Some U.S. cities are banning gas-powered leaf blowers
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reasonstobecheerful.world
I'll never forget having to listen to leaf blowers running full throttle for hours nearly every day in the fall. This lady would get a ladder, climb up, and leaf blow her gutters out every single day between the hours of 11am and 2pm or so. Then chase those leaves around the yard in the wind, mostly fruitlessly. The only brief reprieve was her moving the ladder over 3 feet at a time.
I don't think I've ever held such negative feelings for a human before that I didn't express. Having a good neighbor is so rare for me, I didn't want to spoil it by complaining, but boy did that make me miserable all fall long.
They hurt my ears indoors across the street, I don't know how they are even legal.
Weekly, Random schools blast deafeningly loud speakers into our windows. All this, just so teachers could shout left-right-left, as kids marched on out of sync.
I'm not exaggerating. It was physically painful and I have heard my parents utter words reserved only for the worst of scum.
Who is it for? If I'm losing my hearing, surely the participants must be in lot more pain.
I suspect that many people in public event planning suffer degraded hearing early....... which in turn leads to them setting even higher volumes.
I'm a big fan of the hustle and bustle of big cities. But, there is a reason for targeted defening sounds being used as torture in Guanatanamo Bay.
Numbers provided elsewhere in the comments put the gas version at more than 10x as loud as electric.
But somewhere there is a property manager who wants to have a "pristine"¹ looking property 365 days a year.
¹(for some definition of that … I think fall is beautiful, the sounds of leaves crunching under one's footfalls, the changing colors.)
So don't clean your garden/yard too much in the fall, and definitely not after the temps get cold enough that bugs will be hibernating in those leaves. Also don't clean up in the spring till nightly temperatures are consistently about like 50° F. It's okay to clean up before last harvest and get rid of some stuff, but please try to keep some piles of leaves/dead plants around for the little critters.
Of course don't keep leaves around of plants that are prone to disease, get fruit tree leaves out of your yard as soon as possible, for example.
(Naturally the robins and such don't get them all, so it serves a dual purpose.)
Leaf blowing is bad, but nothing touches my experience with a neighbor and his pressure washing hobby. Imagine someone cleaning their driveway every weekend. The leaf blowers are like a symphony by comparison.
I've moved 2 times over bad neighbors alone. Both times they acted like it was an assault on their humanity that I would leave over such a thing.
Not everyone has the luxury to do so, but you can find a quiet place if your sample size is high enough. It's not just about having enough money to buy an isolated ranch home. There are so many odd things that can make noise that you won't discover for months.
A neighbor of mine a few doors down does the same, it's baffling how they even have concrete left.
One apartment building sometimes gets three workers using big backpack gas leafblowers simultaneously.
One house on a small lot seems to pay two workers to walk around it with gas leafblowers, going on for ages, like they're charging by the person-hour.
Another apartment building -- which seems to use a leafblower as a way for someone to kill time, just waving it around the asphalt, while the property is shabby-utilitarian -- switched to an electric for awhile... (which wasn't as bad as gas ones, but had a high-pitched component to the sound, like maybe metal parts scraping, which I'd guess was pretty hard on the operator's hearing).
Random other leafblowers on and off throughout each day, for maybe 3/4 of the year, not just fall.
I recently tried leaving neighborly notes to the property owners with the worst leafblower problems, and might have to refresh that again in the spring, if I don't move first. Or take my busybody-ness to the next level, and try lobbying local government officials for bans on leafblowers, and on the other main unnecessary noise pollution sources.
The bigger problem is fighting with the fallen leaves. Leaves attract earthworms that actually process them and fertilize soil. Without them, soil is getting empty.
But still, in many cities go this vicious circle of making a lot of landscape care work that destroys it and needs a lot more work: agressively cut the grass + remove leaves -> poor soil -> bare ground without grass -> mud after rains washed on sidewalks & roads + need to bring fertile earth and seed the grass again.
The smell those things put out is vile and it hangs in the air for so long. It’s nauseating and I’ll never figure out how that became legal in the first place. Like surely if I walked around blowing gas smell into people’s apartments I’d surely be arrested. But no, apparently that’s totally legit to do. Wild.
And of course, the noise is unbearable as well. All for what?! Ugggghhhh.
Where did this guy find a US$2200 leaf blower? For that price, it should be autonomous. The most expensive Stihl electric leaf blower I can find is $699.
I have neighbors with both kinds of leaf blowers, and I can't decide which one is more annoying.
Of course, you can be annoyed by both. But then the solution is to move somewhere without neighbours.
110db is roughly 16x as loud as 70.
Same with Greenworks 80v. That sucker I have to hold with two hands because of the blowing force. It's about the same price.
Generally I suggest just buying whatever 'line' you're interested in, so you can share batteries. Just stay away from the 18 or 20v lawn stuff, it's garbage. I got a free Ryobi 18v blower, and it's basically barely strong enough to blow dust off the garage floor.
Lol ok sure. I mean I might not want to handle multiple acres with them. That’s just because they’re small. But my 18v lawn mower and leaf blower work great, and so do my parents’. We’re not using the same brand.
Opinion from the past? Gross generalization? ‘Murica - everything bigger must be better?
If you have a tiny, flat, well kept yard they are probably fine. If you're on a typical quarter acre or more, they're an exercise in frustration.
I was just thinking of someone trying to cut their lawn, looking to buy a mower and weedeater. You definitely want something in a series, or something probably 60/80v.
Ego is pretty universally seen as 'the best.' There's a reason they don't make 18v tools.
The string used can also make a difference. The .095" string with a metal cable inside is what I find to do the best in general. The thin and cheap string without the metal inside doesn't do so well in my experience, it breaks too often and doesn't cut through much more than thin grass.
But is amazing for making a clean burn barrel. one of these can make the barrel red hot - so everything there burns completely.
The cost includes a (now) roughly 1300usd pre-tax battery backpack.
Leaf blowers aren't ubiquitous in the UK, but where I live now they get used. I'm three floors up and even with windows closed the noise inside is incredible. I also noticed the horrible smell when I opened the window to see what it was.
> Most have what’s called a “two-stroke engine,” an outmoded design that burns a mix of gas and oil
One thing that surprised me is the two stroke engine was invented after the four stroke (Ottoman cycle) engine. It does have advantages like being able to run completely upside down since it doesn't have a sump where the oil needs to drain. They also have a higher power to weight ratio.
The thing that makes them outmoded is perhaps lithium ion batteries. You couldn't fit a four stroke engine to a leaf blower or chainsaw etc.
Actually not true - you can definitely get four stroke blowers, chainsaws, weed whackers, etc.
Its major disadvantage is due to lack of valves is that for a short period of time the intake port and exhaust port are both open allowing up to 30% of the unburned air-fuel mixture to pass right through the engine as pollution. This also makes it nearly impossible to add further emissions controls in the exhaust system such as a catalytic converter, not that its really feasible to due to in such a small engine.
Because of this small two-stoke engine like those in a leaf blower can put out much more pollution that a large automobile with a 4-stroke engine with modern emissions controls.
There are more advanced two-stroke designs (BRP E-TEC) that use direct fuel injection to avoid this, but they are far too complicated to use in a small lawn tool.
As soon as you have a common area or a shared wall, roof or other construction artifact you need an HOA of some sort.
The rest is emitted as toxic fumes of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), two of the main ingredients in ground-level ozone, which both trigger asthma attacks and contribute to premature death.
I know ground-level ozone is bad news, but it's still just O3 so there is no way any organic compounds are ingredients in it. Perhaps they play a part in the formation of ozone (I'm no chemist) but then say that.
I had to look it up, and the US Environmental Protection Agency says [1]:
[Ground-level ozone] is created by chemical reactions between oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC). This happens when pollutants emitted by cars, power plants, industrial boilers, refineries, chemical plants, and other sources chemically react in the presence of sunlight.
So that sounds about right then, and was a very quick search away.
[1]: https://www.epa.gov/ground-level-ozone-pollution/ground-leve...
It's one of those things where your "right" to own a gas leaf blower smashes into my right to not be forced to listen to it. You have a remedy - buy a quiet non-gas blower, and I do not.
"I plead for a radical drop of old age subsidies"
~~ Martin Persheid
What's wrong with rakes and towed sweepers?
If you rake, then you have to put them in bags/bins and drag them. It's somewhat slower and hard for older people (although my parents still do it and enjoy it at retirement age).
Where we are at now, we have a wooded lot out back so we blow them back there (folks across the street do blow them to the curb and pay for a company to come out and vacuum them up).
No way we could just rake them either, there's just too much. For lawn sweepers they can be pretty big so you'd need somewhere to put it when you're done (at least the ones I've looked at).
We do rake our lawns, front and back, and haul the leaves to the curb using an old shower curtain as some would use a tarp.
However, my wife does prefer to rake leaves out of the garden beds, so every fall we have a conversation that starts, We really should get a leaf blower, and that then is forgotten until the next fall.
Beds, I'll make an exception for.
The main problem is the obsession with grass.
Letting leaves kill my grass was a terrible mistake, I'll never make it again.
Now, rake, blow, shake, snow, wait. That’s what grass needs and it is easy and looks good.
Or you go with artificial turf or something similar and that has its own issues.
Seems like we decided arbitrarily on the most destructive form of yard that has secondary effects of causing scientifically proven damage to humans around us with sonic blasts from our leaf blowers.
For a lot of leaves, it's not a trivial amount of time. If that's your hobby, that's all good, but otherwise time is valuable and finite.
But ye, never understood the need for one. I am using a rake for 2000m2 of garden with 5 leaf trees. None of my 6 neigbours got a leaf blower.
Even when the leaves are already in a pile it's quite slow and takes about an hour to collect a garden bag of mulched leaves. The thing claims 1:16 ratio but in practice it's closer to 1:6. So it's probably 5-10 minutes to suck in a bag of leaves already piled in one place.
There are push behind lawn sweepers for smaller areas, and tow behind sweepers that you can attach to a lawn tractor or mower.
On leveled ground, a lawn sweeper is faster than a leaf blower, and will pick up twigs, acorns as well as leaves.
In any case... lawn robots are coming strong and it's going to be a lawn robot game soon.
I would pay extra, whatever the cost, to have rakes and brooms be the tools, not the blowers.
Amen
Bring back the common rake, which works well, provides decent low-level exercise and won't cause lung ailments in the population for decades to come?
edit: I had stopped reading prematurely due to a massive advert I confused for the end
>The roar of leaf blowers has long been ubiquitous in fall. But as more US cities ban the gas-powered devices, that’s starting to change.
And if you want to be picky about it, yes, that's kinda of an "unnecessary" ban, but you just wouldn't get most people to change their habits
But see my other comment, I stopped reading prematurely as what I thought was the end of the article was just a massive advert.
And when it comes to air pressure, gas blowers have more CFM than electric ones.
Electric equipment can also not be used if there's rain, and the batteries are not resilient to cold.
I can't imagine they don't pay for themselves within couple months if you actually run a business. The amount of fuel used by any greenkeeping business is non-trivial, and batteries are not that expensive.
>>Electric equipment can also not be used if there's rain
Since when? Of course it can be.
>>and the batteries are not resilient to cold.
This only really starts to have a measurable impact in the kind of cold where I'd question your sanity if you were still blowing leaves outside.
How could it become so popular, does it have any benefits apart from using a machine for the sake of using a machine, and showing off (as it initially has been probably)?
When one has 10,000 square feet (or more) to "rake" and multiple large trees (either your own, or blown in from neighbors) dropping leaves on that 10,000 square feet, a leaf blower can change an 8hr+ job with a rake into a 30-60 minute effort by a single person.
Which is the biggest reason why they were adopted by lawn care contractors, the contractor could now "rake" 10-12 jobs per day vs. 1-3 jobs per day with the same crew of 2-3 employees.
I have an acre of land with multiple large trees. I have an electric sweeper but never really loved the job it did.
In my area, all the leaf blowers that do arrive are all carried by lawn work contractors. However, personally, I'm not bothered by them so their arrival during summer (grass clippings cleanup - always seemed a bit overkill but it is what the 'lawn work contractors' do) or fall (leaves) has never caused me an issue. Note: I'm not detracting from or dismissing the fact that others may be significantly bothered, just stating the fact that I'm personally not bothered by them.
[1] in my specific case not, as I do not, and will never, live in a HOA area -- but eventually even the local govt. will send out a "nastygram", they are simply by far less sensitive than HOA busybodys and it takes a quite significant divergence from the typical before they notice and send out a "nastygram". And the local govt. nastygrams most often include a compliance period before any fines are imposed vs. an HOA one which begins with a fine and escalates from there.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practic...
https://dcist.com/story/20/03/06/the-white-house-lawn-was-on...
The poor Boeing 737 just can't buy good publicity. Now, it's even being invoked in yet another negative story even if it isn't directly about the plane directly.
> The poor Boeing 737 just can't buy good publicity. Now, it's even being invoked in yet another negative story even if it isn't directly about the plane directly.
You’re thinking of the Boeing 737 MAX series. The 737 is from 1967.
To say nothing of the appropriateness or applicability of bringing up the 767 in the original article, which was almost certainly a case of SEO abuse, your usage of passive voice obscures your own role in contributing to and continuing this phenomenon. I’m not sure that you were aware of the distinction beforehand from your comments, and regardless, your comment here now glosses over your own role in virally and memetically propagating the same blunder that your passive statements ascribe to no one with a view from nowhere.
Something something glass houses, casting stones, and so on.
By which I mean the 737 and now we’ve come full circle - goddamn it all to /dev/null
No, I was fully aware of what I was doing. I was not in a fugue state. I was in complete control of all of my faculties. It was an example of taking two things totally unrelated and smashing them together to make a pointless point. The subtlety might have been lost on you, but it does not have any bearing on whether I was cognizant of my actions.
And once you start adding distance differences, the comparisons are pointless.
A microwave five feet away is as loud as a jet 5 miles away or something.