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Comment by clairity | Hacker News Reader

according to a neighbor who looked into it, you can just report them, but the inspector has to see it happening to issue a citation, so you'd have to get them to come at the right time.

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.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26360215

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Blower noise is way louder than cars if that’s what you were referring to.

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.

> "Blower noise is way louder than cars..."

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.

It also doesn't stop.

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.

Yeah, that's what gets to me.

A loud ten second car? Whatever.

Constant leaf blowers every morning for hours? They drive me crazy.

I dislike both forms of noise. Getting rid of one doesn’t necessitate getting rid of both. Noise is known to be hazardous to mental health and we definitely make more than we need to. This is especially so with yard equipment.

i also dislike the noise, but it's sometimes required to get stuff done (like repairing the pavement or mowing a lawn), and we should, as residents, accept that necessary tradeoff at appropriate times. noisy vehicles, however, aren't really so necessary (anymore), with the growing move toward hybrids/electrics.

Most front lawns are unused space that people pay to maintain because “that’s how it’s supposed to be”.

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.

no argument there. i love desertscape yards, and like trees more than lawns (though trees are more water-thirsty). what i don't like are fake plastic lawns as used in a few places around me.

Yes don’t even get me started on plastic lawns.

Blowers and weed wackers shift from throttled to idle all over the place and are a lot harder to tune out than mowers at least for me. Road noise likewise is pretty background and largely from tires, not engines, anyway, unless you have a lot of commercial trucks, bikes, or tuners around.

unfortunately it’s a lot of the latter in my case.

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.

Leaf blowers also blow a ton of dust into houses. I always had a thick layer of dust on my windowsill if I left the windows open on a landscaping day.

for sure, i get some of that too. but moreso for me is getting black soot dust inside, largely from vehicle exhaust and tires (along with other particulates from cooking and pets).

That's why leaf blowers should not be banned, but _outlawed_. An outlaw, in the traditional sense, is a criminal who is placed outside of the protection of the law, so that he can be killed with impunity. Similarly, anyone who sees a leaf blower in operation should be legally allowed to destroy it (without hurting the operator, of course).

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