 20V Flexivolt Platform.
The tool without the battery weighs just under 8 pounds/3.6 kg and is well-balanced even after the battery is added. The packaging was more than adequate and the contents were nested well and damage-free. There are only 4 items when the package is opened - the main blower unit, the tube, concentrator tip, and documentation.
Putting it together is straightforward, although the latch that holds the blower tube to the blower body is a bit finicky. It’s best to understand how it works before assembling the unit and then attempting to take it apart. Said another way, it’s easier to put the unit together than it is to take it apart!
There are two types of blowers; centrifugal and axial. This is an axial unit - the fan’s central axis is in line with the flow of air and the motor shaft. If you think of the turbine blades of a jet engine, you’ve got the right idea. Centrifugal blowers have the fan perpendicular to the flow of the air, with the motor off to the side. The drying fans in car washes are typically this type.
Some key specifications include a sound rating of 61dB, velocity output of up to 125 mph (201 kph), the maximum CFM (cubic foot per minute) produced by this unit is 450.
Practically, this unit packs enough power to quickly clear a smooth area or lawn of leaves. It’s not too heavy, well balanced, and has a reasonable run time before depleting the battery. We contacted DeWalt® Technical Services to get their insights on battery life. Unfortunately, they were not that helpful and only offered general observations while citing variables such as temperature, how old the battery was, the condition of the blower, what speed it was run at, and so forth. Even so, they said that a typical battery (they did not reference what capacity battery) would allow for a running time of about 20 minutes.
Our experience is a 5 aH battery, with the blower running at full speed, is just short of 20 minutes. However, we get much longer life running the unit at half to three-quarter speed. This does two things: extend the battery life and reduce “blow-back” when clearing debris. There are many settings in which a lower flow of air works well - including in corners and along walls.
We found this tool to be very handy and have decided to store it in the house along with other household care and maintenance tools and supplies. We built a hanger/charger base for placement in our mudroom. You can watch the construction and installation of the hanger and charger base here:
We’ll return one year later and give another review of how this blower has faired. Our initial impressions are positive, but time will tell. Watch for the update here!
In the meantime, having tools like this makes routine jobs easier and more likely to be accomplished ongoing and help you to JUST DO IT YOURSELF!
Hey, Dirk Farmer Jay here from DirkFarmerJay.com.
Recently, we purchased this 20-volt cordless blower
from DeWalt, their DCBL722 model.
Now, this little blower is pretty compact.
We're gonna walk you through how it performs,
the unboxing, and one year from now,
we'll come back and show you how we like it
after one full year of use.
Stay tuned and I'll walk you through it.
Hey, Dirk Farmer Jay from DirkFarmerJay.com.
We recently added this little cordless blower
to our repertoire of DeWalt tools,
all using this kind of battery pack.
Works really well because we already have
all the charging stations and other compatible tools,
and we have some initial impressions about this unit
and some ways to use it.
We're gonna walk you through the unboxing in just a moment,
but before we do that, just a couple things.
One, always there will be more information
that we can do in a video
and make it short enough that it remains interesting.
There's always gonna be more information
in the description below, such as specifications,
tips that we got from the tech line from DeWalt,
and so forth.
So be sure that you check that out.
And when it's time to do that one year review,
there'll also be that link down below
that you can just click right over there
and see how we feel about this unit 12 months from now.
Well, let's begin with the unboxing.
We bought this unit, the bare tool,
meaning no battery pack.
So the battery was not with it.
And it was just what you see here,
the concentrator on the tip, the blower tube,
and the handle and the fan unit, all in one box.
And as you can see here, it came nicely packaged.
When you open it up,
you essentially get those three pieces
plus a little bit of documentation.
You can see that goes in our file for future reference
and also to register it,
which I always do with my tool.
So if there's a warranty issue, I can get it fixed.
So that was all done.
Now, when it comes time to put it together,
we're just going to have dirt farmer Maggie here
show you how she put this together.
The first thing you're going to do
is you need to put the concentrator tip on.
And if you note, it kind of looks like a jet engine tip,
but that needs to be snapped into place.
And then you tug on it to make sure it's there,
set it in very well with the securement tabs.
The next thing that happens,
and the blower tube itself needs to get aligned
and put into the body of the fan.
But please notice here, as she's demonstrating,
that there is a indentation on the side of the blower unit
where a screwdriver or a lever of some kind
is inserted in the side,
which allows you to unlatch this in the future.
It's a little bit stubborn,
but we want to show you how it works.
Here, you can see as she levers the screwdriver,
you can see the inside latch.
Then there is an alignment on the tube itself here.
There's a tab that aligns with a groove
in the bottom of the unit right here.
And so that needs to get slid in and then secured.
And once you put those together, you're done.
Except now you see that we need to put on a battery
and the battery just clips in the usual way
that all the DeWALT ones do.
They slide in with protected terminals.
And then there is a securement device
that holds the battery in place and does well.
Now, as far as battery life, how long these last?
Well, I had two different online conversations with DeWALT,
and frankly, they weren't that helpful.
The information that they gave was pretty doggone general.
And what I was asking them about
was the average runtime for a five amp hour battery,
like what we have here.
As a matter of fact, I said the common battery size
you're gonna see out there is probably four, five, six.
How long would the average user,
if they're running this at full blast,
how long would that battery last?
Well, they were pretty vague,
citing all sorts of different reasons,
temperature, age of the unit,
how old the battery is,
whether it's run at full throttle
or partial throttle and all that.
And I understood that, I'd ask for a range.
When pressed for more information,
they gave an answer of depending on the battery,
you're probably gonna get 10 to 20 minutes
of run at full throttle.
And that is certainly in line with our experience.
We found running this one day,
we got about 17, 18 minutes full blast
before the battery said enough
and the unit shut down.
We just swapped out the battery,
put it on the charger and continued with our work.
But I wanna give you a little tip here
that you might find helpful.
You don't need to run the machine,
I'm gonna turn it on full blast,
like that the entire time.
It's not necessary.
You can run it partial
and it puts out a surprising amount of air at the other end.
As a matter of fact,
I actually recommend that you run this
about 50 to 70% throttle.
The reason for that is the stream of air
coming out of the concentrator
can be so strong and so directed,
you get back blast.
That is, let's suppose you're blowing leaves
and they tend to do a circular motion
and come back and land back behind you,
even as you're sweeping left to right.
So slow it down a little bit
and let the leaves get caught in that draft of wind
and run away.
Now, if you need to run it at a higher speed
to get something stubborn or cleaning out gutters
or that sort of thing, it'll work very well.
There's another thing you should know on here
that's a nice little feature I think DeWalt designed here.
And that is, for lack of better term, a cruise control.
So if you look at the top right here,
you can see this right here,
it works in concert with the throttle down here,
but it's somewhat independent.
I know that's a little confusing.
Let me show you what I mean.
I can run this unit by pulling it like this
and I can actually run it very softly right there.
And if I wanted to set that at that speed,
I can simply slide with this.
Notice I'm not pulling the bottom, I'm pushing the top.
And whatever I push that top to,
it's going to stay at that speed.
Well, I could use that, let's say at 50% or so,
just to move light weight items in front of me.
And when I need burst, I can just do that
and it'll return back to where it was.
Pretty handy.
And it saves battery life, makes the job easier as well.
Nice thought out feature there.
Little easier to hear now.
Now let's talk about the blower itself.
You can't see it in here,
but you can guess by the shape of the unit itself
that we have a flat fan that is somewhat like,
whenever you've looked at a jet engine,
you can see an axial fan with blades
that are going around like this.
And it's called axial because the axis
in which that fan rotates is the same direction
as the air is being moved.
So you have a flat fan here,
pulling in, ingesting a very high volume of air,
concentrating it through here
and through a concentrate at the tip
to produce some high velocity air
that really can move the leaves and such.
In contrast to an axial fan,
you may have seen another type that's used
for bigger units, for air movers,
but would not work in this size package.
For you geeks out there, that's a centrifugal fan.
And a centrifugal fan is the kind that you see,
let's say when you're exiting out a carwash
and they've got those moving blowers,
we've got this round unit with a motor
going off perpendicular to the fan direction
or the air direction.
That's a centrifugal blower.
Squirrel cages that you find in evaporative coolers
are a type of centrifugal blower.
So they move a lot of air,
it can exchange a lot of air,
but they're not as compact.
So this does a great job,
more like the jet turbine type of setup.
We found one of the greatest uses for this around here
is cleaning out our garage.
And as you can see here,
leaves collect quite a bit under our car and truck
and they're a real nuisance.
You'd have to back things out,
sweep it out and all that.
Well, not anymore since getting this,
I can simply stand at the nose of both vehicles
or on the sides and blow the air under it,
propelling the leaves out onto the apron,
lowering the door down
and then doing the rest of the apron and sidewalk in here.
Now here you can see Dirt Farmer Maggie
using it in a couple of ways.
One is actually moving leaves, dry leaves,
right off the surface of the lawn,
which is really handy when you want to dress up an area,
you're setting up something for a social gathering
or dollying up an area.
This really works very nicely.
Also, just for general cleaning of an area
like an apron of a garage or a driveway,
you can simply by using arcing motion left and right,
push everything in front of you and get it out of the way.
And it's especially handy for cleaning off sidewalks
that have got leaves all over it.
Or even if there's standing water there
that you want to get off,
there's pockets that this'll do a great job.
And as I mentioned earlier,
it has plenty of power for blowing out leaves
out of gutters.
Okay, let's give you some specifications here.
This is capable with a concentrator producing flow
of up to 125 miles an hour.
You heard that right.
So you can really move some debris.
That's why I said you can throttle back
and still get some great results
and better runtime when you do that.
As far as the cubic feet per minute,
it's rated at 450 cubic feet per minute or CFM.
Weight is almost about eight pounds, 7.7 pounds.
When you add a battery,
you're going to land well under 10.
The unit seems to be well balanced
when you hold it here at the center.
It looks pretty balanced if I grab it right there
and hang straight with that battery in it.
And when I grab it here,
it runs downhill just a little bit,
which is the natural position
you most likely be walking with it anyway.
So I think that works really well.
Now, lastly, what about the sound level on this?
Well, it runs about 64 to 66 decibels.
So it's a moderate level,
but it's not anything like one of the gas ones.
So if you're in a neighborhood
where you need to run things quietly
or there's ordinances that won't allow two-stroke motors,
this is your salvation.
Well, we think it's such a valuable unit
that we've actually given it a place in the home.
Let me show you what I mean.
The bottom line, we like this little blower so much
that we're giving it a home in our mudroom
along with the other home maintenance items here,
including the Dyson vac we have here with its charging base.
We've gone ahead and built this little project right here,
which we'll show in a future video.
You can find the link to it in the description below
when it's published.
And we'll change the end card at the end of this video
when that episode is done.
And you can see how we built that,
where we've got this bracket,
how the keyhole slots, how to mount it,
and all those sorts of things.
And we just used the closest yellow paint that we could get
that would match the DeWalt color.
Pretty doggone good match to give it a really nice home here.
And this bracket just allows you to take this,
hang it right up here, securely on the wall here.
You can take out the battery right here
and simply hang it right there.
And for those of you who are curious,
can you overcharge the battery?
No, DeWalt has told us that
through their technical support department
that these chargers are designed
to keep a maintenance charge going
without fatiguing the battery.
So you're in good shape there.
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Until the next time,
this is Dirt Farmer Jay from DirtFarmerJ.com.
