Commercial users do not like electric equipment because they discharge fast and do not have the means to recharge it between jobs. The solution there is to bring more charged batteries, but those as well as the charging stations for multiple batteries are costly.
And when it comes to air pressure, gas blowers have more CFM than electric ones.
Electric equipment can also not be used if there's rain, and the batteries are not resilient to cold.
>>The solution there is to bring more charged batteries, but those as well as the charging stations for multiple batteries are costly.
I can't imagine they don't pay for themselves within couple months if you actually run a business. The amount of fuel used by any greenkeeping business is non-trivial, and batteries are not that expensive.
>>Electric equipment can also not be used if there's rain
Since when? Of course it can be.
>>and the batteries are not resilient to cold.
This only really starts to have a measurable impact in the kind of cold where I'd question your sanity if you were still blowing leaves outside.
"the most powerful can produce sounds of up to 100 decibels of low-frequency noise, around the same as a Boeing 737 taking off "
The poor Boeing 737 just can't buy good publicity. Now, it's even being invoked in yet another negative story even if it isn't directly about the plane directly.
>> "the most powerful can produce sounds of up to 100 decibels of low-frequency noise, around the same as a Boeing 737 taking off "
> The poor Boeing 737 just can't buy good publicity. Now, it's even being invoked in yet another negative story even if it isn't directly about the plane directly.
You’re thinking of the Boeing 737 MAX series. The 737 is from 1967.
See, it's even worse for Boeing. Now their good planes are lumped together with negative connotations about their bad planes in negative news stories that have nothing to do with Boeing, while getting discussed in forums rather than the actual topic of the article. Which was something about loose bolts making outdoor equipment loud. Damn, it happened again.
> See, it's even worse for Boeing. Now their good planes are lumped together with negative connotations about their bad planes in negative news stories that have nothing to do with Boeing, while getting discussed in forums rather than the actual topic of the article. Which was something about loose bolts making outdoor equipment loud. Damn, it happened again.
To say nothing of the appropriateness or applicability of bringing up the 767 in the original article, which was almost certainly a case of SEO abuse, your usage of passive voice obscures your own role in contributing to and continuing this phenomenon. I’m not sure that you were aware of the distinction beforehand from your comments, and regardless, your comment here now glosses over your own role in virally and memetically propagating the same blunder that your passive statements ascribe to no one with a view from nowhere.
Something something glass houses, casting stones, and so on.
> I’m not sure that you were aware of the distinction beforehand from your comments, and regardless, your comment here now glosses over your own role in virally and memetically propagating the same blunder that your passive statements ascribe to no one with a view from nowhere.
No, I was fully aware of what I was doing. I was not in a fugue state. I was in complete control of all of my faculties. It was an example of taking two things totally unrelated and smashing them together to make a pointless point. The subtlety might have been lost on you, but it does not have any bearing on whether I was cognizant of my actions.
Oh, fantastic. I needed a resident expert in this field. I only mention these concerns to illustrate how these methods and techniques can even work upon one not unlike myself, to wit:
For the eastern-european eye the whole leaf-blower contraption seems to be an extreme waste of resources. A broom and a rake are better in almost every way in my untrained broom&rake using eyes. The single reasonable usecase I saw it in action was when street-cleaners blew out cigarette buds (another waste of resources actually, both cigarettes and littering) from the rock ballast of railway tracks using leaf-blower machines (or something similar).
How could it become so popular, does it have any benefits apart from using a machine for the sake of using a machine, and showing off (as it initially has been probably)?
> How could it become so popular, does it have any benefits apart from using a machine for the sake of using a machine, and showing off (as it initially has been probably)?
When one has 10,000 square feet (or more) to "rake" and multiple large trees (either your own, or blown in from neighbors) dropping leaves on that 10,000 square feet, a leaf blower can change an 8hr+ job with a rake into a 30-60 minute effort by a single person.
Which is the biggest reason why they were adopted by lawn care contractors, the contractor could now "rake" 10-12 jobs per day vs. 1-3 jobs per day with the same crew of 2-3 employees.
There exists in very many areas of the US a common property size for single family homes that is large enough to make "rake by hand" a significant time investment, but that is simultaneously small enough that a riding mower and sweeper is "too much" and/or "too awkward" to use. These tend to fall out into the 5,000 to 15,000 square feet (464.5 m^2 to 1,393.5 m^s for those using metric) range (with some slop on both ends of that size range). It is for this size yard where the 'leaf blower' found a "useful market" by turning an all day effort using a rake into an hour or so's effort using a blower.
In my area, all the leaf blowers that do arrive are all carried by lawn work contractors. However, personally, I'm not bothered by them so their arrival during summer (grass clippings cleanup - always seemed a bit overkill but it is what the 'lawn work contractors' do) or fall (leaves) has never caused me an issue. Note: I'm not detracting from or dismissing the fact that others may be significantly bothered, just stating the fact that I'm personally not bothered by them.
With one or more large Oak trees the amount of leaf cover is such if left untouched that the yard would revert, typically in only one fall season, to "forest ground cover" (old rotting leaves, mud, and the hardy weeds/vines that will grow in "forest ground cover"). Which rapidly becomes not very useful as a "yard", a ripe source of ticks (and the diseases ticks carry) in much of the US, and in many areas will quickly result in a "HOA nastygram" [1] from the HOA busybodys regarding not maintaining the grass properly with the ensuing fines that go along with that nastygram.
[1] in my specific case not, as I do not, and will never, live in a HOA area -- but eventually even the local govt. will send out a "nastygram", they are simply by far less sensitive than HOA busybodys and it takes a quite significant divergence from the typical before they notice and send out a "nastygram". And the local govt. nastygrams most often include a compliance period before any fines are imposed vs. an HOA one which begins with a fine and escalates from there.
I’d say it actually has negative overall effects. Removing the leaf drop deprives the soil of a nutritional opportunity, but if you do still want to do that then raking helps aerate the soil as well as pull any moss.
Americans have an extreme fetish about lawns (it's a matter of social status), and in temperate climates, they want lawns to stay green throughout the winter, so instead of "leaving the leaves", they often rake or use leafblowers (or for the case of 40% of homeowners, hire somebody). In the case of hired labor, homeowners are usually commuting from suburbs and their kids are at school so they don't have to deal with the noise themselves. Lawn grass is the number 1 crop in the United States, and it exists only to absorb excess wealth and make work for others in games of social status in a culture that originally sought to emulate the symbols of wealth of English landowners, as a neatly cut lawn was an indication of wool production, originally the primary English export during the time of the enclosure movement. But with post-WWII suburban housing subsidies, each house began to have a lawn and most people don't want sheep, so the use of lawnmowers and fertilizer to began to supplant the job of sheep.
I rent, and what kills me is listening to it interrupt my meetings and/or my ability to think and thinking to myself, "I'm paying, indirectly, for this service that I don't want. I'd rather they just leave the leaves me, and we can all just enjoy fall before maybe doing one leaf blow at the end of the season, or something."
But somewhere there is a property manager who wants to have a "pristine"¹ looking property 365 days a year.
¹(for some definition of that … I think fall is beautiful, the sounds of leaves crunching under one's footfalls, the changing colors.)
When I got into gardening I learned to leave some leaves around through the winter. The good bugs in your yard need a safe place to hibernate, and it's really important to provide them small microbiomes in so they'll be there to keep things healthy in the spring.
So don't clean your garden/yard too much in the fall, and definitely not after the temps get cold enough that bugs will be hibernating in those leaves. Also don't clean up in the spring till nightly temperatures are consistently about like 50° F. It's okay to clean up before last harvest and get rid of some stuff, but please try to keep some piles of leaves/dead plants around for the little critters.
Of course don't keep leaves around of plants that are prone to disease, get fruit tree leaves out of your yard as soon as possible, for example.
Yes! Also in the spring, I see so many birds migrating land in flocks (eg, 20+ robins), and start overturning those leaves looking for food. The ground is still frozen, bugs are not flying, but there they are ... waiting to be consumed.
(Naturally the robins and such don't get them all, so it serves a dual purpose.)
Oh goodness. I'll never forget my across the street neighbors. They were the nicest people generally, but the wife didn't work and used to spend all her spare time doing busy work in the yard.
I'll never forget having to listen to leaf blowers running full throttle for hours nearly every day in the fall. This lady would get a ladder, climb up, and leaf blow her gutters out every single day between the hours of 11am and 2pm or so. Then chase those leaves around the yard in the wind, mostly fruitlessly. The only brief reprieve was her moving the ladder over 3 feet at a time.
I don't think I've ever held such negative feelings for a human before that I didn't express. Having a good neighbor is so rare for me, I didn't want to spoil it by complaining, but boy did that make me miserable all fall long.
They hurt my ears indoors across the street, I don't know how they are even legal.
In one of my worst places for noise pollution I would regularly have thoughts of throttling the perpetrators to death. This was one thing that made me realise how bad noise is for people.
What a sad story... That said, I absolutely love the expression "sonic assault". I'm adding it to my vocabulary, right next to the uses of "sonic" as a verb and as a noun. ;-)
I grew up in South Asia, with my window facing a large public ground.
Weekly, Random schools blast deafeningly loud speakers into our windows. All this, just so teachers could shout left-right-left, as kids marched on out of sync.
I'm not exaggerating. It was physically painful and I have heard my parents utter words reserved only for the worst of scum.
Who is it for? If I'm losing my hearing, surely the participants must be in lot more pain.
I suspect that many people in public event planning suffer degraded hearing early....... which in turn leads to them setting even higher volumes.
I'm a big fan of the hustle and bustle of big cities. But, there is a reason for targeted defening sounds being used as torture in Guanatanamo Bay.
I don't live through this misery, but I have to deal with occasional loud leaf blowers during my morning walks. Quality noise cancelling headphones do a really good job at mitigating this problem, bringing the noise level from unbearable to just "annoying".
I hate to break it to you, but electric ones are loud too. It's the blower that is loud. Not the motor. I have a big ass backpack one and it's not any louder than the little handheld electric one I have.
Not "across the street loud". I've got a Stihl electric one and I can barely hear one working in my own yard. It's just slightly louder than a hairdryer.
No, the reason we use logarithmic scale for noise is because "loudness" is logarithmic i.e. as the power of sound grows exponentially the perceived loudness grows linearly, so 80 db is 15% as loud as 70db (it is 10x more power though).
There are more options that can be much faster and convenient from which I would recommend lawn sweepers and mower bagging kits. There are also leaf vacuums but those work better vacuuming leaf piles.
There are push behind lawn sweepers for smaller areas, and tow behind sweepers that you can attach to a lawn tractor or mower.
On leveled ground, a lawn sweeper is faster than a leaf blower, and will pick up twigs, acorns as well as leaves.
In any case... lawn robots are coming strong and it's going to be a lawn robot game soon.
Is this article out of the past? Battery-powered leaf blowers now seem to be about the same price as gas-powered ones.
Where did this guy find a US$2200 leaf blower? For that price, it should be autonomous. The most expensive Stihl electric leaf blower I can find is $699.
Unfortunately a battery powered leaf blower sound is almost as annoying as a combustion engine powered one. It's "quieter" for sure if decibels are measured but it makes a quite loud high pitch brain piercing squeal.
I have neighbors with both kinds of leaf blowers, and I can't decide which one is more annoying.
True! I have a Makita leaf blower. It uses the same battery as my other power tools. It was therefore very cheap and is as good or better than my previous, gas powered one. I can just about do my terrain on a 5Ah battery.
Bat powered ones have gotten so good. On the low end, I have a 40v Ryobi Whisper model I think I bought for 200 or so. It's definitely -not- anything resembling a whisper, but they don't hurt your ears much. I always compare it to about as loud as a vacuum. They work surprisingly well.
Same with Greenworks 80v. That sucker I have to hold with two hands because of the blowing force. It's about the same price.
Generally I suggest just buying whatever 'line' you're interested in, so you can share batteries. Just stay away from the 18 or 20v lawn stuff, it's garbage. I got a free Ryobi 18v blower, and it's basically barely strong enough to blow dust off the garage floor.
Lol ok sure. I mean I might not want to handle multiple acres with them. That’s just because they’re small.
But my 18v lawn mower and leaf blower work great, and so do my parents’. We’re not using the same brand.
Opinion from the past?
Gross generalization?
‘Murica - everything bigger must be better?
Experience. I have 18v tools and 40v tools. I have an 18v weedeater and the thing struggles with anything thicker than a blade of grass. I've seen the same with mowers.
If you have a tiny, flat, well kept yard they are probably fine. If you're on a typical quarter acre or more, they're an exercise in frustration.
Some of them require 2 batts to operate in series so effectively 36-40v. It's no different then what you have, most likely. They work for me pretty well on 4 acres. Amperage is more of an issue. But, I think the point of your generalized 'avoid 18v' comment is not great advice to take without further consideration. I actually like having everything the same voltage so I don't have to juggle multiple extra batteries on that plane.
That's fair. Milwaukee has some high end 18v polesaws that work extremely well, for example, but of course trade power for battery life, which can be equally frustrating.
I was just thinking of someone trying to cut their lawn, looking to buy a mower and weedeater. You definitely want something in a series, or something probably 60/80v.
Ego is pretty universally seen as 'the best.' There's a reason they don't make 18v tools.
My 18v weed eater kicks ass. I have two acres and it pretty much chews through everything. I shove it down in ditches and chop up all kinds of stuff with it.
My experience is similar. I have a 20v weed eater and it'll go through just about anything less than finger width. I have an acre and can do all the trimming in about one half charge of the battery.
The string used can also make a difference. The .095" string with a metal cable inside is what I find to do the best in general. The thin and cheap string without the metal inside doesn't do so well in my experience, it breaks too often and doesn't cut through much more than thin grass.
Interesting, I might try some different string. My (18v) electric weed eater is ridiculously bad. It struggles with thick grass, and the battery makes it about 1/4 way through. I have ~1.2 acres but more perimeter than normal due to lots of things (like trees, a gazebo, a firepit, flower gardens) so probably more comparable to 1.5 acres, but the electric has been a massive disappointment for me
You just need to get the bigger Ryobi blower. Mine isn't even the biggest one and it's almost as powerful as my backpack gas blower. The battery doesn't last long in it though. Maybe 15 minutes. So I use it for quick work, and on days where I need to go longer like after a big fall storm I use the gas blower just so i dont have to stop and chsnfe batteries.
Every morning from 8-9 someone blows the two dozen large leaves out of the park across the way. I wish they just pick them up, it would go faster even. They do it when it’s wet! Do you know how badly wet leaves react to leaf blowers?!
Yea that’s true! I don’t hold it against them at all, they keep the park nice at least, and I like walking there, so it’s a small price to hear the blower in the end.
Noise pollution has become one of my biggest problems. I'm sure everything has got louder and it seems to keep getting even louder. Obviously I have also become older, but I don't remember my parents complaining about noise when they were my age.
Leaf blowers aren't ubiquitous in the UK, but where I live now they get used. I'm three floors up and even with windows closed the noise inside is incredible. I also noticed the horrible smell when I opened the window to see what it was.
> Most have what’s called a “two-stroke engine,” an outmoded design that burns a mix of gas and oil
One thing that surprised me is the two stroke engine was invented after the four stroke (Ottoman cycle) engine. It does have advantages like being able to run completely upside down since it doesn't have a sump where the oil needs to drain. They also have a higher power to weight ratio.
The thing that makes them outmoded is perhaps lithium ion batteries. You couldn't fit a four stroke engine to a leaf blower or chainsaw etc.
I have a four stroke trimmer that I can change out to a pole saw. I can run it at any angle I've had to so far. It sees some weird angles with the pole saw.
>One thing that surprised me is the two stroke engine was invented after the four stroke (Ottoman cycle) engine. It does have advantages like being able to run completely upside down since it doesn't have a sump where the oil needs to drain. They also have a higher power to weight ratio.
Its major disadvantage is due to lack of valves is that for a short period of time the intake port and exhaust port are both open allowing up to 30% of the unburned air-fuel mixture to pass right through the engine as pollution. This also makes it nearly impossible to add further emissions controls in the exhaust system such as a catalytic converter, not that its really feasible to due to in such a small engine.
Because of this small two-stoke engine like those in a leaf blower can put out much more pollution that a large automobile with a 4-stroke engine with modern emissions controls.
There are more advanced two-stroke designs (BRP E-TEC) that use direct fuel injection to avoid this, but they are far too complicated to use in a small lawn tool.
Well, in my city there are few of these, but lots of low-paid workers removing leaves with rakes -- collecting them in piles, then in plastic bags, and finally into trucks, to the landfill I suppose.
The bigger problem is fighting with the fallen leaves. Leaves attract earthworms that actually process them and fertilize soil. Without them, soil is getting empty.
But still, in many cities go this vicious circle of making a lot of landscape care work that destroys it and needs a lot more work: agressively cut the grass + remove leaves -> poor soil -> bare ground without grass -> mud after rains washed on sidewalks & roads + need to bring fertile earth and seed the grass again.
My gardener has been creating a leaf bank in our yard, where they don’t remove all the leaves and instead let them build up in select areas. It’s amazing the difference in wildlife, we’ve seen a continuous stream of critters that we never saw when everything was blown clean. I quite like the aesthetic as well.
Yeah, I could never figure that out. The tree spend a lot of energy extracting nutrients from the soil, and then I'm just supposed to take the result and throw it away? Seems like it would stretch a lot longer if I didn't.
It gets even worse: my end of my block alone (in pricey Cambridge, MA), has multiple properties that routinely use multiple gas leafblowers at once, and gratuitously.
One apartment building sometimes gets three workers using big backpack gas leafblowers simultaneously.
One house on a small lot seems to pay two workers to walk around it with gas leafblowers, going on for ages, like they're charging by the person-hour.
Another apartment building -- which seems to use a leafblower as a way for someone to kill time, just waving it around the asphalt, while the property is shabby-utilitarian -- switched to an electric for awhile... (which wasn't as bad as gas ones, but had a high-pitched component to the sound, like maybe metal parts scraping, which I'd guess was pretty hard on the operator's hearing).
Random other leafblowers on and off throughout each day, for maybe 3/4 of the year, not just fall.
I recently tried leaving neighborly notes to the property owners with the worst leafblower problems, and might have to refresh that again in the spring, if I don't move first. Or take my busybody-ness to the next level, and try lobbying local government officials for bans on leafblowers, and on the other main unnecessary noise pollution sources.
I don't know what to say about this subject, not having been subjected to it (and also having a lawn and sometimes considering getting a (battery-powered) blower). I found this part of the article annoying in a misleading bad-sciency kind of way, though:
The rest is emitted as toxic fumes of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), two of the main ingredients in ground-level ozone, which both trigger asthma attacks and contribute to premature death.
I know ground-level ozone is bad news, but it's still just O3 so there is no way any organic compounds are ingredients in it. Perhaps they play a part in the formation of ozone (I'm no chemist) but then say that.
I had to look it up, and the US Environmental Protection Agency says [1]:
[Ground-level ozone] is created by chemical reactions between oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC). This happens when pollutants emitted by cars, power plants, industrial boilers, refineries, chemical plants, and other sources chemically react in the presence of sunlight.
So that sounds about right then, and was a very quick search away.
In Germany we also have that, but I'm British and in the UK there was nothing like this. People do full on loud drilling work on Sundays with no issue from their neighbours. There may be "officially" laws to restrict noise on Sunday in the UK, but it's not socially expected at all. Here in Germany everyone knows not do on Sunday, not so in UK. My wife is also British and she hates the Germany noise restriction, she wants to be able to make as much noise as she wants whatever day she wants. That's simply the British way. Though her mum is French and she prefers it the German way.
In Poland it's also socially unacceptable to be making noise on Sunday. I don't think there are any actual laws against it, but no one ever cuts the grass on a Sunday for instance. And yes, I also live in the UK now and it's really annoying that people don't keep Sunday noise free, with all the cutting drilling and what have you. Oh well, different society, different expectations.
I take a bit of heat from my HOA because I simply refuse to participate in activities that I wouldn't want my neighbors doing every day.
Leaf blowing is bad, but nothing touches my experience with a neighbor and his pressure washing hobby. Imagine someone cleaning their driveway every weekend. The leaf blowers are like a symphony by comparison.
I've moved 2 times over bad neighbors alone. Both times they acted like it was an assault on their humanity that I would leave over such a thing.
Not everyone has the luxury to do so, but you can find a quiet place if your sample size is high enough. It's not just about having enough money to buy an isolated ranch home. There are so many odd things that can make noise that you won't discover for months.
I never understood leaf blowers. They just move the leaves but the wind will blow them back. I had a Toro brand corded electric blower that could be reversed to suck and chop the leaves into a bag, that could then be emptied into the compost bin. Much more effective solution.
The point is to pile up the leaves so they can be manually collected, put in bags etc. The "suck" solution makes sense if you don't have a lot of leaves, but people with large yards or lot of trees need large bins or even trucks to collect the leaves after blowing.
I hate to break it to you but if you don't grow grass then weeds and mud will take over. The weeds bring insects and mosquitos and the mud is well...mud.
Letting leaves kill my grass was a terrible mistake, I'll never make it again.
Back when I had a lawn, I'd mow the leaves into the ground. But maybe that only worked well in that locale? (Now I live in the high desert, so no lawn.)
Why are you monocropping grass?? Plant a meadow. Make hill mounds with grass clippings. Plant a hedgerow.
Seems like we decided arbitrarily on the most destructive form of yard that has secondary effects of causing scientifically proven damage to humans around us with sonic blasts from our leaf blowers.
It's not very effective as you need to move the nozzle very close to the leaf to suck it in. Meanwhile, a decent hand-held blower moves leaves from 20 feet away. I have such a vacuum and use it after I've piled up the leaves with a blower because, apparently, there is no other compact leaf shredding options.
Even when the leaves are already in a pile it's quite slow and takes about an hour to collect a garden bag of mulched leaves. The thing claims 1:16 ratio but in practice it's closer to 1:6. So it's probably 5-10 minutes to suck in a bag of leaves already piled in one place.
If you don't have an HOA, consider not leaf blowing or raking at all. There's not much point and local insect populations probably need them to weather winter.
Many single-unit family home neighborhoods do not have an HOA—people just get along or take their concerns to the town itself. I mostly associate HOAs with suburbia.
The frequency of gas smell / poison air filling my whole apartment is 100% out of control. It is absolutely mind blowing to me that with all doors closed and windows shut, the noise isn’t even the issue I have. It’s the poison that enters so quickly and hangs around for so long, and it happens so often.
The smell those things put out is vile and it hangs in the air for so long. It’s nauseating and I’ll never figure out how that became legal in the first place. Like surely if I walked around blowing gas smell into people’s apartments I’d surely be arrested. But no, apparently that’s totally legit to do. Wild.
And of course, the noise is unbearable as well. All for what?! Ugggghhhh.
About time. I've read horror stories of people moving out of cities during the lockdowns to escape their small hellholes, only to find out that their Zoom meetings are now going to have leaf blowers in the background all day.
It's one of those things where your "right" to own a gas leaf blower smashes into my right to not be forced to listen to it. You have a remedy - buy a quiet non-gas blower, and I do not.
I would ban gas-powered gardening instruments altogether (except industrial scale ones). They are loud, stinky and have worse emissions than a 50 year old car.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 183 ms ] threadedit: I had stopped reading prematurely due to a massive advert I confused for the end
>The roar of leaf blowers has long been ubiquitous in fall. But as more US cities ban the gas-powered devices, that’s starting to change.
And if you want to be picky about it, yes, that's kinda of an "unnecessary" ban, but you just wouldn't get most people to change their habits
But see my other comment, I stopped reading prematurely as what I thought was the end of the article was just a massive advert.
And when it comes to air pressure, gas blowers have more CFM than electric ones.
Electric equipment can also not be used if there's rain, and the batteries are not resilient to cold.
I can't imagine they don't pay for themselves within couple months if you actually run a business. The amount of fuel used by any greenkeeping business is non-trivial, and batteries are not that expensive.
>>Electric equipment can also not be used if there's rain
Since when? Of course it can be.
>>and the batteries are not resilient to cold.
This only really starts to have a measurable impact in the kind of cold where I'd question your sanity if you were still blowing leaves outside.
The poor Boeing 737 just can't buy good publicity. Now, it's even being invoked in yet another negative story even if it isn't directly about the plane directly.
> The poor Boeing 737 just can't buy good publicity. Now, it's even being invoked in yet another negative story even if it isn't directly about the plane directly.
You’re thinking of the Boeing 737 MAX series. The 737 is from 1967.
To say nothing of the appropriateness or applicability of bringing up the 767 in the original article, which was almost certainly a case of SEO abuse, your usage of passive voice obscures your own role in contributing to and continuing this phenomenon. I’m not sure that you were aware of the distinction beforehand from your comments, and regardless, your comment here now glosses over your own role in virally and memetically propagating the same blunder that your passive statements ascribe to no one with a view from nowhere.
Something something glass houses, casting stones, and so on.
By which I mean the 737 and now we’ve come full circle - goddamn it all to /dev/null
No, I was fully aware of what I was doing. I was not in a fugue state. I was in complete control of all of my faculties. It was an example of taking two things totally unrelated and smashing them together to make a pointless point. The subtlety might have been lost on you, but it does not have any bearing on whether I was cognizant of my actions.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39055098
And once you start adding distance differences, the comparisons are pointless.
A microwave five feet away is as loud as a jet 5 miles away or something.
How could it become so popular, does it have any benefits apart from using a machine for the sake of using a machine, and showing off (as it initially has been probably)?
When one has 10,000 square feet (or more) to "rake" and multiple large trees (either your own, or blown in from neighbors) dropping leaves on that 10,000 square feet, a leaf blower can change an 8hr+ job with a rake into a 30-60 minute effort by a single person.
Which is the biggest reason why they were adopted by lawn care contractors, the contractor could now "rake" 10-12 jobs per day vs. 1-3 jobs per day with the same crew of 2-3 employees.
I have an acre of land with multiple large trees. I have an electric sweeper but never really loved the job it did.
In my area, all the leaf blowers that do arrive are all carried by lawn work contractors. However, personally, I'm not bothered by them so their arrival during summer (grass clippings cleanup - always seemed a bit overkill but it is what the 'lawn work contractors' do) or fall (leaves) has never caused me an issue. Note: I'm not detracting from or dismissing the fact that others may be significantly bothered, just stating the fact that I'm personally not bothered by them.
[1] in my specific case not, as I do not, and will never, live in a HOA area -- but eventually even the local govt. will send out a "nastygram", they are simply by far less sensitive than HOA busybodys and it takes a quite significant divergence from the typical before they notice and send out a "nastygram". And the local govt. nastygrams most often include a compliance period before any fines are imposed vs. an HOA one which begins with a fine and escalates from there.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practic...
https://dcist.com/story/20/03/06/the-white-house-lawn-was-on...
But somewhere there is a property manager who wants to have a "pristine"¹ looking property 365 days a year.
¹(for some definition of that … I think fall is beautiful, the sounds of leaves crunching under one's footfalls, the changing colors.)
So don't clean your garden/yard too much in the fall, and definitely not after the temps get cold enough that bugs will be hibernating in those leaves. Also don't clean up in the spring till nightly temperatures are consistently about like 50° F. It's okay to clean up before last harvest and get rid of some stuff, but please try to keep some piles of leaves/dead plants around for the little critters.
Of course don't keep leaves around of plants that are prone to disease, get fruit tree leaves out of your yard as soon as possible, for example.
(Naturally the robins and such don't get them all, so it serves a dual purpose.)
"I plead for a radical drop of old age subsidies"
~~ Martin Persheid
I'll never forget having to listen to leaf blowers running full throttle for hours nearly every day in the fall. This lady would get a ladder, climb up, and leaf blow her gutters out every single day between the hours of 11am and 2pm or so. Then chase those leaves around the yard in the wind, mostly fruitlessly. The only brief reprieve was her moving the ladder over 3 feet at a time.
I don't think I've ever held such negative feelings for a human before that I didn't express. Having a good neighbor is so rare for me, I didn't want to spoil it by complaining, but boy did that make me miserable all fall long.
They hurt my ears indoors across the street, I don't know how they are even legal.
Weekly, Random schools blast deafeningly loud speakers into our windows. All this, just so teachers could shout left-right-left, as kids marched on out of sync.
I'm not exaggerating. It was physically painful and I have heard my parents utter words reserved only for the worst of scum.
Who is it for? If I'm losing my hearing, surely the participants must be in lot more pain.
I suspect that many people in public event planning suffer degraded hearing early....... which in turn leads to them setting even higher volumes.
I'm a big fan of the hustle and bustle of big cities. But, there is a reason for targeted defening sounds being used as torture in Guanatanamo Bay.
Numbers provided elsewhere in the comments put the gas version at more than 10x as loud as electric.
There are push behind lawn sweepers for smaller areas, and tow behind sweepers that you can attach to a lawn tractor or mower.
On leveled ground, a lawn sweeper is faster than a leaf blower, and will pick up twigs, acorns as well as leaves.
In any case... lawn robots are coming strong and it's going to be a lawn robot game soon.
Where did this guy find a US$2200 leaf blower? For that price, it should be autonomous. The most expensive Stihl electric leaf blower I can find is $699.
https://www.scag.com/product/wheeled-blowers/extreme/
I have neighbors with both kinds of leaf blowers, and I can't decide which one is more annoying.
Of course, you can be annoyed by both. But then the solution is to move somewhere without neighbours.
110db is roughly 16x as loud as 70.
Same with Greenworks 80v. That sucker I have to hold with two hands because of the blowing force. It's about the same price.
Generally I suggest just buying whatever 'line' you're interested in, so you can share batteries. Just stay away from the 18 or 20v lawn stuff, it's garbage. I got a free Ryobi 18v blower, and it's basically barely strong enough to blow dust off the garage floor.
Lol ok sure. I mean I might not want to handle multiple acres with them. That’s just because they’re small. But my 18v lawn mower and leaf blower work great, and so do my parents’. We’re not using the same brand.
Opinion from the past? Gross generalization? ‘Murica - everything bigger must be better?
If you have a tiny, flat, well kept yard they are probably fine. If you're on a typical quarter acre or more, they're an exercise in frustration.
I was just thinking of someone trying to cut their lawn, looking to buy a mower and weedeater. You definitely want something in a series, or something probably 60/80v.
Ego is pretty universally seen as 'the best.' There's a reason they don't make 18v tools.
The string used can also make a difference. The .095" string with a metal cable inside is what I find to do the best in general. The thin and cheap string without the metal inside doesn't do so well in my experience, it breaks too often and doesn't cut through much more than thin grass.
But is amazing for making a clean burn barrel. one of these can make the barrel red hot - so everything there burns completely.
The cost includes a (now) roughly 1300usd pre-tax battery backpack.
Leaf blowers aren't ubiquitous in the UK, but where I live now they get used. I'm three floors up and even with windows closed the noise inside is incredible. I also noticed the horrible smell when I opened the window to see what it was.
> Most have what’s called a “two-stroke engine,” an outmoded design that burns a mix of gas and oil
One thing that surprised me is the two stroke engine was invented after the four stroke (Ottoman cycle) engine. It does have advantages like being able to run completely upside down since it doesn't have a sump where the oil needs to drain. They also have a higher power to weight ratio.
The thing that makes them outmoded is perhaps lithium ion batteries. You couldn't fit a four stroke engine to a leaf blower or chainsaw etc.
Actually not true - you can definitely get four stroke blowers, chainsaws, weed whackers, etc.
Its major disadvantage is due to lack of valves is that for a short period of time the intake port and exhaust port are both open allowing up to 30% of the unburned air-fuel mixture to pass right through the engine as pollution. This also makes it nearly impossible to add further emissions controls in the exhaust system such as a catalytic converter, not that its really feasible to due to in such a small engine.
Because of this small two-stoke engine like those in a leaf blower can put out much more pollution that a large automobile with a 4-stroke engine with modern emissions controls.
There are more advanced two-stroke designs (BRP E-TEC) that use direct fuel injection to avoid this, but they are far too complicated to use in a small lawn tool.
The bigger problem is fighting with the fallen leaves. Leaves attract earthworms that actually process them and fertilize soil. Without them, soil is getting empty.
But still, in many cities go this vicious circle of making a lot of landscape care work that destroys it and needs a lot more work: agressively cut the grass + remove leaves -> poor soil -> bare ground without grass -> mud after rains washed on sidewalks & roads + need to bring fertile earth and seed the grass again.
One apartment building sometimes gets three workers using big backpack gas leafblowers simultaneously.
One house on a small lot seems to pay two workers to walk around it with gas leafblowers, going on for ages, like they're charging by the person-hour.
Another apartment building -- which seems to use a leafblower as a way for someone to kill time, just waving it around the asphalt, while the property is shabby-utilitarian -- switched to an electric for awhile... (which wasn't as bad as gas ones, but had a high-pitched component to the sound, like maybe metal parts scraping, which I'd guess was pretty hard on the operator's hearing).
Random other leafblowers on and off throughout each day, for maybe 3/4 of the year, not just fall.
I recently tried leaving neighborly notes to the property owners with the worst leafblower problems, and might have to refresh that again in the spring, if I don't move first. Or take my busybody-ness to the next level, and try lobbying local government officials for bans on leafblowers, and on the other main unnecessary noise pollution sources.
The rest is emitted as toxic fumes of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), two of the main ingredients in ground-level ozone, which both trigger asthma attacks and contribute to premature death.
I know ground-level ozone is bad news, but it's still just O3 so there is no way any organic compounds are ingredients in it. Perhaps they play a part in the formation of ozone (I'm no chemist) but then say that.
I had to look it up, and the US Environmental Protection Agency says [1]:
[Ground-level ozone] is created by chemical reactions between oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC). This happens when pollutants emitted by cars, power plants, industrial boilers, refineries, chemical plants, and other sources chemically react in the presence of sunlight.
So that sounds about right then, and was a very quick search away.
[1]: https://www.epa.gov/ground-level-ozone-pollution/ground-leve...
I would pay extra, whatever the cost, to have rakes and brooms be the tools, not the blowers.
Amen
Leaf blowing is bad, but nothing touches my experience with a neighbor and his pressure washing hobby. Imagine someone cleaning their driveway every weekend. The leaf blowers are like a symphony by comparison.
I've moved 2 times over bad neighbors alone. Both times they acted like it was an assault on their humanity that I would leave over such a thing.
Not everyone has the luxury to do so, but you can find a quiet place if your sample size is high enough. It's not just about having enough money to buy an isolated ranch home. There are so many odd things that can make noise that you won't discover for months.
A neighbor of mine a few doors down does the same, it's baffling how they even have concrete left.
The main problem is the obsession with grass.
Letting leaves kill my grass was a terrible mistake, I'll never make it again.
Now, rake, blow, shake, snow, wait. That’s what grass needs and it is easy and looks good.
Or you go with artificial turf or something similar and that has its own issues.
Seems like we decided arbitrarily on the most destructive form of yard that has secondary effects of causing scientifically proven damage to humans around us with sonic blasts from our leaf blowers.
For a lot of leaves, it's not a trivial amount of time. If that's your hobby, that's all good, but otherwise time is valuable and finite.
But ye, never understood the need for one. I am using a rake for 2000m2 of garden with 5 leaf trees. None of my 6 neigbours got a leaf blower.
Even when the leaves are already in a pile it's quite slow and takes about an hour to collect a garden bag of mulched leaves. The thing claims 1:16 ratio but in practice it's closer to 1:6. So it's probably 5-10 minutes to suck in a bag of leaves already piled in one place.
As soon as you have a common area or a shared wall, roof or other construction artifact you need an HOA of some sort.
The smell those things put out is vile and it hangs in the air for so long. It’s nauseating and I’ll never figure out how that became legal in the first place. Like surely if I walked around blowing gas smell into people’s apartments I’d surely be arrested. But no, apparently that’s totally legit to do. Wild.
And of course, the noise is unbearable as well. All for what?! Ugggghhhh.
It's one of those things where your "right" to own a gas leaf blower smashes into my right to not be forced to listen to it. You have a remedy - buy a quiet non-gas blower, and I do not.