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Comment by thousand_nights | Hacker News Reader

honestly i don't get the point of leaf blowers, you move the leaves with an extremely loud gasoline powered machine from one place to another

for what purpose, to make it someone else's problem and then they can blow them back?

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It boggles my mind too, I always see these workers blowing leaves for HOURS in my street, you'd be more efficient with a rake, while using 0 gas, and producing 0 noise. Even from the workers perspective, you're just sitting there next to a two stroke engine with no emission filtering the whole day, that can't be good for your lungs. Same thing for removing temporary paint strips or killing weeds, they burn liters of propane slowly moving 50 meters per hour, the best part is that they're often two or three workers per burner, one holding the flamethrower, one pulling the gas tank, one pulling the half melted paint strip. Last time I saw them using a bulldozer to scrape a 10cm wide road paint strip... the amount of energy wasted is insane, we're truly living as if gas was free, unlimited and without side effects

I always saw people acting like game NPCs blasting a single leaf for what seemed like forever trying to get it into a specific spot.

I'm not convinced leaf blowing is faster than raking. I'm not even convinced it's faster than picking up leaves by hand.

I have been wondering also about this. Why would you use a leaf blower when you can use an electric leaf mulcher, which shreds the leaves, seed and sticks. You can then dispose the leaves in your garden or put it into bio waste.

So you can take them to a bag or trash can and they don't ruin your lawn.

I hated doing this as a kid btw, and it's one of the reasons I don't want a home with a lawn.

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