> There is also a new restriction for battery-powered models. They may only be used from October to December.
If you want to live in nature and in a city you need the tools to manage it. Cutting the trees down is also a valid solution.
It's the classic arsehole world we have become, people have to be indignant about everything.
For the people who don't create, lazy sloths sitting in their basements, they lash out at those who do.
Trees are a lot of work, when you work in gardening half the time is cleaning (leaf blowing, hedging and mowing) the other half is chopping them down because they are too much work for the owner.
Seems like one compromise would be that they can only be used during a few-hour period every other week or so. So you'd only get the noise in a predictable window.
It would be nice if we could solve our problems in a nice and civil way, and to be considerate to one another instead of making things illegal.
But then again, we are talking about a country where in many buildings you are not allowed to shower after 9pm.. Or take out the glass to the recycling on sundays..
I wish there existed a law that defined a single three-hour or so window of time on Saturday during which you could mow your lawn, and if you do that outside that window, you get sent into a room where you're bombarded with sounds of angry lawnmowers for 96 hours straight.
Are many HN members in Zürich? I was suprised to see this type of news with so many points, though it's quite amusing to see the mixture of different topics in the front page.
Zurich is an important city for IT in Europe, and a city I personally like as a visitor.
But that's not it - I find this restriction interesting, and I wanted to learn more. I contrast this with the unrestricted American "freedom to" that I usually see in HN.
The leafblower is one of those partisan issues where one camp likes to score internet points by joining the chorus against Unpopular Thing even though they have never been impacted by it, and the other camp defending it because their area really gets a lot of leaves compared to the rest, leaves kill their lawns, and brooms/rakes are seemingly ineffective or they don't exist.
Maybe it’s just me but I wonder why western countries don’t implement noise limits for vehicles with sirens in residential areas (fire trucks, police, ambulance etc.).
It always felt to me unnecessarily loud.
They’ve made them louder and louder over the years. That’s because cars have improved soundproofing to keep out the road noise of the tires against asphalt. But that also means it’s harder for drivers to hear sirens. Plus sound systems have gotten louder (in some cases almost drowning out sirens for people outside the vehicle as well as inside!)
TLDR: arms race against audibility for drivers, with residents’ sanity as the casualties.
I live in a very leafy area with a lot of deciduous forest cover, so we're no stranger to leaves. I have never understood leafblowing. It seems like such busy work. It's not hugely common here but I have seen people carefully shepherding leaves into little piles on pathways, battling against the entropy of a light breeze. I'm sure there's a good reason but it always just seems like the ultimate expression of man trying to conquer nature in every way
Same here, it is crazy around Autum in Germany, I never seen anyone bothering with leaves back in Portugal, and worse many of those leaf blowers are diesel powered, so much for being eco-friendly.
My main use case for a leaf blower is to blow lawn clippings off the sidewalks, paths, and roads back on to my lawn after mowing and trimming. Rakes aren't effective for such small trimmed parts.
My leaf blower is battery electric though so its a good bit quieter than the gas ones others use, although I do agree its still one of the loudest parts of my yard maintenance.
I live in the Netherlands. Moved right next to a cycling path that connects my district with the rest of the city. Big mistake - the sound of mopeds is unbearable. On top of that, there are kids who enjoy revving their engines. The sound drives me mad, but for reasons out of scope of this comment I can't move out. Fortunately, the city scheduled a ban on combustion engine mopeds. The problem is that it'll take a few years for the ban to come into force.
Funnily, previously I lived next to a railway and also under fly path of airplanes and these sounds never bothered me. It's the tiny combustion engines that make high-pitched noises that are the worst.
I moved to a neighborhood where a surprising majority of the residents do not outsource their lawn care and I think this makes the biggest difference. The noise reduction of simply not having beaten up landscaper trucks with muffler deletes driving through the streets every day is a massive help.
Letting your landscapers blow nutrients off your property is insane when it's difficult to find good quality top soil. The stuff you buy at Home Depot is essentially trash and rocks now. What comes out of the mower bag each spring can yield an incredible amount of dirt after it's had a full summer to cook in the pile.
In Washington, DC, gasoline-powered leaf blowers are forbidden. But less than an hour ago, I passed a powerful-looking one ready for use on a lawn nearby.
We finally bought a battery-powered leaf blower. This is really not for the lawn, which is relatively small and easily raked. Rather, my wife likes to remove the leaves from the garden beds. These are difficult to rake, what with shrubs etc., and one generally brings a good deal of mulch along with the leaves. We also have a strip of gravel to one side of the garage, and the blower makes it possible to remove leaves without gravel coming along.
And since you asked, the leaves end up at the curb. The city has a couple of collections every fall.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 50.2 ms ] threadIf you want to live in nature and in a city you need the tools to manage it. Cutting the trees down is also a valid solution.
It's the classic arsehole world we have become, people have to be indignant about everything.
For the people who don't create, lazy sloths sitting in their basements, they lash out at those who do.
Trees are a lot of work, when you work in gardening half the time is cleaning (leaf blowing, hedging and mowing) the other half is chopping them down because they are too much work for the owner.
But then again, we are talking about a country where in many buildings you are not allowed to shower after 9pm.. Or take out the glass to the recycling on sundays..
We have this ban as well in Los Angeles and it’s been lovely, though it’s within 150m of a residential zone.
for what purpose, to make it someone else's problem and then they can blow them back?
I hated doing this as a kid btw, and it's one of the reasons I don't want a home with a lawn.
But that's not it - I find this restriction interesting, and I wanted to learn more. I contrast this with the unrestricted American "freedom to" that I usually see in HN.
TLDR: arms race against audibility for drivers, with residents’ sanity as the casualties.
My leaf blower is battery electric though so its a good bit quieter than the gas ones others use, although I do agree its still one of the loudest parts of my yard maintenance.
Funnily, previously I lived next to a railway and also under fly path of airplanes and these sounds never bothered me. It's the tiny combustion engines that make high-pitched noises that are the worst.
Letting your landscapers blow nutrients off your property is insane when it's difficult to find good quality top soil. The stuff you buy at Home Depot is essentially trash and rocks now. What comes out of the mower bag each spring can yield an incredible amount of dirt after it's had a full summer to cook in the pile.
We finally bought a battery-powered leaf blower. This is really not for the lawn, which is relatively small and easily raked. Rather, my wife likes to remove the leaves from the garden beds. These are difficult to rake, what with shrubs etc., and one generally brings a good deal of mulch along with the leaves. We also have a strip of gravel to one side of the garage, and the blower makes it possible to remove leaves without gravel coming along.
And since you asked, the leaves end up at the curb. The city has a couple of collections every fall.