Oakland bans the use of combustion engine-powered leaf blowers and trimmers
oaklandca.gov
oaklandca.gov
Traditional American lawn maintenance is a horribly unsustainable (and in my opinion, ugly) practice. We should encourage alternatives.
See: Banks, "National Emissions from Lawn and Garden Equipment"
There's still plenty of use cases for gas units but if we could get them banned from everywhere but rural areas it would be a good step in the right direction.
Some folks go too far and say "nobody should have a lawn!!!" but they clearly don't understand the zenlike experience of avoiding one's family, drinking cheap lager, listening to a podcast, and working the lawn in the sunshine for a couple hours on a Saturday morning. Kept me sane last year more than anything else did.
Commercial leaf blowers are over 3 HP. 1-2 horsepower doesn't seem like a big difference, but it's literally 50-100% more power.
My (small) push mower is 5.1 HP, over 250% of the max power I could get from a corded unit. It can still bog down in heavy, damp grass, especially while mulching. Take away 60% of its power and it's not going to get better.
Battery trimmers are awesome; I'll give you that one.
I can definitely see it becoming in issue on larger areas, with larger weeds or, in less dry weather, if you really _have_ to, like landscaper services, maybe. But for the average suburban lawn maintenance?
The real solution here is to mow more often, and on dryer days. Never had any issue with my corded units as long as I keep the lawn short. When it's long, you have to move in a few passes to get a nice cut without clogging things up. Mulching long grass is gross anyway, you'll get way too much grass detritus out of it; I know it's good for the lawn, but again, it makes more sense with a weekly mow and fairly short grass, rather than letting it grow into a field and mowing it once a month or something like that. You get out what you put in.
Obviously that makes more sense for homeowners who do their own work as opposed to lawn companies; I'd be okay with exceptions for businesses, with 4-stroke only.
Don't most American houses have at least one 240V socket in the garage, for use with garden/garage equipment? (Otherwise, where do you plug in an electric car if you're visiting relatives, for example?)
[1] https://www.argos.co.uk/browse/garden-and-diy/lawnmowers-and...
Newer ones, depending on location.
>(Otherwise, where do you plug in an electric car if you're visiting relatives, for example?)
You charge on 120v or you don't charge.
Electric cars may change this. They haven't yet, at least not much.
(The important thing to note for non-US-dwelling folks is that your average American simply never deals with plugs other than 120V except for rare circumstance, like appliance replacement or adding a car charging portal.)
This battery-operated one works well and is also much quieter than the gas-powered ones.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/RYOBI-125-MPH-550-CFM-40-Volt-Li...
Even 10% nationally? Including every semi truck, car and airplane? And then all of our national power generation system?
It doesn't seem like blowers could be 10% of that no matter how you slice it.
A statistic for CA was motorcycles make up 1% of my miles driven but 10% of smog pollutants.
Pollution is a different matter though. Even the big 4-stroke tourers have worse emission control than cars; the 2-stroke motorbikes are exponentially worse in SOx/NOx/CO/particulate emissions (which hurt your lungs rather than the climate).
Also, it's not just leaf blowers. It's also lawn mowers and other gas powered lawn equipment.
Now I think everybody is quietly waiting for the revolution of battery powered lawn equipment to make this moot.
It wouldn't be great for large commercial estates, but the runtime is more than enough for most homeowners.
I have a second battery to swap and fast charge, but I also have an abnormal number of messy trees on 5 acres.
https://www.husqvarna.com/us/products/battery/
(I don't remember how I ended up there but I was looking at their battery products a few months ago)
I went pure electric 5 years ago with no problems. Starts up every time with the push of a button and since I bought a set, it came with multiple batteries so I can swap them out before fully depleting one for extended life.
It's bad when you're looking at some piece of equipment and are relieved to discover that it has been sitting with gas in it since the 90s. At least there is a hope the rubber bits are intact.
On the other hand, this is so common now that the aftermarket carb business has become a mass market. You can buy chinese knockoffs carbs with all of the hoses and plastic bits for like $10 on Amazon now.
Aftermarket carbs are cheap because carbs are cheap. You can buy a lawn mower at WalMart for $100, and everyone has to make a profit. That means the engine can't cost more than $20, and the carb must be less than that. The Chinese make a nice profit selling new carbs for $10, even though most carbs still go to the engine manufactures who pay a lot less in quantity.
Ethanol has been common enough in gas since the 90s.In the early years there were problems with it attacking rubber. That rubber hasn't been used in fuel systems for years though.
I have my share of electric battery-powered lawn equipment, but I've already gone through one generation of batteries which rendered the old equipment obsolete. And the markup on batteries is on the order of 500% compared to what a generic battery of similar chemistry would cost. It's an excellent racket, very profitable.
I wonder about the people here on HN buying Ryobi stuff... maybe they're onto something. Normally I wouldn't touch Ryobi with a ten foot pole, because it's trash. But OTOH, it's cheap, so maybe the quality of the tool will match up with the expected availability of batteries so the TCO isn't as offensive.
[0] If you haven't seen those old videos where B&S demonstrates why the Slick 50 demos were BS, you should. Lawnmower engines are way overbuilt, mostly as an artifact of their small size. They're hard to kill.
Small airplanes have not kept up (they still use lead fuel!), and so are overall worse than lawn equipment. However there is a lot more lawn equipment. (I don't know anything about modern jet engine emissions)
https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=1...
In 2011, approximately 26.7 million tons of pollutants were emitted by GLGE (VOC=461,800; CO=5,793,200; NOx=68,500, PM10=20,700; CO2=20,382,400), accounting for 24%−45% of all nonroad gasoline emissions. Gasoline-powered landscape maintenance equipment (GLME; leaf blowers/vacuums, and trimmers, edgers, brush cutters) accounted for 43% of VOCs and around 50% of fine PM. Two-stroke engines were responsible for the vast majority of fine PM from GLME.
For example, your cars catalyst prevents a lot of pollutants from being emitted -- but your lawnmower doesn't have this device at all.
CO2 is a different story all together -- because it's the primary byproduct.
Electric lawn equipment has only become viable in the market in the past decade or so due to improved batteries. Now that electrification is feasible (and often nicer to use than gas-powered), seems great to ban or at least disincentivize combustion engine equipment.
A couple of quotes from, comparing a two stroke leaf blower to a 2011 F-150 SVT Raptor:
https://www.edmunds.com/about/press/leaf-blowers-emissions-d...
"The hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor," said Jason Kavanagh, Engineering Editor at Edmunds.com. "As ridiculous as it may sound, it is more 'green' to ditch your yard equipment and find a way to blow leaves using a Raptor."
"The tests found that a Ryobi 4-stroke leaf blower kicked out almost seven times more oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and 13.5 times more carbon monoxide (CO) than the Raptor, which InsideLine.com once dubbed "the ultimate Michigan mudslinger." An Echo 2-stroke leaf blower performed even worse, generating 23 times CO and nearly 300 times more non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC) than the Raptor. "
10% does seem mind bogglingly high, but then when you consider just how big the efficiency gap is, and start thinking about how many people have leaf blowers, weed whackers and the like... maybe it's possible?
They seem to only make a single pass if I'm not having a call.
I'd guess a combination of inexpensive underpowered engines and a spinning blade. I have an old mower with a big engine that doesn't really seem to work too hard, and it's only a little bit louder than my electric mower.
This kinda soured me on electric lawn equipment for a while.
Then again, I'm also averse to the lengths people go through to maintain landscaping. Landscaping is necessary, but so many homeowners care so much about property values that they want everything to constantly appear uniform. Some neighbors even rat on each other to their HOA if one person went an extra week without mowing.
With at least the weedwhacker I have, there's not really an option. If you hold the button down, it overheats. If you leave it up to long, it shuts off. As a result, any time I'm walking across pavement, or in between patches that need weedwhacking, I have to rev the stupid thing.
I agree with everything you've said though. I don't have a choice right now, but the way suburban/urban landscaping is done is a nightmare.
Or get a new one if you can afford it. They're not terribly expensive.
It's also not technically mine.
Source: http://leafblowernoise.com/Electric%20blower%20sound.htm
So I would refute your claim.
Husqvarna 525BX 25-cc 2-Cycle 192-MPH 493-CFM Handheld Gas Leaf Blower https://www.lowes.com/pd/Husqvarna-525BX-25-cc-2-Cycle-192-M...
EGO POWER+ 180-MPH Brushless Handheld Cordless Electric Leaf Blower, 500-600CFM https://www.lowes.com/pd/EGO-Power-56-Volt-Lithium-Ion-Brush...
Can an electric leaf blower be as loud as a gas-powered one? Sure. I'm sure under the right circumstances a Prius can make noise comparable to Corolla too. Electric leaf blowers aren't silent and are often loud, but not aggravatingly loud. They won't make your next-door neighbors lose their mind, much less your neighbors two doors down.
Noise pollution is one of those places where I am seriously conflicted. It’s one of those cases where you feel like it’s regulating common curtesy.
See also: Harley Davidson mentality.
Yet people do these things which are infuriating and intrude on those around them without a thought.
Agree with things to reduce noise pollution, but don’t feel like this will help much in that regard.
The bigger issue imo is that we incentivize the wrong things. Money and time instead of quality and a job well done. It's faster to blow loudly than to rake silently. A silent landscaping company powered by reel mowers and rakes would clear less properties per man hour, but maybe there is in fact a market there for that premium, nearly silent service.
Noise pollution is an environmental impact.
I assume you mean:
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-09/documents... (2015)
"All Nonroad sources account for approximately 242 million tons of pollutants each year, accounting for 17% of all VOC missions, 12% of NOx emissions, 29% of CO emissions, 4% of CO2 emissions, 2% of PM10 emissions, and 5% of PM2.5 emissions."
What's "Nonroad" isn't clearly defined here, so I assume it's quite a lot more than "Gas-powered blowers".
It's dangerous to humans in closed spaces, but that's not where leaf blowers are operated. (And yes, I also hate them, but that's not he point.)
I expect the non-particulate emissions are dominated by 2 stroke motors (well, other than CO₂).
Also, just because it's inconvenient, doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
Regulation costs money. Making a safer car was more expensive and it took tons of political legwork to legislate mandatory seatbelts/airbags/backup cameras. Doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.
> In 2011, approximately 26.7 million tons of pollutants were emitted by GLGE (VOC=461,800; CO=5,793,200; NOx=68,500, PM10=20,700; CO2=20,382,400)
To quote other sources:
CO emission in the United States in 2001 was 120.8 million short tons, of which 74.8 million came from on-road vehicles.
Fair to say around 3% of total CO in USA today is being generated by GLGE (Gasoline powered lawn and garden equipment).
There's nothing green about green lawns.
Virtually no noise, no pollution, and even a brown lawn after being well kept didn't look terrible.
A lawn should be able to go 4 weeks with no water in the summer and not die. It will go dormant, and once the water starts again it will green up quickly. A dormant lawn will be brown and you shouldn't walk on it much, but if you don't need to do things on it and aren't bothered aesthetically by it, it's fine.
Once it goes brown, water it maybe every 3 weeks just to make sure it doesn't go from dormant to dead if you don't get enough rain.
I fully agree that some vegetation looks nice, and is good for insects and birds. But I'd much prefer some variety at least - different grasses, wildflowers, moss, clover, local plants, and not kept permanently trimmed 3mm off the earth. I mentioned this to my wife a few years back, and she looked at me like I'd gone crazy, and I've had the same aghast looks from others too.
Actually, I'd like to see some proposals for regulation around this. Homogeneous lawns are just such a colossal waste.
In this example, reasonable legislation would limit the noise and pollution from blowers, without specifically banning any particular technology.
The US had sealed beam headlamps for years after better lighting technologies were invented because US law required them instead of mandating some technology-agnostic standard [0].
Or more recently, we've banned the use of phones while driving. I ask: is it legal to play harmonica while driving? If we agree that it shouldn't be, the law should be written to ban both using a phone or playing harmonica while driving without specifically mentioning either, except perhaps as examples.
[0] https://www.carid.com/articles/brief-history-of-sealed-beam-...
In some ways this is nicer because a company doesn't need to do specific emission and noise testing certifications to comply with a single municipalities regulations. So people in Oakland can have potentially more choices while achieving a reduction of combustion emissions.
So the lesson is that Government really shouldn't get in the game of trying to regulate specific technologies rather than whatever harmful side effects are created by the technology. Regulate noise and emissions, and let the engineers find the best ways of meeting those targets.
There are practically infinite bad things that someone could possibly do. You can't outlaw them all.
Slippery slope arguments shouldn’t apply to specific provisions in the law that target likely scenarios.
Let’s say you said that the driver shouldn’t drive distracted. You have now outlawed listening to radio, music, or others talking in a way not conducive to giving full attention to the car, perhaps even while the car is being driven automatically, if there is any chance of the driver needing to drive manually such that they must be ready to drive.
That said, I agree that the method of generating the outcome need not always be defined. For example, in some legislation, companies/vendors are named specifically, which may lead to de facto support by the government of some private institutions, which seems anticompetitive.
These systems are legal but using the phone is not, so this really is a great example of trying to regulate technology rather than outcomes. All that happens is vendors put ports in their cars and route the phone interface to the driver in a fixed screen rather than in the phone's screen. Regulation bypassed.
Setting emission thresholds means needing to get out there and perform spot checks in the field. It's specialised, expensive and in practise means many people just flouting the law and getting away with it. Pointless law.
Simply banning ICE strimmers and blowers means any enforcement officer can easily cite rule breakers, confiscate equipment, etc.
And per sibling, not the same as mandating one technology, at all.
It meets the requirement.
It’s not a good mix. We end up with a system that punishes people following the rules and doesn’t do anything about the many people breaking the rules. It also creates the sense of unfairness and general lawlessness — that laws are recommendations that can mostly be ignored.
I hate half-measures that inconvenience those that follow the rules, and do nothing to punish those who break them.
Isn't that what they did?
Oh, are you saying they should ban the sale or posession, not just the use?
Or you're saying they should ban more kinds of noise-making or polluting machines, not just leaf-blowers?
Are you arguing for more expansive ban?
Or I may be missing it.
To summarize, every law needs to be extremely well thought out, but results have shown otherwise (although that's a different thread).
In BC we used to have something called Air Care, which measured your vehicle emissions and forced bad cars off the road. Naturally it only impacted people who couldn't afford new cars. It was the one of the dumbest government programs I had ever seen.
When most people are guilty of multiple offenses, then a government can find political troublemakers and accuse them of violating dozens of "rules" that are otherwise never enforced.
Alternatively, there should be a "fixed budget" for laws, as in: if you want to pass that new law, you're going to pick one of the existing laws on the books an can it to make space for the new one.
Yes its named Parkinsons law. Parkinson noticed that the number of ships in the english army was decreasing but the number of administrators administrating the ships were increasing.
Government officials hire more officials which invents new laws and rules.
Reference link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law
...but I see them much more frequently in Florida. I suppose frequency of blowing is very biome dependent.
I couldn't find one (at the time, probably 4 years ago). Most everything I could find was 1/4 of the equivalent power.
Though I will admit to not being sure exactly what you will find.
In 5 minutes of googling for "commercial battery leaf blower" and "backpack battery leaf blower", it looks like they're mostly still in the 500-600W (2/3 HP) range with a couple hitting around 1000W, even for the backpack units.
Most of the ones in the middle of the product lineup are 500-600cfm
The number I got for a 3hp model was based on a husqvarna I saw from a quick google search, I think... almost certainly a residential model.
Pacific Northwest resident chiming in.
I absolutely have a thick mat of wet leaves. But IMO, the solution isn't a more powerful leave blower; it's a rake.
With battery powered chainsaws, the noise signature is much better and quieter.
2 stroke engines just have a way of screaming in their power band.
It sounds like that might be the most practical way to force compliance.
i'm personally not sympathetic to the noise argument, since we accept the constant noise of much more plentiful and sometimes-quieter-but-sometimes-louder 2-ton vehicles all over the place. blowers/trimmers are also usually used during business hours where it has to be acceptable to make some noise for work purposes.
in contrast, the pollution argument is quite salient, as @porb121 details[0], and reason enough for the ban. the exhaust pollutants can be smelled surprisingly far away (dozens of feet) and can enter homes through windows and linger. and with blowers at least, raking and sweeping are likely as efficient in most cases and doesn't really save labor/exertion.
The reason I’ve been hesitant to complain is it feels wrong to go after the (mostly working immigrant) landscape companies the Palo Alto NIMBYs have all hired to do their landscaping.
I assume a lot of them are probably commuting from far away.
depends on the vehicle. in my neighborhood, we have plenty of (intentionally) loud cars, motorcycles, and trucks. but the point is that work machines that come with unavoidable noise should be allowed to make that noise during working hours (unlike most vehicles, except perhaps delivery trucks, but they should be using primary thoroughfares, not neighborhood streets).
i also don't report landscaping companies for that reason.
A jackass on a straight-pipe harley is obnoxious, but they are around for like 30 seconds. But a jackass on an industrial zero-clearance lawn mower is going at it for at least 30mins.
These things don't need to be so loud that operators need to wear hearing protection.
A loud ten second car? Whatever.
Constant leaf blowers every morning for hours? They drive me crazy.
And heavens forbid leaves build up around plants, we must remove all compost like that because it will contaminated the soil, it’s so unnatural.
In a front lawn or landscaping that no one uses, it should be low maintenance native plants that are adapted to the weather so they barely need water and will benefit by letting the leaves decay. Send the leaves through a shredder if one really hates the sight of leaves.
however, i’d point out that lifting the noise floor, as road noise does, contributes to lifetime hearing loss, as we make everything else louder (it also negatively affects attention, concentration, stress and anxiety in subtle but meaningful ways). it’s the kind of long, low externalized cost that our short-term-oriented brains tend to evaluate and address poorly.
And if a neighbor refuses to comply with noise ordinances because they want faster/cheaper lawn care, they already kind of hate you. They're just being subtle in how they show it.
Or just have the rules convert to "must not look abandoned", as long as that doesn't conflict with other existing rules. In case of conflict, the "must be lawn" rule would just disappear with no replacement.
EDIT: Let's downvote instead of actually having a proper response. I can't wait until the bubble some of you live in pops and all of this nonsense goes away.
Also, what you add in battery charging, you easily make up with reduced maintenance of the tool.
We're speaking of people doing their lawns after all...
New theft target when each one has to carry $8k worth of batteries in the truck/trailer to have enough juice to perform their normal task, which could have been performed by two 10 gallon jugs of gasoline.
These kind of models exist since a very long time, and I was not thinking of any battery model when I wrote my comment.
If at least they do it everywhere it's possible, that would already be great. Most of the time when I am distressed by the pollution and sound of a blower/mower there is an electrical outlet handy.
For a single family home, this is fine. For townhomes, larger lot, commercial properties, this isn't as clear.
I imagine you can get some things corded still. I use battery and corded all the time, but I have gas powered as well.
In a small home (less than 1 acre) I can work around it, on the farm. It's almost all gas. Things like the blower, lawn mower, chainsaws, etc. had bad electric alternatives. We also don't and can't run, 1000 foot electrical cords all over the property.
Corded will always be the better option though. With the drills on the farm, corded offer way more torque! Just make sure you've got isolated circuits for exterior and aren't loading them down or you're popping breakers with a couple of the electric tools plugged in.
Hell, even just running a 4-stroke generator will be far less polluting.
Ruined wrists don’t have to be a thing.
The guy who uses the $100 Home Depot weed whacker to do his own lawn is the one who gets screwed because he now either has to wrangle a cord everywhere or spend much more for equivalent performance from an electric.
(on second thought string trimmers are low enough power that a cheap battery one should work for a homeowner but for blowers, chainsaws and most other landscaping power equipment my point still stands, you gotta spend big bucks on the 36-48v stuff that performs about the same as the ICE powered $99.99 special)
Its right up there with "rules for thee and not for me".
Whether it is virtue points or an important issue is irrelevant, the way it was handled was appalling and harmful.
EDIT - If you're downvoting consider this: If you and your family were running a small landscaping business and need to replace thousands of dollars of equipment, you might feel differently. Be empathetic towards those people and consider other ways to accomplish the goal. We could just as easily have banned the sale of these after a future date. There are always options to mitigate the pressure on the affected persons.
I wonder, between the two of us, who has spent more time actually making money by doing landscaping.
A large portion of these 'businesses' are 1-2 people who scraped together whatever they could to get the equipment to make a living. Many are low income. Many sacrifice heavily in their personal lives to be able to make ends meet.
The lie here is the notion that the bunch that go the route of 'organic landscaping' are representative of the entire group.
This complaint is brought up for every single environmental improvement, and it misses the concept that the risk is an imbalance, not a change which affects everyone. For example, you used to not be able to see across the street in LA on bad smog days – and I remember plenty of people insisting that doing anything about that would devastate the economy, and yet California seems to be not exactly an impoverished wasteland.
Many run their business with the tools they can afford. Upon inspection, you would find that many such businesses have little to no resale value to lean on to make such an upgrade.
> They've likely had notice for a long time. Especially if they participate in their government.
What percentage of people laborers have the time to actively participate in government? I don't know the answer to this but I suspect it's shockingly small.
Are electric equivalents of the banned gas tools really that much more expensive?
The problem preventing commercial adoption is that if you want commercial user amounts of uninterrupted run time you wind up spending a fortune on batteries.
Of course if you are a homeowner that equipment will last a lot longer. (home owners buy a cheaper grade of quality in general, so you can't compare lifetimes with pro grade equipment)
I have personally seen such equipment remain in use for 15-20 years. When I was young the lawnmower we used was a monstrous Craftsman that was originally built 20 years prior. It was used year-round for that period for everything from snow removal, lawn mowing, and hauling landscaping supplies (retaining wall blocks and the like).
You would likely be surprised at the level of care and maintenance some small business owners put in.
We are talking about hand held stuff here though. While pros need equipment to last longer than home owners, there is a limit to how much mass they can deal with for something that is hand held.
I agree that second-order effects need to be considered, certainly. That is the point of phase-in periods, which this measure had.
Is it long enough, or substantial enough? Should small businesses be able to apply for exemptions, or interest free loans for new equipment, for example? Perhaps.
It should be uncontroversial given the facts and experiences with these engines that they are awful pollutants, terribly aggravating to communities, and that the world would be better without them.
My only point is that the way you implement change matters and that this implementation will adversely affect the worst-off population.
> It should be uncontroversial given the facts and experiences with these engines that they are awful pollutants, terribly aggravating to communities, and that the world would be better without them.
No controversy there at all.
I can easily imagine they did. Who's right? People have been raising this issue for years, the idea did not just fall out of the sky. I'm unclear why the people who have been putting up with the problem for a long time need to coddle the people creating the problem any longer.
I'm happy to see changes like this as it's something I've complained about for years; multiple properties in my area used these sort of services, and I'd frequently have to deal with the dust and dirt from their property being blown onto mine, along with noise and bad smells. I also felt bad for the operators who were exposed to that every day. So I am one of those people who has spent years nudging for a regulatory change.
Why, exactly, should anyone support a business model that can only be profitable by dumping its weaknesses on to other people? I mean, if you want to use a potentially dangerous product and the risks fall only on you, you have an absolute right to do that. But you have no right to accrue benefits while dumping the risk onto someone else.
It's just a bandaid that needs to be ripped off. Like RoHS getting rid of lead solder; that was never gonna happen without regulatory intervention.
And this isn't going to harm immigrant small businesses, because everyone's in the same boat. It's not like non-immigrant businesses get to continue using gas blowers.
Price will go up a little bit for consumers as everybody switches over to electric.
But we're not even talking a massive capital investment here. Weed whackers don't cost $50,000.
And since pretty much every vendor would have the same cost increase, it wouldn't be a competitive disadvantage from a pricing point of view. Likely the cost increase would mostly be passed on to the customer.
I just looked at the stats for some Honda generators and they have a 7000-W unit with 120v and 240v outputs that runs at 52-58dB.
A new mid-range California (CARB)-compliant Echo gas leaf blower comes in at 74dB.
My yard is tiny and I’ll routinely go through 2 240WHr batteries each time I cleanup my yard. I couldn’t imagine how annoying that would be with an actual big yard. Also good luck if you go on vacation and come back to tall grass, my electric mower (I have one from Ryobi) that struggles to increase the torque well enough to handle it.
On lawn movers, you could put giant batteries as you don't carry them, it's just a matter of cost.
I should try doing it before a run that’s a good idea
Is that a big energy consumption? It's about 0.5 kWH, or about $0.10, depending on where you are. How much would you spend on gas & oil for a 2-stroke ICE system?
(I can understand that it's a bit of a hassle from a charging process point of view.)
Now, this isn’t so bad for my yard but if I was mowing my grandparents yard like I did as a kid that would be a really annoying limitation since they had like an 0.75 acre lot.
I hope that battery technology continues to improve but today it is for sure a limitation.
If the world were like that, it wouldn't be an issue to grab some of the standard multiuse batteries you have lying around your house and use them for the acre lot mow job (sometimes while doing landscaping you need to take a gas can out with you too, after all).
Instead what we are left with is every brand has their own standard, which changes every few years, leaving the consumer with a mountain of useless crap to perennially replace and increases the costs of electric appliance adoption (whereas gas is standardized and cheap and works for your car as well as all your equipment, 2 stroke aside).
If you're a home-owner you can rotate a couple of batteries and likely only use the ones included with the equipment bundle(s). But commercial users don't have that luxury, they're definitely buying additional batteries. Manufacturers commonly charge an excessive premium for add-on batteries.
Example:
- Toro Brushless Leaf Blower (51820) + 2.5 Ah battery (88625) & charger (88602): $199
- Toro 2.5 Ah battery (88625): $165
So the battery add-on costs 82%~ of the tools total cost alone. As a homeowner after n years you'll likely respond by just outright replacing the tool for a new bundle, but in a commercial context this just kills the whole idea. According to the manufacturer at the lowest speed setting each battery lasts 90 minutes, and nobody is using this at the lowest setting.
If you’re somewhere you can’t charge, you’re talking $1500 to do 4 hours of heavy work.
And that’s assuming your small battery pack can even put out enough torque to match a 2-stroke for heavy uses.
As to the "rake and broom," point: there's an innate time value to consider for commercial applications. If each job takes longer, you'll do fewer jobs, and could lose money overall.
I'm not really clear on what point you were trying to make? That add-ons aren't overpriced? That commercial lawn care companies should wait 3 hrs between jobs? That manual raking and gas/electric blowers offer the same productivity?
I think you understand this quite well.
It is quite literally today's current prices at major retailers. It isn't the worst case, Toro's battery overcharging is pretty in-line with other manufacturers, and I picked Toro because it is popular/mainstream for commercial work already.
> faster commercial chargers
You're saying that for a commercial lawn care company to switch to electric right now they have to buy chargers that don't exist for sale?
> vehicle as less-polluting power store for mains-power electrical tool,
And the cost of batteries? You're just completely ignoring the comment chain's topic entirely.
> manual tools that work better and faster in some contexts
Commercial lawn care and leaf blowers/trimmers is the context. It is literally what the thread and comment chain is about. In the context we're talking about: No, absolutely not. In other irrelevant contexts? Sure, I guess?
You're saying that for a commercial lawn care company to switch to electric right now they have to buy chargers that don't exist for sale?
Multi-bank commercial chargers (also known as battery tenders) are a thing. There are many third-party offerings. I did not check for compatibility with Toro batteries specifically, but if is as popular a brand as you say then then either they already exist or will soon.
manual tools that work better and faster in some contexts
Commercial lawn care and leaf blowers/trimmers is the context. It is literally what the thread and comment chain is about. In the context we're talking about: No, absolutely not. In other irrelevant contexts? Sure, I guess?
This is ridiculous. Rakes and brooms work better than leafblowers in some cleaning contexts, like where you have a pile of wet leaves banked up somewhere (mentioned on another thread); blowing them is difficult and slow, whereas they can be moved in moments with a rake.
Is this really so hard to figure out? The original references to 'Rake and Broom' were clearly humorous, but it doesn't take much imagination to think up situations where a manual tool can actually be the most efficient choice. You seem bent on disputing everything rather than admitting that it might be possible to get things done without filthy 2-stroke engines.
"A single two-stroke engine produces pollution equivalent to that of 30 to 50 four-stroke automobiles. "
https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/two-strokes-and...
Since I also have the Ego mower & weedwhacker, I have 3 batteries to swap through, but it is a pain during fall cleanup.
Absolutely no good for commercial or big jobs though.
I have no reservation about saying that the societal good far outweighs the bad.
This corrects this imbalanced market where 99% of stakeholders are held captive by old, polluting, loud, ultra-obnoxious, all-downsides-heavily-externalized persistent disturbances. Mandating electric options was evidently what it's going to take to get any change, to start to do the right thing.
The market, now that it was to do the right thing, can begin to adjust it's approach as to how it wants to do the right thing. It can improve it's designs, &c.
120 volts at 10 amps is kind of tepid, when compared against a combustion engine, and typical for the US
If you're comparing a commercial backpack to a consumer-grade handheld, sure, big difference. But, that's apples and oranges.
Comparing the commercial EGO systems to the commercial Husqvarna systems, both produce ~600cfm of air movement in a backpack system. The battery life on the EGO systems is sufficient (60 min+ runtime peer battery, in my experience, more than enough for several large yards during mowing season).
Yes, a landscape crew would need to carry several spare batteries per electric device, likely with some sort of charging station on the truck. Expensive up front costs, no question. But, probably worth it in the long run for emissions and nuisance gains.
So, we have an electric one for that, and for various other tasks, like clearing our steep driveway of debris that makes it difficult to receive deliveries or get our cars up. Blowing takes 30 seconds, where sweeping would take 5 minutes.
I used to begrudgingly use expensive four-stroke tools because they were less irritating than two-stroke and electrics weren't up to snuff, but more recently I've replaced everything but a leaf mulcher with cordless electric and I'm really happy with them. I'll probably replace the mulcher eventually as well, I don't doubt that the cordless equipment can deliver, it's just that it still works and where I use it trailing an extension cord is fine.
I'm really sick of Tues-Thurs having 30-40 2-stroke engines idling/running for basically 3 straight hours. It's noisy, and I can definitely smell it, and it definitely interrupts my work
A rake is no use for starting pulse jet engines, however.
Infuriated, I stormed out during my lunch break with a rake and just did it in under five minutes. He didn't know how to react, so he just stood there STILL USING THE BLOWER TRYING TO HELP.
Strangest experience I'd had in awhile.
Edit - this is getting popular, so here's my baby: https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lawn-and-garden/gard...
You gotta think of the scale the average landscaper operates and their margins. They aren't going to employ five people for two days to rake one parcel. They are going to employ five people and buy five leaf blowers to do ten parcels in those two days instead. They don't live in the neighborhood, they don't care that they make noise, and outside the pandemic, no one else does either because they are at the office when they are busy landscaping.
a) rethink whether I really need an acre of manicured grass, and probably leave the leaves where they are, making a more dappled woodland setting. Leaves don't stay on open grassland of course, I don't see farmers blowing off the fields.
b) if I were mowing an acre I would have a lawn tractor...and use that to shred and then pick up the leaves.
Still gas, still loud, still polluting - just one layer of indirection.
It's not just about making people feel good or allowing audiophiles to listen to records undisturbed.
It's free to the city's coffers. It is a multi-million dollar capital expense to the city's businesses and residents.
I support the measure. But it's far from free.
Assuming the lawn services can pass the cost along to customers. Given the low barriers to entry, I would not make this assumption.
In reality, a mix of total wage decreases (i.e. reduction in hours, benefits and/or hourly wage), supplier payment decreases, profit decreases and price increases will incorporate the change. Also, if an outfit cannot afford the capital cost of upgrading their equipment, they will fold.
Enforcement shouldn't be excessively difficult. Cops can write citations for illegal equipment, and if a company routinely ignores the citations they could get in real trouble. Give the companies plenty of time (a year or two) to phase in the new equipment as well. Make sure the change is well publicized, especially in Hispanic media. If the city was really proactive they could task an intern with calling every lawn service company in the city 6 months before the law goes into effect and make sure each one has a plan to transition in time.
The enforcement is key however. These sorts of regulations will be ignored 100% if they aren't enforced. Escalating fines are necessary, they have to make it more expensive to break the law than comply, or the companies that cheat will win.
I am not afraid of spending money on items but I find it frustrating when the extra expenditure ends up being a dud, like my Toro (gas-powered) lawnmower which, despite the money spent and the numerous trips to the repair place, and the care lavished on it, has worked less than it has failed completely. My previous mower ran wonderfully without hardly any maintenance; this thing I have been changing oil, messing about with spark plugs, using special and such, all to no avail.
Battery-powered sounds good but I don't know if the market shakeout has happened yet.
Best part? No small engine maintenance needed.
Instead, you have different maintenance needs, they aren't gone entirely. Rather than occasionally having to do engine work (which you might never have to do), you now have a wear item to replace: the battery. Eventually, Ryobi or Makita or whoever will stop selling that particularly proprietary shaped battery for that model you bought, eventually forcing your hand to pay for a newer machine where you can still buy new batteries, and leaving you with a lawnmower sized hunk of junk in the form of your old, perhaps functional but unable to charge mower.
I don't see this as the end of lawncare equipment maintenance, I see this as the end of being able to keep your equipment going for decades. These companies executive boards must be patting themselves on the back for figuring out how to break consumers out of being able to get by on $50 used mowers forever, and forcing them to pay retail for new models at regular intervals. It's like the printer ink racket.
Even if they keep the same battery format, you are now locked in to Ryobi and can't take your proprietary batteries and use them with a competitor's equipment, like you can with a standardized fuel like gasoline, or a standardized battery like a car battery.
It's no different than small engines requiring repair, and the companies that make them not supporting them anymore. Yet we've dealt with that for decades.
The problem with battery is that even within a brand, it keeps changing format (though seems to be settling a bit) and they are not as strong. They also don't sit well, so if you have stored them you have plan way ahead to do the work you want to do.
After all, the mains are never really far away in urban or suburban context, so ICE-powered tooling is meaningless.
In many cases there is also a way to plug to the grid using traps on the side of streetlights.
I don't often run it for a long time, but when I get the chance I don't want to have to cut my work time short or spend an extra $300 to cut down trees and not have to worry about the running time.
There is also a company that offers a stand on mower comparable to what I use at home, but it would be about $18k to replace my $4k mower with an electric option.
I am interested in the responsible, environmentally friendly, option, but it is hard to swallow.
Those prices do seem high compared to eGo, though I haven’t measured the runtime of my chainsaw, and lack of local service shops is an issue.
On the other hand, the same batteries will power their other tools (string trimmers, push behind lawnmowers, etc), so you can have lots of tools for less total money, assuming sporadic use.
Either way, the reduced noise, air pollution and maintenance make electric tools a no brainer for most use cases.
Leaf blowers churn out a bunch of monoxide due to the generally poor motor design.
It will reduce noise across yards. It will increase efficiency. It will cause more ewaste. And it will definitely raise prices.
Yeah it’s ridiculous.
Which, even accounting for charging losses, will be less polluting than backpackable two-strokes, and less close to where workers breathe, so, mission accomplished, whether the pollution concern is environmental or worker health or both.
Which from a pollution point of view is way better than 2-stroke backpacks.
I saw my first electric leaf blower ~3 months ago & chatted with the crew some; they'd only picked their new gear up the day before! They were happy with it. The wearable one was much quieter, but there was also a ground-based unit that was still loud as all get out, alas.
I've also asked other property management crews (probably 7 at this point) if they knew about the ban, & so far, no one even knows about it, other than the one crew I'd met who'd just gotten their electric gear.
I am very curious to see, long term, how powering these systems works out. Will a work crew simply buy a bunch of 40V or 80V batteries? How many will be enough? How many crews will turn right around & buy a generator they'll leave running a good part of the day? Longer term, perhaps hybrid work vehicles like the F150 & their built in 2.4 & 7.2kW inverter could become a crucial capability. Alas, it seems probable one way or another that combustion based energy, albeit less dirty & radically less obnoxious than these gas tools, will be used.
Anyhow. This ban can't come soon enough. Another year of these noise devices is going to be obnoxious. Unlikely to ever happen, but I wish cities would have designated noise hours, say 3 hours a day, 5 days a week (whatever) where noise was allowed (without special circumstances permit). It seems like such an obvious civic good to coordinate, to try to steer us away from all causing loud riotous noise all day long.
[1] https://dcist.com/story/18/12/04/d-c-council-strikes-death-b...
For charing, many newer trucks come with robust power systems for running electrics. Obv not an expense to be taken lightly, but we're getting there. Ford has the most compelling options right now - right up to 7.3kw system (I believe that's with the engine idling). I believe that with the hybrid drivetrain, you can use a not-insignificant amount of electricity with he truck engine off.
It's not the worlds greatest blower (480 CFM and 110 MPH) but it gets the job done on my modest yard (40mins of runtime).
Lawns in public places makes sense. They get enough use to be justifiable. But, private lawns are so underused that even stepping on some is considered impolite.
Most privately owned lawns are too little to do anything useful with, besides being a summer hangout for a backyard grill. We could grow trees & plants in the same area, get shade, better soil retention, a cooling effect and have a real ecosystem going. IMO, it looks prettier too. Lawns are not Greenery. They are merely green, but they are the locusts of the plant world.
Historians will look back at the American Dream as THE cultural idea that kick started an era of gross unsustainability.
I grew up in northern MN, and routinely people would spray disgusting pesticides in their lawns that would drift across the neighborhood, all to get rid of dandelions. Why? Dandelions are flowers, and not just regular flowers, but ones that kids like me enjoyed kicking or blowing on when they went to seed. These people created dead zones for plants and animals all for some bizarre aesthetic that doesn't even look good. I'm hoping newer generations will find big lawns as ugly and gag-inducing as I do.
Get rid of your lawn. Fill the space with gardens, mini-farms, and native pollen-producing plants.
All of this happens when you strip the regulation from the lawn. In many cities in the U.S., you can get cited if you don't maintain your lawn to the standard of the city code. You might not be able to do something as simple as grow vegetables in front of your house at all.
State should step up subsidies to encourage this.
All of the electric ones are basically toys compared to the gas powered one. Gas unit's 1100 cfm and 220 mph rating is substantially higher than the electrics and it shows in performance. The electrics can barely move a small pile of dry leaves. The gas one can lift sheets of wet, mucky leaves and move them around effortlessly.
On the other hand, I love my battery string trimmer. That's a device that seems perfect for electric as the power requirement is quite low and there's no carb to get all gummed up. The electric works every time and a battery pack easily does my entire yard trimming twice over, so there's no fiddling or stopping required.
I use animal skin gloves for that authentic feel, though I've tried synthetic and bareback, and that's fine too.
I've found my emissions are lower with this setup, unless I ate lentils for lunch.
There's pluses and minuses to everything. As a lot of commenters pointed out, there have been many local ordinances that already do this, and many landscapers ignore them; as do the folks that hire the landscapers.
Where I live, I don't think that we have ordinances like that.
As I work from home, it sucks. Those two-strokes are loud.
https://www.wshu.org/post/david-bouchier-spring-chorus#strea...
That's what they used to say about cars, too. Innovation and technological advances will find a way, especially with the economic incentives created by this legislation for an enterprising startup to build a better battery blower.
Yet I can still drive 500 miles hauling 2500lb (8000lb gross weight), or haul 40,0000lb (80,000lb gross) over 2,000 miles without refueling / recharging.
No electric vehicle can do that, still today.
Let me know when an electric vehicle will be able to haul 100,000lb of grain all day long by -20C, then we'll talk.
Anyway you’re right about the average *current* battery powered ones.
Then theres the whole buying batteries, longevity of batteries, the power to charge etc. I would bet that the damage to the ecosystem from using gas blowers / trimmers isn't that big a difference and if equated in measurement of power and life, the gas far outperforms it.
Also, the Electrics are just as loud in most instances. Are they going to ban gas pressure washers next?
These batteries really will not age well in both common scenarios. The professional landscaper that uses this thing every day, possibly for a extended period of time will kill the battery very fast. The casual home owner that may use this thing once a weak or so will kill the battery with inactivity as it sits around in the garage 99% of the time.
The entry-level models don't even have exchangeable batteries. Basically throwing a perfectly good device away because battery is dead, producing huge amounts of e-waste.
Here in Santa Monica, they also banned electric ones (because they "kick up dust which causes pollution") which has resulted in nobody following it all.
The suburbs are surprisingly loud because of this, louder than the cities I've lived in.
I've been very happy with the Ego line of electric (rechargeable batteries) lawn tools. I have, and use regularly, their leaf blower, weed whacker, and snow blower. 3 seasons of use so far.
Regarding this ban - I can understand upholding noise codes, but the reality is that electric leaf blowers and trimmers are nowhere near as good and have limited run times. They are simply not a good substitute. Rather than banning them, I would rather see the cost of the externalities priced in or maybe a tighter number of hours when such equipment can be used. In general, the government should not get into the habit of controlling individual actions via widely-scoped hard bans.
You'd imagine there would be more busybodies or easily-disturbed people who would be phoning anonymous tips over noise complaints. Maybe they would be doing that more if knowledge of the law was more widespread.
You're gonna have a harder time getting people to narc on their neighbors in LA than in SF.
Even then most people who would narc will just ask their neighbors to adjust the times which they do loud things and most neighbors will do so.
On the other hand, a single big diesel generator is less harmful to the environment than a bunch of 2 stroke engines. It could theoretically even get some pollution controls that would be too heavy and expensive for the power equipment.
Or maybe they'll buy those F150s with the built in power bank and have the truck idle to charge the batteries. That would be even better for noise level and the environment, as the truck comes with modern pollution controls.
Also, most people that use them don’t actually put the result in a pile, and haul it away. They just push crap back and forth across property lines. Get a rake and a tarp already.
Back in my bike commuting days, it was obvious that one leaf blower was putting out more (non CO2) pollution than a long line of idling cars.
Still, this is a step in the right direction.
You know what really needs to be banned? Wind. Fucking wind blows literally a million times more shit everywhere. Something must be done.
Yes they have issues, yes they allow people to do amazing stuff.
For us it's our goats who share a space with us. It'd be unmanageable without a leaf blower.
Ours is electric, Ryobi ONE+, which shares batteries with 7 regular tools we use (And another 5 that gather dust)
If you want to make the world a better place, how about we stop rewarding university press releases of this weeks new BS battery tech, and work on getting handyman batteries down in price (they are exorbitant) and cross compatibility wouldn't hurt.
Or like Dyson (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/06/dyson-sil...) get someone working on a quieter leaf blower.
Picking on people because they have a different life is boring, some people like to travel, some people smash alcohol to 5am and some people like a nice garden that's prim and proper. And those can be all the same person at different points of life. People are literally making up pollution figures here for this and jumping on just so stories as if they explain everything, people have to stop joining these group hate subcultures, that's what we have sports for.
No one is picking on people for having a different life. I don’t care if people want to have lawns. I care if they run a goddamn engine right outside my home every single day of the week.
You can have your lawn. I really could not care less about it. What you can’t have is my acceptance of constant engine noise in the place where I live.
But that said, I hope they compensate current owners with vouchers or grant some trade in value and not outright ban them without compensation. That would be wholly unfair to current owners.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Oakland,_California
Lawn and Gardening jobs are mostly done by immigrants and other minorities in and around Oakland. For these cash strapped individuals it is going to be a major burden to replace all their equipment with battery operated devices, not to mention, it is going to be a problem to charge the batteries as these people often work around the clock and can't afford to keep the equipment idle. Some of these people will go out of business, or will have to seek loans from loan sharks or pay expensive fines to the city.
Not sure Oakland can even make a dent it CO pollution in the world with this law but surely will destroy few more lives of city's minorities and vulnerable people.