Magnetic Sweeper

A magnetic sweeper is a cleanup tool that uses a strong permanent magnet to collect nails, staples, screws and metal offcuts. On reroofing jobs, thousands of old nails fall from the roof during tear-off, and new nails are dropped during installation. Loose nails on lawns, driveways and paths are a hazard to people, pets, tyres and mowers, so sweeping the site is a standard part of job cleanup and of many contractors' quality checklists.

Types

• Rolling sweepers look like a push broom or small lawn mower, with a magnetic bar mounted between two wheels and a handle. Product listings show widths from about 17 in to 30 in (roughly 43 to 76 cm). Many have a quick-release lever that lets the collected nails drop into a bin or onto a tarp.
• Hand-held magnetic pickups and wands reach into flower beds, gravel and gutters.
• Large tow-behind sweepers cover car parks and large sites.
• Magnetic trays and bowls hold fasteners on the roof to reduce drops in the first place.

Use

Sweeping in overlapping passes, slowly, picks up more nails than a fast single pass. Grass length, gravel, mulch and leaf litter affect how close the magnet gets to buried nails, so crews often sweep more than once, including after mowing or rain. Nails can be thrown well beyond the drip line of the roof, especially from steep roofs and when debris is dropped into dumpsters, so the swept area typically extends well out from the house. Tarps laid around the base of the walls during tear-off catch much of the debris.

Limits

Magnets only collect ferrous metals. Aluminium, copper and most stainless-steel fasteners, and plastic cap fasteners, are not picked up and must be gathered by hand or by other means.

Related tools

Roofing shovels and pry bars for tear-off; chutes, dumpsters and trailers for debris; and leaf blowers or brooms for clearing granules and dust from roofs and driveways.