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Comment by oooyay | Hacker News Reader

I actually didn't know this was coming up and just bought an electric. They all kind of suck except for the Ego and the Ego is like $250.

Portland has gotten quite a bit more expensive. We've begun rejecting taxes, which as the self-selected second highest taxed city in the nation is new. Our economy has struggled to return post-COVID lockdowns. There's a lot more I could say but people are really feeling the economic squeeze. I doubt this will help, but is pretty minor when you think about housing, electricity, gas, and water costs that continue to rise as wages go down in the city. I call this place the city of a thousand cuts, there's a lot to like, but there's a lot that hurts too.

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If you can't afford a leaf blower, you could try using a $10 rake. they usually work better and faster than a leaf blower most of the time anyways.

If the hand rake isn't enough you can put a rake on a small tractor (or lawn mower) and it is a lot easier to control where the pile ends up.

In East Portland we're mostly dealing with needles from Douglas Firs. I'm not sure this will help much, or be easier. Most people I know that use a leaf blower around here use it to clear pathways and the streets after cones and needles drop because the city doesn't send street cleaning this far.

How many needles and cones do you have that you need to be clearing streets? And surely a pushbroom would suffice for the sidewalks.

In just my neighborhood we have probably 30-40 large Douglas Firs and several types of pines and maples. It's a substantial amount, which is why the city has "leaf day". It just doesn't come out here.

> $250

Think of all the rakes you could buy with that!

Oh no, I cant annoy everyone in a 500m radius for 20 minutes once a week by blowing all the leaves that have fallen into my garden into my neighbours garden. Did I get it right?

My point was you can still buy the gas ones in the store and they're substantially cheaper than the Ego I bought. I live in East Portland, which is why I was talking about cost. I wish the kind of suburban problems you're describing are what we deal with.

Howdy, fellow east Portlander, you might be interested in this: https://www.eptl.toollibrarian.net/TL/ourtools.php.

They have 5 electric leaf blowers available right now. You mentioned you already bought one, but perhaps you could share this info with some of your friends or neighbors to save them the cost. :)

Hello! We do use the EPTL :) that did remind me to donate my old plugin blower though thank you. I will note that EPTL only has plugin blowers and there are good reasons I went with a more mobile blower.

Ah, yeah, I'd suspect they'd only have plugins. Def understand the need for mobility. I never want to miss a chance to share with folks about the existence of EPTL, though. :P

The electric backpack leaf blower isn’t that much more expensive than the gas ones. If you’re using it in a business, the extra cost really isn’t significant amortized over thousands of uses.

If you’re poor and using it on your own property, a corded electric is like $50 and works fine. The cord is a little bit of a hassle, but you don’t have to worry about mixing gas and oil, fuel stabilizer etc etc. electric has gotten to the point of being good enough, and it’s not reasonable to make so much noise in a residential area when there are good alternatives.

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