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Comment by aritmo | Hacker News Reader

There are some sweet battery-based blowers and trimmers. Less noisy as well.

I have a 80cc 2-stroke gas leaf blower, two plug-in electric leaf blowers, and I've tried a buddy's battery leaf blower.

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.

My 16 tine rake has 45 spm (strokes per minute) with a 300 gr flying capacity, or a 25 kg capacity when rolling a pile. I decided to upgrade this year to the nylon fibre collection bag, which has sweet dual handles.

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.

I gave you a +1 for that. Thanks for the levity.

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...

Actually, you are technically wrong, to be pedantic about it with an anecdote. Borrowed a plug in leaf bower that is from maybe the 90s or 2000s. That thing easily blows around 1 to 1.5in crushed granite. Leaves smeaves, real blowers do granite and I’m not talking pea gravel. Oh but it sounds like a jet engine and is as loud as or maybe louder than a gas one.

Anyway you’re right about the average *current* battery powered ones.

> All of the electric ones are basically toys compared to the gas powered one.

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.

> That's what they used to say about cars, too. Innovation

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.

Given all of the energy and funding being put in that space, we'll see it on HN within the next decade or two.

You can put all the money you want to increase the speed of light, and you will certainly see a lot of snake-oil startup promising an increased speed of light, and their share of Kool-aid drinker here on HN, but the speed of light will never increase...

Have you used one? I have a 20v and 60v dewalt blower. The 20volt blows, but it's not very strong. It works blowing out the garage and with minor clippings on the sidewalk / driveway that's about it. The 60v works better, substantially more power and it moves leaves. Both have horrible battery life when all is said and done. We're talking 20 minutes or so with 9AH batteries, and in the case of the 60v I get about 30 minutes on a 12ah FlexVolt.

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?

Note that while it's annoying, it's certainly an option to plug-in the leaf blowers.

Neither of mine plug in, the only adapters available are third party on amazon and a few have less than stellar reviews. Namely, they short out and cause fires. I'd also be required to have a substantial amount of electrical cord length at our farm, like 1000 feet cables, which simply isn't feasible. I suppose I could throw the generator in the truck when doing stuff out there but I feel like that defeats the purpose.

Plug in to a generator? :)

The electric ones are not just weaker in performance, but have other significant problems.

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.

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