Design flaw

Consider the common push broom. It is a standard by which nearly every man or woman who has a workshop or large outdoor paved area is quite familiar with. It is a staple of the garage. Last week, my trusty old pusher snapped off the handle for the last time. It was a wooden twenty-four inch palmyra head. Too many handles have snapped off in the holes, and, the wood after twenty years was falling apart. Today, due to the whirlybirds littering my concrete I had to go buy another one.

Here's where things start going awry.

I have long noticed the design flaw these tools all have in common. My new one is no different than my trusty old one. Here's the rub; the angle of the handle to the brush head as it contacts the surface it is sweeping is incorrect. For the broom head to properly and efficiently do what it was designed to do, the bristles need to be flat against the ground/surface.

Now, even at my robust height of 5' 8", I must bend down slightly to be at the proper angle. For you freekishly tall people of 5'9" or above, you must put that much more stress on your lower back to do so. At the proper angle the bristles do their job efficiently. Unfortunately, most everyone who has a broom stands up normally to their natural height to use it. That means only the front bristles of the broom contact the surface to push the debris away. They bend beneath the weight/force applied to the forward stroke and that usually means a lot of stuff is left over from the path you just swept. That's the problem.

It's high time the hardware engineers out there do what is needed and design a properly working push broom without an overly inflated price for doing so. The world would be a cleaner place indeed.