The location is wooded Georgia suburbs on roughly an acre with lots of oak and a smattering of pine trees. There isn't much yard; a couple hundred square feet of grass with leaves three to six inches deep. And there's a 300 foot driveway I've been leaf blowing and accumulating the leaves off to the sides. One to two feet of paved surface has been reclaimed on each side of the driveway from years of damp leaves gathering.
The landlord said I can put the leaves in a depression near the driveway. Its volume is such that a full dump truck of material might not fill it.
My questions are:
1) What techniques work to move lots of large leaves 100 feet? Right now, I begin work near the pit and move 3 or 4 feet at a time with the leaf blower.
2) Is it safe to leave a dump-truck sized pile of leaves in "the pit"?
3) Any concerns or life-experience observations about dealing with the 2 to 4 inches of rotting leaves I am removing from the driveway edges?
Update:
Answer chosen based on direct applicability; I'm trying to preserve the existing grass and keep the people areas tidy. Even with the mountain of leaves I'm moving there is 10x more leaves several inches deep covering the rest of the wooded area on the property.
The pic shows me about 1/5 done. I laid a bar on the edge of the tarp to help loading it. The bar is from a weight lifting set and holds the edge of tarp in place while I used the broom to push leaves in. Then I'd use the leaf blower to sweep the rest of the leaves in.
Once the top layers of leaves were removed, I was using the leaf blower more like a hair dryer. Note in foreground the brick. The leaves are 2x to 3x the height of bricks used to line the yard. The "pit" is 80 or 90 feet from where the pic was taken and is now practically full. The roughly 10,000 sq ft area of the lawn took about 6 hours to clear. The leaves surely were there for more than 1 season, as the bottom layer was starting to decay and was clinging mightily to the earth.
Best Answer
I have a similar situation where I live. I don't have a large lawn and I have many 60+ foot tall trees surrounding my house. I found there to be two suitable options for leaf removal (based on my personal experience).
A leaf blower and rake are your best friend (not to mention having friends with rakes as well). I use the leaf blower for sidewalks and areas on my driveway with minimal leafs. The leaf blower becomes less efficient once they become more piled up. At this point, I use a wide shop broom to push the piles where I want them to go.
As for the lawn, I found that using a rake is the fastest and most efficient method of leaf removal (albeit more physical effort than, say, holding a leaf blower). I typically just rake the leaves into the wood-line and let them decompose over winter on their own.
If you don't want to have leaves bordering your wood-line, A nice and easy method for removing the leaves to a different location would be to get a large tarp and blow/rake the leaves onto that. Once the tarp is full of leaves, you can just pull the tarp to a new location such as a pit or trailer.