To this day, I don't understand why cities or neighborhoods don't at least limit the days they can be used. Everywhere I've lived, someone in earshot is mowing or blowing every...single...day.
Seems to me it's outside your door/sidewalk it's still a lot of noise
Personally, I'd advocate a rake.
Making them illegal didn't seem to help in LA where the gardeners still defiantly use the gas powered blowers with zero repercussions. Hopefully you'll have better success outlawing them in your community.
That particular model of leaf blower with the backpack is fairly powerful, and the reviewer notes it pushes more air than the gas powered one he is using. However, a number of comments mention that the gas powered blower is much more powerful and that the reviewer is biased, which may be apparent from his early praise for the electric model.
The big issue is that the electric blower's runtime is limited. He gets 22 minutes out of a full battery using it "normally", which takes 1 hour 40 minutes to charge on the standard charger, and 42 minutes on the fast charger. He concludes that electric is better in every way for homeowners, and there's no reason to go back to gas unless you are a commercial user (presumably due to the battery limitations).
Reminds me, couple of years ago I tried estimating what it would take to run a steamer to kill weeds. Felt like you could do it off a 240VAC 30amp circuit but not a 120V 15/20 amp one. Trouble while more modern houses have exterior outlets, none have 240V. Then again, EV chargers can deliver that.
Maybe the solution for gardeners is run power of an electric truck like the new Ford one.
I'm sure the small gardening contractors will raise the issue of cost, but the large landscaping companies should have no excuse.
My real concern is that they will only be able to ship a limited run, which will get snapped up by the early adopters, that is the truck enthusiasts and EV fans who have enough disposable income and the patience to just get in line and wait.
Where I live you can't really leaf-blow anyway, as the leaves are almost always wet and heavy.
Gas blowers make light work of heavy, wet leaves. It’s why the landscapers use them rather than electrics.
The electric ones might be slightly quieter (due to having less power), but then the trade off is running for longer because they have less power.
Electric leaf blowers average 65db, 4 strokes are 70-80db, while 2 strokes average 90db. Where 10db is roughly double the "noise" I think this qualifies for "significantly"
It is not at all surprising that it’s much quieter as a result of putting ~40% of the energy into the stream of air.
You mean the sound per cfm isn't significant.
(source: I switched to Ego battery electric yard equipment from gas powered ones a few years ago).
The blowers I’d encourage you to look up the specs and make sure your quiet electric has the power your loud gas one had before finalizing your conclusion on sound output per air output. I doubt it has even half the power (unless your gas blower was a particularly small four-stroke).
I bought two plug-in blowers (both were bad jokes, being limited to 1.4kW of input power by the outlet) before buying a gas blower. I’ve since tried two battery blowers of friends and one of those was okay but still noticeably slower and less powerful than my gas blower (the other was similar to the plug-ins: suitable for dry leaves on smooth concrete).
I’m not at all opposed to electric tools (especially since small seasonal gas engines are a pain to keep running well); in fact I prefer them. But I haven’t found a blower that’s competitive in power and I’ve got maple seeds to move from 3” bluegrass in the wet New England fall and I’ve not found an electric that can do it.
However, the battery life isn't great, you get maybe 15 mins on a charge of those smaller 2ah batteries (but I have several along with a bigger 4ah mower battery). Perfectly fine for my yard, but not practical for a landscaper.