24 ms·

Oakland bans the use of combustion engine-powered leaf blowers and trimmers

377 points by hindsightbias 6y ago

sivex 6y ago
Landscaping companies will be running gas powered generators to charge their batteries...
- ganoushoreilly 6y ago
  Exactly. If it's a noise ordinance, set time limits during the day. If it's a pollution issue, look at the problem from a wider lens and then slowly introduce standards as we have with improving emissions in cars. This is simply a knee jerk feel good law that won't solve the problem. The 60v blowers are just as loud, the generators just as loud.
- stickfigure 6y ago
  That might not actually be as bad. Generators are four-stroke.
- munk-a 6y ago
  I think it's not unlikely that they might be charging their equipment off of a truck mounted generator (or the truck itself) which is good news - since most generators and all cars are far more efficient and generally better muffled than leaf blowers. Leaf blowers churn out a bunch of monoxide due to the generally poor motor design.
- nashashmi 6y ago
  Could be. Until better battery alternatives come up. I don’t think a battery can be charged very quickly. Even with an on-site generator. So they will have multiple batteries. At which point it might be better off charging them overnight. It will reduce noise across yards. It will increase efficiency. It will cause more ewaste. And it will definitely raise prices. Yeah it’s ridiculous.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Landscaping companies will be running gas powered generators to charge their batteries... Which, even accounting for charging losses, will be less polluting than backpackable two-strokes, and less close to where workers breathe, so, mission accomplished, whether the pollution concern is environmental or worker health or both.
- mikestew 6y ago
  Fantastic, as I'd rather listen to the even the cheapest Harbor Freight open-frame generator over a two-stroke leaf blower any time you care to ask me. That set up will pollute less, too.
  - hedora 6y ago
    Oddly, the Harbor Freights aren’t the noisiest on the market. Westinghouse is worse, for example.
- ska 6y ago
  More likely they'll have beefed up alternators and battery packs on the trucks and charge between/during jobs. Which from a pollution point of view is way better than 2-stroke backpacks.
- danans 6y ago
  Or you know, plug in to their clients' outdoor power outlets. If it works for contractors, don't see why it wouldn't work for landscapers.
aritmo 6y ago
There are some sweet battery-based blowers and trimmers. Less noisy as well.
- ganoushoreilly 6y ago
  Have you used one? I have a 20v and 60v dewalt blower. The 20volt blows, but it's not very strong. It works blowing out the garage and with minor clippings on the sidewalk / driveway that's about it. The 60v works better, substantially more power and it moves leaves. Both have horrible battery life when all is said and done. We're talking 20 minutes or so with 9AH batteries, and in the case of the 60v I get about 30 minutes on a 12ah FlexVolt. Then theres the whole buying batteries, longevity of batteries, the power to charge etc. I would bet that the damage to the ecosystem from using gas blowers / trimmers isn't that big a difference and if equated in measurement of power and life, the gas far outperforms it. Also, the Electrics are just as loud in most instances. Are they going to ban gas pressure washers next?
  - jlmorton 6y ago
    Note that while it's annoying, it's certainly an option to plug-in the leaf blowers.
    - jeffrallen 6y ago
      Plug in to a generator? :)
    - ganoushoreilly 6y ago
      Neither of mine plug in, the only adapters available are third party on amazon and a few have less than stellar reviews. Namely, they short out and cause fires. I'd also be required to have a substantial amount of electrical cord length at our farm, like 1000 feet cables, which simply isn't feasible. I suppose I could throw the generator in the truck when doing stuff out there but I feel like that defeats the purpose.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I have a 80cc 2-stroke gas leaf blower, two plug-in electric leaf blowers, and I've tried a buddy's battery leaf blower. All of the electric ones are basically toys compared to the gas powered one. Gas unit's 1100 cfm and 220 mph rating is substantially higher than the electrics and it shows in performance. The electrics can barely move a small pile of dry leaves. The gas one can lift sheets of wet, mucky leaves and move them around effortlessly. On the other hand, I love my battery string trimmer. That's a device that seems perfect for electric as the power requirement is quite low and there's no carb to get all gummed up. The electric works every time and a battery pack easily does my entire yard trimming twice over, so there's no fiddling or stopping required.
jschveibinz 6y ago
Gas mowers and garden tools are just bad in general. But they are the backbone of a lot of immigrant small businesses. Banning without providing a path or incentive to electric seems very radical to me. Relevant facts on gas-powered tools: https://www.peoplepoweredmachines.com/faq-environment.htm https://www.peoplepoweredmachines.com/faq-environment.htm
- maxcan 6y ago
  Making life miserable for small business to win some virtue points is one of the bedrock principles for SFBA municipal governments. Its right up there with "rules for thee and not for me".
  - eznzt 6y ago
    Making the lives of poor people miserable in the name of virtue points is one of the bedrock principles of left-wing governments around the world. For example, European cities banning diesel vehicles.
    - octonion 6y ago
      "virtue points" is a meaningless propaganda term.
    - ginja 6y ago
      It's funny how everything is a matter of perspective. I'd say that European governments are pretty "center" on average, given that they mostly range from social democracy to liberal conservatism. But anyway, in most medium to large European cities there is little reason to drive. The restrictions on vehicles are overwhelmingly positive for residents' quality of life and the environment.
    - snakeboy 6y ago
      > For example, European cities banning diesel vehicles. At least in Paris, poor people are not often the ones driving into Paris for work, they're mostly taking the metro in from the suburbs. Paris has some moderate air pollution problems, often among the worst European or American cities (of course, globally there's much worse), and that effects everyone's quality of life and long-term health in a myriad of ways that we don't fully understand yet, as well as in some obvious ways that we already understand. Of course there's always a bit of political show-boating with these things, and so the French left-wing do this with their pet issues, namely environmental issues. But that show-boating doesn't diminish the tangible positive effects of the policy...
underseacables 6y ago
I’m ambivalent about this. On the one hand they are LOUD as hell, but the electrics just don’t blow as good. The gas powered blowers just work better, especially for large jobs.
- ahupp 6y ago
  In addition to the noise, those two-stroke engines produce a huge amount of pollution. "A single two-stroke engine produces pollution equivalent to that of 30 to 50 four-stroke automobiles. " https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/two-strokes-and-youre-out https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/two-strokes-and...
  - mc32 6y ago
    Then they should ban two-stroke gasoline scooters (both stand on and sit on types).
    - jascii 6y ago
      For what it's worth, the 2008 article OP references specifically mentions technology to significantly reduce the pollution from 2 stroke engines. This technology has since been widely adopted in the scooter industry. Modern scooters pollute less per mile than the average single occupant car. https://www.motorscooterguide.net/do-scooters-pollute-more-than-cars/ https://www.motorscooterguide.net/do-scooters-pollute-more-t...
  - linksnapzz 6y ago
    When I lived in Cambridge, there was a guy in my neighborhood with a 1970s 2-stroke Saab. I figured every time he started it up, he undid all the non-polluting that every Prius ever sold in MA was responsible for.
    - tclancy 6y ago
      Was it a Sonnet? Those were pretty enough to justify it.
danaliv 6y ago
Good riddance. When I lived in Oakland the noise from these things was constant in my neighborhood. They were running every single day. It was intolerable.
- deleted 6y ago
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- jlmorton 6y ago
  Agreed, good riddance, but the noise is not going to go away, it's going to become a high-pitched scream, rather than a lower-pitched buzz.
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    The higher the sound frequency, the easier it is to muffle it.
  - finnh 6y ago
    That high-frequency sound doesn't carry as far, at least
  - acdha 6y ago
    That doesn’t fit any electric blower I’ve ever heard. The overall volume is notably lower and the frequency isn’t too different - slightly higher but even a hair drier with a smaller diameter isn’t a “high-pitched scream”.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      It's notably quieter, because it's notably less powerful. In the best case, you hear the noise for a multiple of the time because the work is done more slowly and/or by more people using blowers together to move debris.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        Battery powered blowers exist and are just as powerful. A cord (as others have noted) can't deliver enough power for the job and so they have to run it longer. However a battery can deliver just as much power as an engine, for only a little more weight.
rektide 6y ago
DC passed a combustion leaf blower ban in December 2018[1], but it's only coming into effect January 2022, another 10 months. I saw my first electric leaf blower ~3 months ago & chatted with the crew some; they'd only picked their new gear up the day before! They were happy with it. The wearable one was much quieter, but there was also a ground-based unit that was still loud as all get out, alas. I've also asked other property management crews (probably 7 at this point) if they knew about the ban, & so far, no one even knows about it, other than the one crew I'd met who'd just gotten their electric gear. I am very curious to see, long term, how powering these systems works out. Will a work crew simply buy a bunch of 40V or 80V batteries? How many will be enough? How many crews will turn right around & buy a generator they'll leave running a good part of the day? Longer term, perhaps hybrid work vehicles like the F150 & their built in 2.4 & 7.2kW inverter could become a crucial capability. Alas, it seems probable one way or another that combustion based energy, albeit less dirty & radically less obnoxious than these gas tools, will be used. Anyhow. This ban can't come soon enough. Another year of these noise devices is going to be obnoxious. Unlikely to ever happen, but I wish cities would have designated noise hours, say 3 hours a day, 5 days a week (whatever) where noise was allowed (without special circumstances permit). It seems like such an obvious civic good to coordinate, to try to steer us away from all causing loud riotous noise all day long. [1] https://dcist.com/story/18/12/04/d-c-council-strikes-death-blow-to-gas-powered-leaf-blowers/ https://dcist.com/story/18/12/04/d-c-council-strikes-death-b...
- alistairSH 6y ago
  WRT the ground-based blower - at some point, moving air makes as much noise as the engine, so this isn't surprising. For charing, many newer trucks come with robust power systems for running electrics. Obv not an expense to be taken lightly, but we're getting there. Ford has the most compelling options right now - right up to 7.3kw system (I believe that's with the engine idling). I believe that with the hybrid drivetrain, you can use a not-insignificant amount of electricity with he truck engine off.
kaczordon 6y ago
They're already banned in LA but landscapers still use it all the time anyway and just ignore the law. Really annoying to have a loud engine right beside your window, doesn't seem to really help with the work anyway just blows the leaves around in circles and they rake it anyway.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  Does California allow civil lawsuits for this kind of thing? It sounds like that might be the most practical way to force compliance.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - clairity 6y ago
    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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26360215
    - fossuser 6y ago
      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.
ericbarrett 6y ago
Used to live across the street from a neighbor who got his yard cleaned up by a crew with a gas blower twice weekly. They were already banned in that town, but it was never enforced. The noise would wake me up and the fumes—like standing next to a 1960s Mustang with a cold engine—would drift into our apartment and linger for 15-20 minutes. Gas blowers are gross and their time passed a while ago.
- MereInterest 6y ago
  My apartment is across the street from a shopping center, and they have all maintenance work done at night. This includes using leaf blowers to clear off walkways. The noise is absolutely ridiculous to have at 3 in the morning.
  - mike_d 6y ago
    Almost every city has a noise ordnance that prevents this. Just call the PD and file a noise complaint every time it happens.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Twice weekly seems excessive, but I only ever see them in the peak of fall when the leaves are falling. I blow my yard maybe 4-5 times all year combined. ...but I see them much more frequently in Florida. I suppose frequency of blowing is very biome dependent.
porb121 6y ago
Huge fan of this. Gas-powered blowers are responsible for a disturbingly large portion of US air pollutants. Something like 10% of all CO, 5% of VOCs come from gas-powered lawn equipment, and they produce >30%* of the non-car pollutants. Traditional American lawn maintenance is a horribly unsustainable (and in my opinion, ugly) practice. We should encourage alternatives. See: Banks, "National Emissions from Lawn and Garden Equipment"
- elevenoh 6y ago
  Could not agree more.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Please consider cribbing off of Oakland's ordinance and championing it where you live. The more locales where banned, the faster manufacturing of gas powered lawn implements dies off.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    Yes. I am a big fan of corded electric lawn gear. Maybe it doesn't work if you have to mow an acerage, but for a normal suburban environment corded blowers, trimmers, and mowers are all totally reasonable to use. No batteries to worry about, powerful enough, never have to fill up gas, often lighter than other options. There's still plenty of use cases for gas units but if we could get them banned from everywhere but rural areas it would be a good step in the right direction. Some folks go too far and say "nobody should have a lawn!!!" but they clearly don't understand the zenlike experience of avoiding one's family, drinking cheap lager, listening to a podcast, and working the lawn in the sunshine for a couple hours on a Saturday morning. Kept me sane last year more than anything else did.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      If you have a couple unobstructed squares to mow it's great. If you have stuff to go around the cord becomes more of a pain than the ICE equivalent.
etrautmann 6y ago
Amazing. Working from home in Menlo Park was infuriating for this reason
mc32 6y ago
I’m not opposed to this. They are noisy. They often come early on weekends! But that said, I hope they compensate current owners with vouchers or grant some trade in value and not outright ban them without compensation. That would be wholly unfair to current owners.
henearkr 6y ago
Nice!!! I really hope Tokyo is next in line. And all the other cities in the world. After all, the mains are never really far away in urban or suburban context, so ICE-powered tooling is meaningless.
- mrwh 6y ago
  This is the thing, doesn't even need to be battery powered, houses usually have external accessible power points (at least in the US and certainly in Oakland).
  - ganoushoreilly 6y ago
    Houses are a small part of landscaping maintenance around a city. I bet there aren't as many outlets available as you think. You also have to deal with consumption and ownership of the outlet, how do you re-imburse someone with external outlets in a townhouse situation?
    - henearkr 6y ago
      In most cities there are electrical outlets for municipal workers too (in urban context they are often protected by a lock). In many cases there is also a way to plug to the grid using traps on the side of streetlights.
Bud 6y ago
Next step: ban the electric leaf blowers, too. Get a rake. Or, just stop being a lawn fetishist—also a good option.
fossuser 6y ago
I think this has been banned in Palo Alto for years, but is never enforced and there are a lot of them running all of the time. The suburbs are surprisingly loud because of this, louder than the cities I've lived in.
retrac 6y ago
While people usually complain about the noise, the far bigger concern is pollution. Almost all of the power-weight advantage in the lightweight two-stroke engines used in these machines is gained with partial combustion of lubricant-enriched fuel and no emissions control. With some pollutants it is something like two to three magnitudes of order worse per unit of energy produced, compared to a low-emissions car engine.
enahs-sf 6y ago
This is all well and good, but i'd much prefer the city focus on things like cleaning up all the broken glass everywhere or addressing the unhoused issues before taking on such superfluous tasks.
- ganoushoreilly 6y ago
  This is simply to make people feel good. Easier to tackle issues like this than to actually invest in solving real problems.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    There are some good examples elsewhere in the article responses but this legislation may significantly improve health outcomes for landscapers and provide a non-negligible effect on the environment. Two-stroke leafblower engines pollute a lot. It's not just about making people feel good or allowing audiophiles to listen to records undisturbed.
- rektide 6y ago
  Legislating that property owners not use anti-human systems doesn't take much effort, is easy to knock out. Using a zero-sum mentality, that good legislation in one place is incompatible with doing work elsewhere, is harmful. Especially when the work you talk about requires not just legislation, but significant resources invested. Here, we only mandate that companies do the right thing, at their own cost. This seems like an easy win, something worth knocking out early. Blocking easy at-hand work on all the backlog of big important hard to do work seems illogical.
- vvillena 6y ago
  How is it superflous? It improves air quality a lot, and it's free to implement. Also, it's not an exclusive policy, it can be done in addition to the things you propose.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > it's free to implement It's free to the city's coffers. It is a multi-million dollar capital expense to the city's businesses and residents. I support the measure. But it's far from free.
ehutch79 6y ago
My apt complex has 'landscapers' that use these. Landscapers in quotes because there's about 10 sq meters of lawn and a few plants. Every weekend they're out there blowing dirt around. It's not like it does anything besides making the pool unusable.
williesleg 6y ago
They need to outlaw trimming, that's killing photosynthesis providing life that takes carbon out of the air.
xt00 6y ago
I think a reasonable option for people that do this for a living would be a back-park worn battery pack that has an inverter to drive leaf blowers that typically use a 110VAC input, since the backpack could house the equivalent of maybe 10 of the normal small batteries that are used in the battery powered leaf blowers.. only problem is that they are pretty spendy.. likely the cost will come down once these are more mainstream.. but yea the noise of these things is horrible.. for example, lets say you live in a neighborhood where 8 of your neighbors all have lawn services that use them.. easily that means you could have one or two per day.. bwahhh bwahhhhh everyday.. super obnoxious.. Here is one backpack electric leaf blower: EGO BAX1501 56V 28Ah, $1300
- tclancy 6y ago
  I have an EGO backpack blower that works well on our two acres and it only cost $250.
nostromo 6y ago
Has anyone else noticed the trend of ever-increasing laws and ever-decreasing enforcement? It’s not a good mix. We end up with a system that punishes people following the rules and doesn’t do anything about the many people breaking the rules. It also creates the sense of unfairness and general lawlessness — that laws are recommendations that can mostly be ignored.
- kepler1 6y ago
  I echo this sentiment. It's either getting too expensive (people) to police laws with sufficient numbers, or we are not interested in offending people or doing the dirty work of putting teeth behind laws in the name of "equity" (for some things). I hate half-measures that inconvenience those that follow the rules, and do nothing to punish those who break them.
- mike_d 6y ago
  This is just peak NIMBY Karen at work: laws passed to address personal grievances.
- proc0 6y ago
  Yeah, it's just not an effective means to change small behavior like this. They could have instead banned loud noise making machines and/or machines with high pollution, and this would reduce the supply, and shift the demand to the alternatives, which by definition should now optimize for the proper features (silent and green). The way things happening now, especially in CA, is laws for everything such that it specifies behavior, not incentives. This then makes enforcement target individuals instead of market suppliers.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    > They could have instead banned loud noise making machines and/or machines with high pollution Isn't that what they did? Oh, are you saying they should ban the sale or posession, not just the use? Or you're saying they should ban more kinds of noise-making or polluting machines, not just leaf-blowers? Are you arguing for more expansive ban? Or I may be missing it.
mywacaday 6y ago
Seems like a disproportionate impact on landscaping companies, thinks are hard enough with COVID without adding the cost of retooling and buying a days worth of batteries for each piece of equipment
- jandrese 6y ago
  It would be ironic if this forced landscaping companies to all buy noisy diesel generators to run constantly so they can charge a bank of batteries while running on another set. On the other hand, a single big diesel generator is less harmful to the environment than a bunch of 2 stroke engines. It could theoretically even get some pollution controls that would be too heavy and expensive for the power equipment. Or maybe they'll buy those F150s with the built in power bank and have the truck idle to charge the batteries. That would be even better for noise level and the environment, as the truck comes with modern pollution controls.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    Another thought is that this might open up a black market for people hacking gas powered equipment so it is quiet and can pass for electric powered from a distance.
KDJohnBrown 6y ago
LA did this like 20 years ago I believe. I’m surprised this took so long.
- asdff 6y ago
  Living in LA now and I didn't know they did this until I read through this thread. Gas mowers invade the neighborhood daily. No enforcement means nothing changes.
blobbers 6y ago
YES! If they're giving Tesla incentives give battery operated leaf blowers incentives as well. Super happy cities are starting to do this, hope my neighborhood could as well. State should step up subsidies to encourage this.
eatbitseveryday 6y ago
I wonder if landscaping companies will buy a fuel-powered generator to run their electrical equipment, seeing as they'd otherwise have to use the property's outlets to power their equipment (or risk not having access to electricity on some properties).
- hellisothers 6y ago
  I have seen this happen when I lived near Palo Alto :(
  - xodice 6y ago
    It's still a win pollution wise. Those 4 stroke generators are far better re: emissions than a 2 stroke engine on ICE lawn tools.
- reportingsjr 6y ago
  It's possible, but even if this happens it's still a pretty big win over the two stroke engines that are prevalent in lawn equipment. You'd be surprised at how efficient a modern generator is compared to two stroke engines.
deleted 6y ago
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aye01 6y ago
whole heartedly agree that this is a plus, but no way in hell are gardeners in oakland going to stop using them. i see most gardening truck around the city with their entire beds with just gas blowers. no way are companies with already low margins going to swap their equipment over this. its going to take years before we see the effects of this.
rmah 6y ago
I hope this ban spreads, not because of the air pollution, but because of the noise pollution. I hate when those things wake me up or keep me from enjoying my terrace.
- ganoushoreilly 6y ago
  They're just going to use Electrics and Generators. It doesn't really solve that side of the problem. A different approach would be needed to reduce noise pollution, such as Operating hours etc.
  - 542354234235 6y ago
    Electric blowers are quieter than gas ones, and one generator is quieter than 3-4 individual gas engine lawn tools.
  - sib 6y ago
    It's a lot easier to put an effective muffler on a generator than on a leaf blower that is person-portable. I just looked at the stats for some Honda generators and they have a 7000-W unit with 120v and 240v outputs that runs at 52-58dB. A new mid-range California (CARB)-compliant Echo gas leaf blower comes in at 74dB.
jeffbee 6y ago
Neighboring Berkeley banned these years ago but there is no mechanism for enforcement so it hasn't made any difference.
- __turbobrew__ 6y ago
  That is the west coast way: non-existent enforcement of laws.
at_a_remove 6y ago
I have been looking into the battery-powered lawncare ecosystem for a while but I have found the prospects a little daunting. As far as I can tell, there's one new entrant to the field, Ego. The others are either from companies that have dealt with batteries for a while (Dewalt, Ryobi) or are "house brands" found exclusively at the big box stores like Lowes, Home Depot, Menards, and so on. I am not afraid of spending money on items but I find it frustrating when the extra expenditure ends up being a dud, like my Toro (gas-powered) lawnmower which, despite the money spent and the numerous trips to the repair place, and the care lavished on it, has worked less than it has failed completely. My previous mower ran wonderfully without hardly any maintenance; this thing I have been changing oil, messing about with spark plugs, using special and such, all to no avail. Battery-powered sounds good but I don't know if the market shakeout has happened yet.
- Blackthorn 6y ago
  The battery powered options from the good tool brands like Makita and Ryobi are very good. I have a Makita and would definitely recommend. Best part? No small engine maintenance needed.
  - ummonk 6y ago
    And brands usually use one battery model across their tool lineup so you can swap batteries.
  - asdff 6y ago
    Decent lawncare equipment rarely needs much maintenance in my experience. My dad has had his ryobi mower for at least 20 years now and all that's ever been put into it is gas. Instead, you have different maintenance needs, they aren't gone entirely. Rather than occasionally having to do engine work (which you might never have to do), you now have a wear item to replace: the battery. Eventually, Ryobi or Makita or whoever will stop selling that particularly proprietary shaped battery for that model you bought, eventually forcing your hand to pay for a newer machine where you can still buy new batteries, and leaving you with a lawnmower sized hunk of junk in the form of your old, perhaps functional but unable to charge mower. I don't see this as the end of lawncare equipment maintenance, I see this as the end of being able to keep your equipment going for decades. These companies executive boards must be patting themselves on the back for figuring out how to break consumers out of being able to get by on $50 used mowers forever, and forcing them to pay retail for new models at regular intervals. It's like the printer ink racket.
lostphilosopher 6y ago
FWIW I've been very happy with the Ego line of electric (rechargeable batteries) lawn tools. I have, and use regularly, their leaf blower, weed whacker, and snow blower. 3 seasons of use so far.
CodeWriter23 6y ago
Los Angeles adopted such a law years ago. Net effect on the ground: every gardener still uses the gas-powered model. Because two reasons IMO a)lack of publicity and b) the gardener and the homeowner are liable for the fine, and who wants to rat on their neighbors (especially if “neighbor” = landlord as in my case)
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  > who wants to rat on their neighbors You'd imagine there would be more busybodies or easily-disturbed people who would be phoning anonymous tips over noise complaints. Maybe they would be doing that more if knowledge of the law was more widespread.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Density of busybodies increases as you go up the economic ladder (and then falls off a cliff at the top). You're gonna have a harder time getting people to narc on their neighbors in LA than in SF. Even then most people who would narc will just ask their neighbors to adjust the times which they do loud things and most neighbors will do so.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      LA is like five times the population of SF. There's probably more wealthy people there just based on the sheer size of the population alone.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  Just give a private right of action. If the $500 fine is payable to the complainant (or split between the city and the complainant) then the problem will go away in short order.
sparkling 6y ago
The entry level blowers don't even have swap-able batteries. With these things standing in a cold, dusty, maybe humid garage 99% of the time, the battery will rapidly degrade and be dead after just a few years of usage. Then you have 15lbs of e-waste for the junk yard. Honestly not a ideal situation either.
- xodice 6y ago
  My Kobalt cordless blower is very much entry level and has swappable batteries that also swap with my other Kobalt tools. It's not the worlds greatest blower (480 CFM and 110 MPH) but it gets the job done on my modest yard (40mins of runtime).
plandis 6y ago
I have an electric weed trimmer, lawn mower and leaf blower. They are quite a bit less noise than gas equivalents I used growing up. The one huge downside is that these devices are pretty big energy consumers and battery life is horrible. My yard is tiny and I’ll routinely go through 2 240WHr batteries each time I cleanup my yard. I couldn’t imagine how annoying that would be with an actual big yard. Also good luck if you go on vacation and come back to tall grass, my electric mower (I have one from Ryobi) that struggles to increase the torque well enough to handle it.
- xmprt 6y ago
  A good result of this is that the technology is going to get a lot better now that there's a larger market for the electric alternatives.
- egeozcan 6y ago
  Why can't leaf blowers have just long cables and no battery? Would be completely fine for small gardens. Professional ones could have quickly interchangeable batteries. On lawn movers, you could put giant batteries as you don't carry them, it's just a matter of cost.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    A cord cannot deliver enough power. They exist, but only smaller models and you quickly need more power.
  - mnouquet 6y ago
    Because your standard 1.5HP 110V circuit has as much torque an as sloth, which is only slightly better than battery operated tools' having as much torque as an anemic sloth.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  I bought a reel mower for my smaller yard. No charging, minor effort to keep it clean, stays sharp for a long time (at some point I'll have to deal with that, but it's been good so far), no gas, essentially no noise. It takes me just as long to mow my yard as with an electric or gas mower, though I do have to mow it twice a week during the peak growing season (it does not handle tall grass very well). But 20-30 minutes of walking & pushing exercise is not terrible twice a week, I run, row, and cycle a lot more than that. Last year I treated it as a warmup and followed it up with a 30+ minute run.
jimnotgym 6y ago
I would like to recommend an alternative to the leaf blower called a 'rake'. It takes no time at all to rake a lawn, the exercise is good for you, emissions are low and the noise levels are safe. How many times have you seen someone blow leaves away, only for the wind to blow them straight back. A rake is no use for starting pulse jet engines, however. https://youtu.be/zsXWspo5hrc https://youtu.be/zsXWspo5hrc
- binarymax 6y ago
  The past autumn my neighbors landscaper was using a leaf blower for 2 hours just trying to blow a whole wet pile into the wind to the curb - about 10 feet away. He was failing miserably, but didn't care and kept at it. Infuriated, I stormed out during my lunch break with a rake and just did it in under five minutes. He didn't know how to react, so he just stood there STILL USING THE BLOWER TRYING TO HELP. Strangest experience I'd had in awhile. Edit - this is getting popular, so here's my baby: https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lawn-and-garden/gardening-tools/rakes/7439565 https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lawn-and-garden/gard...
- ummonk 6y ago
  And a sharp hand-forged sickle is surprisingly effective at trimming.
- asdff 6y ago
  Try raking an acre lot and then you will be running to the Stihl store to get a backpack blower after you get your second blister two hours into the job. This task was literally my childhood. It would take five of us and two tarps to haul leaves to the woods over a couple days to rake out that yard, and don't get me started if the leaves were the least bit wet at all. Now, the job takes one person with a backpack blower an afternoon. You gotta think of the scale the average landscaper operates and their margins. They aren't going to employ five people for two days to rake one parcel. They are going to employ five people and buy five leaf blowers to do ten parcels in those two days instead. They don't live in the neighborhood, they don't care that they make noise, and outside the pandemic, no one else does either because they are at the office when they are busy landscaping.
sgt 6y ago
I have a gardener and I'm pretty sure he uses that trimmer like a swiss army knife to trim or cut pretty much anything. This means he'll be busy with it for hours each time. He also never fails to fill too much two stroke oil. Perhaps it's time I replaced it with an electric one.
KorematsuFred 6y ago
While the intentions behind this could be noble, these sort of heavy handed moves are anti-minority and hurt some of the poorest people. Lawn and Gardening jobs are mostly done by immigrants and other minorities in and around Oakland. For these cash strapped individuals it is going to be a major burden to replace all their equipment with battery operated devices, not to mention, it is going to be a problem to charge the batteries as these people often work around the clock and can't afford to keep the equipment idle. Some of these people will go out of business, or will have to seek loans from loan sharks or pay expensive fines to the city. Not sure Oakland can even make a dent it CO pollution in the world with this law but surely will destroy few more lives of city's minorities and vulnerable people.
Someone1234 6y ago
One major reason why electric lawn equipment isn't more popular for commercial: Excessive battery costs. If you're a home-owner you can rotate a couple of batteries and likely only use the ones included with the equipment bundle(s). But commercial users don't have that luxury, they're definitely buying additional batteries. Manufacturers commonly charge an excessive premium for add-on batteries. Example: - Toro Brushless Leaf Blower (51820) + 2.5 Ah battery (88625) & charger (88602): $199 - Toro 2.5 Ah battery (88625): $165 So the battery add-on costs 82%~ of the tools total cost alone. As a homeowner after n years you'll likely respond by just outright replacing the tool for a new bundle, but in a commercial context this just kills the whole idea. According to the manufacturer at the lowest speed setting each battery lasts 90 minutes, and nobody is using this at the lowest setting.
- bopbeepboop 6y ago
  That’s bonkers! If you’re somewhere you can’t charge, you’re talking $1500 to do 4 hours of heavy work. And that’s assuming your small battery pack can even put out enough torque to match a 2-stroke for heavy uses.
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    Or you fit your pickup truck with an inverter (which you probably already have tbh) and charge batteries as you drive to the next job. And wait until you hear about some exciting products that require no battery at all, like Rake and Broom!
    - Someone1234 6y ago
      It takes 3 hours to recharge the provided battery on the provided charger. That means a battery could be used, at most, twice in a day therefore still requiring add-on batteries for commercial applications (3x~ per tool, per day). As to the "rake and broom," point: there's an innate time value to consider for commercial applications. If each job takes longer, you'll do fewer jobs, and could lose money overall. I'm not really clear on what point you were trying to make? That add-ons aren't overpriced? That commercial lawn care companies should wait 3 hrs between jobs? That manual raking and gas/electric blowers offer the same productivity?
bernardv 6y ago
Great move. The mostly North American leaf-blower addiction is so annoying. A good old rake will do the trick. Never understood the need to blow leaves around in a windstorm, as I’ve seen it practiced in the northeastern US.
- bernardv 6y ago
  Why was my comment voted down? Are the admins of this site so sensitive? Did I hurt anyone‘s feelings or use foul language?
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    There's a lot of 'you can't tell me what to do!' types on HN.
throwawaysea 6y ago
It's amazing that the city of Oakland has time for this but no time to enforce the law or hold arrested criminals accountable with actual charges. They've made no real progress on the streak of crimes against Asians committed by what seems like mostly African American suspects, and have been hesitant to use the 'hate crime' label which they use generously in other situations. Meanwhile, police chief LeRonne Armstrong arrested an Asian shopowner who legally used his firearm in defense (https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-cops-reluctant-to-arrest-store-owner-who-opened-fire-to-stop-robbery https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-cops-reluctant-to-arrest-s...). Even though the shopowner was later released with no charges (https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/03/02/no-charges-for-oakland-chinatown-shop-owner-whose-gunfire-broke-up-robbery-attempt/ https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/03/02/no-charges-for-oakla...), it gives away the lopsided politics and priorities of Oakland. And now here we are, with the city leadership spending time on minutia instead of the real problems that plague the bay. Regarding this ban - I can understand upholding noise codes, but the reality is that electric leaf blowers and trimmers are nowhere near as good and have limited run times. They are simply not a good substitute. Rather than banning them, I would rather see the cost of the externalities priced in or maybe a tighter number of hours when such equipment can be used. In general, the government should not get into the habit of controlling individual actions via widely-scoped hard bans.
leephillips 6y ago
I experience a kind of existential horror when observing someone standing for a full minute with the nozzle of one of these idiotic machines directed toward a single recalcitrant leaf that could be dislodged with a subsecond flick from a rake or a broom, while piles of birds fall dead from their nests behind him. It resembles the sensation that overcomes me when surrounded, at a fireworks display, by a throng of my fellow citizens all attempting to memorialize the spectacle with flash photography.
wcarron 6y ago
All for it. Hoping it becomes a statewide ban in the next few years. I'm really sick of Tues-Thurs having 30-40 2-stroke engines idling/running for basically 3 straight hours. It's noisy, and I can definitely smell it, and it definitely interrupts my work
- asdff 6y ago
  It's already banned in LA and you wouldn't know it from the amount of gas blowing still going around. In CA there are laws then there are the laws that actually go enforced by the police. This is not one of those.
  - wcarron 6y ago
    Yeah I'd heard of that and was wondering exactly where that law covered? Just LA City or the whole county or what?
    - asdff 6y ago
      It's just for the city of LA, but other cities in the county like santa monica also might have their own laws. Hasn't stopped anyone it seems!
TwoBit 6y ago
We need to call on Home Depot etc. to stop selling these.
phkahler 6y ago
There goes my plan for a leaf powered leaf vacuum.
TheRealPomax 6y ago
Nice, now for everyone else. And for all lawncare tools.
kogir 6y ago
Will this play out like it did in Palo Alto? There, the landscaping services switched to small generators on little carts, pulled behind the new, electric leaf blowers. Still gas, still loud, still polluting - just one layer of indirection.
- thatfrenchguy 6y ago
  I think most likely they just end up ignoring the law.
carabiner 6y ago
The ideal device for turning dinosaurs into noise. Thank god.
tanseydavid 6y ago
...and now Marin County, too -- please, God!
chrisBob 6y ago
I have been following electric garden tools for a little while. The biggest issue I have is the up front cost, mostly related to batteries. Stihl and Husqvarna recently released options where I could replace my $400 chainsaw with a battery option, but it would be $600 to run for 30 minutes, and another $150/battery to add another 30 minutes of run time. I don't often run it for a long time, but when I get the chance I don't want to have to cut my work time short or spend an extra $300 to cut down trees and not have to worry about the running time. There is also a company that offers a stand on mower comparable to what I use at home, but it would be about $18k to replace my $4k mower with an electric option. I am interested in the responsible, environmentally friendly, option, but it is hard to swallow.
- hedora 6y ago
  30 minutes run time is a long time for a chain saw for tasks where you spend more time moving logs and positioning the saw than actively cutting. Those prices do seem high compared to eGo, though I haven’t measured the runtime of my chainsaw, and lack of local service shops is an issue. On the other hand, the same batteries will power their other tools (string trimmers, push behind lawnmowers, etc), so you can have lots of tools for less total money, assuming sporadic use. Either way, the reduced noise, air pollution and maintenance make electric tools a no brainer for most use cases.
  - asdff 6y ago
    It depends on how the cutting goes I suppose. Will the electric saw cut as easily as the STIHL? Or, will it be binding up into the wood and struggle with knots? These sorts of complicated cuts we take for granted with our overpowered gas saws might be more challenging and take more time under higher load for a lower powered saw, and those run times probably assume the chainsaw is not under full load and is ran in best conditions (such as, not freezing outside, factory new battery).
ogre_codes 6y ago
On top of air pollutants, they are also obnoxiously loud for what often amounts to a vanity product. I know this isn’t why they were banned, but a little peace and quiet is a nice side effect.
screye 6y ago
Controversial opinion: Privately owned lawns (not gardens) are an abomination. It is the only other 'weed' that's made it. Grass consumes a lot of water + manpower, while providing almost nothing in return. Lawns in public places makes sense. They get enough use to be justifiable. But, private lawns are so underused that even stepping on some is considered impolite. Most privately owned lawns are too little to do anything useful with, besides being a summer hangout for a backyard grill. We could grow trees & plants in the same area, get shade, better soil retention, a cooling effect and have a real ecosystem going. IMO, it looks prettier too. Lawns are not Greenery. They are merely green, but they are the locusts of the plant world. Historians will look back at the American Dream as THE cultural idea that kick started an era of gross unsustainability.
- orthecreedence 6y ago
  I recognize that this is a somewhat controversial opinion, especially given the downvotes you had when I stumbled across the comment, but I want to say that I agree and think our current views towards lawns, grass, and weeds are a point of cultural insanity. I grew up in northern MN, and routinely people would spray disgusting pesticides in their lawns that would drift across the neighborhood, all to get rid of dandelions. Why? Dandelions are flowers, and not just regular flowers, but ones that kids like me enjoyed kicking or blowing on when they went to seed. These people created dead zones for plants and animals all for some bizarre aesthetic that doesn't even look good. I'm hoping newer generations will find big lawns as ugly and gag-inducing as I do. Get rid of your lawn. Fill the space with gardens, mini-farms, and native pollen-producing plants.
- asdff 6y ago
  This is what I like about where I live. People are trying to get productivity out of their lawns and outdoor spaces. They are growing fruit. They are growing weed. It's where they store bulky items like kayaks, and surfboards, and grills, and their kids playset. They have some sort of side hustle going on in the front or the back yard that might look like hell from the street, but it's totally that person's thing. One neighbor has their lawn littered in sculptures they've produced from found objects and granite. Another works on their project cars. Someone nearby has roosters. Some even keep bees. It's a part of your life you can make yours and work on continually without having to hire someone to bust out a wall or look at the wiring, along with the required paperwork to city hall that entails. It's both your farm and your workshop. All of this happens when you strip the regulation from the lawn. In many cities in the U.S., you can get cited if you don't maintain your lawn to the standard of the city code. You might not be able to do something as simple as grow vegetables in front of your house at all.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Robotic lawnmowers that slowly work on the yard all night long are the future.
subsaharancoder 6y ago
Oakland is grappling with rising crime, drug use, unemployment, businesses closing, schools not reopening etc and the city council dedicated their time and money to address this inane issue
jmugan 6y ago
I think we need a bigger appreciation of noise pollution in general. People fly private planes and helicopters over while we are trying to enjoy nature, or trucks go beep beep beep when we are trying to think, or unnecessarily loud vehicles rumble when we are trying to relax.
hedora 6y ago
They should ban leaf blowers outright. Even without the engine exhaust, they kick up particulates (allergens, car exhaust/tire dust, etc), and put them back in the atmosphere. Also, most people that use them don’t actually put the result in a pile, and haul it away. They just push crap back and forth across property lines. Get a rake and a tarp already. Back in my bike commuting days, it was obvious that one leaf blower was putting out more (non CO2) pollution than a long line of idling cars. Still, this is a step in the right direction.
- nate_meurer 6y ago
  > they kick up particulates (allergens, car exhaust/tire dust, etc), and put them back in the atmosphere. You know what really needs to be banned? Wind. Fucking wind blows literally a million times more shit everywhere. Something must be done.
frEdmbx 6y ago
Adam Carolla will be happy to hear this.
dba7dba 6y ago
Abut 10 years ago, City of Los Angeles tried to ban engine-powered leaf blowers (driven by people tired of the noise pollution) but was reversed when local gardeners made a big stink about it.
wdr1 6y ago
I like that Oakland has only banned combustion leaf blowers. Here in Santa Monica, they also banned electric ones (because they "kick up dust which causes pollution") which has resulted in nobody following it all.
- asdff 6y ago
  They do make everything dirty. I live across from another apartment. One day my groundskeeper blows all the crap out of mine and into their area, and the next day their groundskeeper comes and blows it all back. Who knew that blowing around dust back and forth doesn't clean anything in a place that rains 5 times a year?
aaron695 6y ago
Honestly the delusional hate here is humanity at it's worst. Yes they have issues, yes they allow people to do amazing stuff. For us it's our goats who share a space with us. It'd be unmanageable without a leaf blower. Ours is electric, Ryobi ONE+, which shares batteries with 7 regular tools we use (And another 5 that gather dust) If you want to make the world a better place, how about we stop rewarding university press releases of this weeks new BS battery tech, and work on getting handyman batteries down in price (they are exorbitant) and cross compatibility wouldn't hurt. Or like Dyson (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/06/dyson-silent-fan https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/06/dyson-sil...) get someone working on a quieter leaf blower. Picking on people because they have a different life is boring, some people like to travel, some people smash alcohol to 5am and some people like a nice garden that's prim and proper. And those can be all the same person at different points of life. People are literally making up pollution figures here for this and jumping on just so stories as if they explain everything, people have to stop joining these group hate subcultures, that's what we have sports for.
- danaliv 6y ago
  And some people like to have some peace in their own homes. No one is picking on people for having a different life. I don’t care if people want to have lawns. I care if they run a goddamn engine right outside my home every single day of the week. You can have your lawn. I really could not care less about it. What you can’t have is my acceptance of constant engine noise in the place where I live.
RickJWagner 6y ago
Oakland is famous for crime. I wonder if they'll actually send cops out for violators. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Oakland,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Oakland,_California
CryptoPunk 6y ago
It bothers me when wealthy cities with horrible law and order problems start focusing on peripheral issues like environmental protection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Oakland,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Oakland,_California
thenoblesunfish 6y ago
Fantastic. I can’t wait for those horrible things to go the way of car alarms.
wolfretcrap 6y ago
I think combustion powered lawn movers and chainsaw are more popular than these, should have been that candidate for ban.
JudasGoat 6y ago
From some quick research, battery technology isn't able to provide more than an hour and a half in a $1400 backpack battery. So a Company owner that can't recharge on the fly would need 5 or 6 battery packs per employee to last the day. Or worse they might run a generator continuously on the truck to recharge them.
RhysU 6y ago
There's no gas-blown air there.

377 points by hindsightbias 6y ago

sivex 6y ago

Landscaping companies will be running gas powered generators to charge their batteries...

ganoushoreilly 6y ago
Exactly. If it's a noise ordinance, set time limits during the day. If it's a pollution issue, look at the problem from a wider lens and then slowly introduce standards as we have with improving emissions in cars. This is simply a knee jerk feel good law that won't solve the problem. The 60v blowers are just as loud, the generators just as loud.
stickfigure 6y ago
That might not actually be as bad. Generators are four-stroke.
munk-a 6y ago
I think it's not unlikely that they might be charging their equipment off of a truck mounted generator (or the truck itself) which is good news - since most generators and all cars are far more efficient and generally better muffled than leaf blowers. Leaf blowers churn out a bunch of monoxide due to the generally poor motor design.
nashashmi 6y ago
Could be. Until better battery alternatives come up. I don’t think a battery can be charged very quickly. Even with an on-site generator. So they will have multiple batteries. At which point it might be better off charging them overnight. It will reduce noise across yards. It will increase efficiency. It will cause more ewaste. And it will definitely raise prices. Yeah it’s ridiculous.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Landscaping companies will be running gas powered generators to charge their batteries... Which, even accounting for charging losses, will be less polluting than backpackable two-strokes, and less close to where workers breathe, so, mission accomplished, whether the pollution concern is environmental or worker health or both.
mikestew 6y ago
Fantastic, as I'd rather listen to the even the cheapest Harbor Freight open-frame generator over a two-stroke leaf blower any time you care to ask me. That set up will pollute less, too.
- hedora 6y ago
  Oddly, the Harbor Freights aren’t the noisiest on the market. Westinghouse is worse, for example.
ska 6y ago
More likely they'll have beefed up alternators and battery packs on the trucks and charge between/during jobs. Which from a pollution point of view is way better than 2-stroke backpacks.
danans 6y ago
Or you know, plug in to their clients' outdoor power outlets. If it works for contractors, don't see why it wouldn't work for landscapers.

aritmo 6y ago

There are some sweet battery-based blowers and trimmers. Less noisy as well.

ganoushoreilly 6y ago
Have you used one? I have a 20v and 60v dewalt blower. The 20volt blows, but it's not very strong. It works blowing out the garage and with minor clippings on the sidewalk / driveway that's about it. The 60v works better, substantially more power and it moves leaves. Both have horrible battery life when all is said and done. We're talking 20 minutes or so with 9AH batteries, and in the case of the 60v I get about 30 minutes on a 12ah FlexVolt. Then theres the whole buying batteries, longevity of batteries, the power to charge etc. I would bet that the damage to the ecosystem from using gas blowers / trimmers isn't that big a difference and if equated in measurement of power and life, the gas far outperforms it. Also, the Electrics are just as loud in most instances. Are they going to ban gas pressure washers next?
- jlmorton 6y ago
  Note that while it's annoying, it's certainly an option to plug-in the leaf blowers.
  - jeffrallen 6y ago
    Plug in to a generator? :)
  - ganoushoreilly 6y ago
    Neither of mine plug in, the only adapters available are third party on amazon and a few have less than stellar reviews. Namely, they short out and cause fires. I'd also be required to have a substantial amount of electrical cord length at our farm, like 1000 feet cables, which simply isn't feasible. I suppose I could throw the generator in the truck when doing stuff out there but I feel like that defeats the purpose.
sokoloff 6y ago
I have a 80cc 2-stroke gas leaf blower, two plug-in electric leaf blowers, and I've tried a buddy's battery leaf blower. All of the electric ones are basically toys compared to the gas powered one. Gas unit's 1100 cfm and 220 mph rating is substantially higher than the electrics and it shows in performance. The electrics can barely move a small pile of dry leaves. The gas one can lift sheets of wet, mucky leaves and move them around effortlessly. On the other hand, I love my battery string trimmer. That's a device that seems perfect for electric as the power requirement is quite low and there's no carb to get all gummed up. The electric works every time and a battery pack easily does my entire yard trimming twice over, so there's no fiddling or stopping required.

jschveibinz 6y ago

Gas mowers and garden tools are just bad in general. But they are the backbone of a lot of immigrant small businesses. Banning without providing a path or incentive to electric seems very radical to me. Relevant facts on gas-powered tools: https://www.peoplepoweredmachines.com/faq-environment.htm https://www.peoplepoweredmachines.com/faq-environment.htm

maxcan 6y ago
Making life miserable for small business to win some virtue points is one of the bedrock principles for SFBA municipal governments. Its right up there with "rules for thee and not for me".
- eznzt 6y ago
  Making the lives of poor people miserable in the name of virtue points is one of the bedrock principles of left-wing governments around the world. For example, European cities banning diesel vehicles.
  - octonion 6y ago
    "virtue points" is a meaningless propaganda term.
  - ginja 6y ago
    It's funny how everything is a matter of perspective. I'd say that European governments are pretty "center" on average, given that they mostly range from social democracy to liberal conservatism. But anyway, in most medium to large European cities there is little reason to drive. The restrictions on vehicles are overwhelmingly positive for residents' quality of life and the environment.
  - snakeboy 6y ago
    > For example, European cities banning diesel vehicles. At least in Paris, poor people are not often the ones driving into Paris for work, they're mostly taking the metro in from the suburbs. Paris has some moderate air pollution problems, often among the worst European or American cities (of course, globally there's much worse), and that effects everyone's quality of life and long-term health in a myriad of ways that we don't fully understand yet, as well as in some obvious ways that we already understand. Of course there's always a bit of political show-boating with these things, and so the French left-wing do this with their pet issues, namely environmental issues. But that show-boating doesn't diminish the tangible positive effects of the policy...

underseacables 6y ago

I’m ambivalent about this. On the one hand they are LOUD as hell, but the electrics just don’t blow as good. The gas powered blowers just work better, especially for large jobs.

ahupp 6y ago
In addition to the noise, those two-stroke engines produce a huge amount of pollution. "A single two-stroke engine produces pollution equivalent to that of 30 to 50 four-stroke automobiles. " https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/two-strokes-and-youre-out https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/two-strokes-and...
- mc32 6y ago
  Then they should ban two-stroke gasoline scooters (both stand on and sit on types).
  - jascii 6y ago
    For what it's worth, the 2008 article OP references specifically mentions technology to significantly reduce the pollution from 2 stroke engines. This technology has since been widely adopted in the scooter industry. Modern scooters pollute less per mile than the average single occupant car. https://www.motorscooterguide.net/do-scooters-pollute-more-than-cars/ https://www.motorscooterguide.net/do-scooters-pollute-more-t...
- linksnapzz 6y ago
  When I lived in Cambridge, there was a guy in my neighborhood with a 1970s 2-stroke Saab. I figured every time he started it up, he undid all the non-polluting that every Prius ever sold in MA was responsible for.
  - tclancy 6y ago
    Was it a Sonnet? Those were pretty enough to justify it.

danaliv 6y ago

Good riddance. When I lived in Oakland the noise from these things was constant in my neighborhood. They were running every single day. It was intolerable.

deleted 6y ago
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jlmorton 6y ago
Agreed, good riddance, but the noise is not going to go away, it's going to become a high-pitched scream, rather than a lower-pitched buzz.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  The higher the sound frequency, the easier it is to muffle it.
- finnh 6y ago
  That high-frequency sound doesn't carry as far, at least
- acdha 6y ago
  That doesn’t fit any electric blower I’ve ever heard. The overall volume is notably lower and the frequency isn’t too different - slightly higher but even a hair drier with a smaller diameter isn’t a “high-pitched scream”.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    It's notably quieter, because it's notably less powerful. In the best case, you hear the noise for a multiple of the time because the work is done more slowly and/or by more people using blowers together to move debris.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      Battery powered blowers exist and are just as powerful. A cord (as others have noted) can't deliver enough power for the job and so they have to run it longer. However a battery can deliver just as much power as an engine, for only a little more weight.

rektide 6y ago

DC passed a combustion leaf blower ban in December 2018[1], but it's only coming into effect January 2022, another 10 months. I saw my first electric leaf blower ~3 months ago & chatted with the crew some; they'd only picked their new gear up the day before! They were happy with it. The wearable one was much quieter, but there was also a ground-based unit that was still loud as all get out, alas. I've also asked other property management crews (probably 7 at this point) if they knew about the ban, & so far, no one even knows about it, other than the one crew I'd met who'd just gotten their electric gear. I am very curious to see, long term, how powering these systems works out. Will a work crew simply buy a bunch of 40V or 80V batteries? How many will be enough? How many crews will turn right around & buy a generator they'll leave running a good part of the day? Longer term, perhaps hybrid work vehicles like the F150 & their built in 2.4 & 7.2kW inverter could become a crucial capability. Alas, it seems probable one way or another that combustion based energy, albeit less dirty & radically less obnoxious than these gas tools, will be used. Anyhow. This ban can't come soon enough. Another year of these noise devices is going to be obnoxious. Unlikely to ever happen, but I wish cities would have designated noise hours, say 3 hours a day, 5 days a week (whatever) where noise was allowed (without special circumstances permit). It seems like such an obvious civic good to coordinate, to try to steer us away from all causing loud riotous noise all day long. [1] https://dcist.com/story/18/12/04/d-c-council-strikes-death-blow-to-gas-powered-leaf-blowers/ https://dcist.com/story/18/12/04/d-c-council-strikes-death-b...

alistairSH 6y ago
WRT the ground-based blower - at some point, moving air makes as much noise as the engine, so this isn't surprising. For charing, many newer trucks come with robust power systems for running electrics. Obv not an expense to be taken lightly, but we're getting there. Ford has the most compelling options right now - right up to 7.3kw system (I believe that's with the engine idling). I believe that with the hybrid drivetrain, you can use a not-insignificant amount of electricity with he truck engine off.

kaczordon 6y ago

They're already banned in LA but landscapers still use it all the time anyway and just ignore the law. Really annoying to have a loud engine right beside your window, doesn't seem to really help with the work anyway just blows the leaves around in circles and they rake it anyway.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
Does California allow civil lawsuits for this kind of thing? It sounds like that might be the most practical way to force compliance.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- clairity 6y ago
  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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26360215
  - fossuser 6y ago
    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.

ericbarrett 6y ago

Used to live across the street from a neighbor who got his yard cleaned up by a crew with a gas blower twice weekly. They were already banned in that town, but it was never enforced. The noise would wake me up and the fumes—like standing next to a 1960s Mustang with a cold engine—would drift into our apartment and linger for 15-20 minutes. Gas blowers are gross and their time passed a while ago.

MereInterest 6y ago
My apartment is across the street from a shopping center, and they have all maintenance work done at night. This includes using leaf blowers to clear off walkways. The noise is absolutely ridiculous to have at 3 in the morning.
- mike_d 6y ago
  Almost every city has a noise ordnance that prevents this. Just call the PD and file a noise complaint every time it happens.
koheripbal 6y ago
Twice weekly seems excessive, but I only ever see them in the peak of fall when the leaves are falling. I blow my yard maybe 4-5 times all year combined. ...but I see them much more frequently in Florida. I suppose frequency of blowing is very biome dependent.

porb121 6y ago

Huge fan of this. Gas-powered blowers are responsible for a disturbingly large portion of US air pollutants. Something like 10% of all CO, 5% of VOCs come from gas-powered lawn equipment, and they produce >30%* of the non-car pollutants. Traditional American lawn maintenance is a horribly unsustainable (and in my opinion, ugly) practice. We should encourage alternatives. See: Banks, "National Emissions from Lawn and Garden Equipment"

elevenoh 6y ago
Could not agree more.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Please consider cribbing off of Oakland's ordinance and championing it where you live. The more locales where banned, the faster manufacturing of gas powered lawn implements dies off.
- core-questions 6y ago
  Yes. I am a big fan of corded electric lawn gear. Maybe it doesn't work if you have to mow an acerage, but for a normal suburban environment corded blowers, trimmers, and mowers are all totally reasonable to use. No batteries to worry about, powerful enough, never have to fill up gas, often lighter than other options. There's still plenty of use cases for gas units but if we could get them banned from everywhere but rural areas it would be a good step in the right direction. Some folks go too far and say "nobody should have a lawn!!!" but they clearly don't understand the zenlike experience of avoiding one's family, drinking cheap lager, listening to a podcast, and working the lawn in the sunshine for a couple hours on a Saturday morning. Kept me sane last year more than anything else did.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    If you have a couple unobstructed squares to mow it's great. If you have stuff to go around the cord becomes more of a pain than the ICE equivalent.

etrautmann 6y ago

Amazing. Working from home in Menlo Park was infuriating for this reason

mc32 6y ago

I’m not opposed to this. They are noisy. They often come early on weekends! But that said, I hope they compensate current owners with vouchers or grant some trade in value and not outright ban them without compensation. That would be wholly unfair to current owners.

henearkr 6y ago

Nice!!! I really hope Tokyo is next in line. And all the other cities in the world. After all, the mains are never really far away in urban or suburban context, so ICE-powered tooling is meaningless.

mrwh 6y ago
This is the thing, doesn't even need to be battery powered, houses usually have external accessible power points (at least in the US and certainly in Oakland).
- ganoushoreilly 6y ago
  Houses are a small part of landscaping maintenance around a city. I bet there aren't as many outlets available as you think. You also have to deal with consumption and ownership of the outlet, how do you re-imburse someone with external outlets in a townhouse situation?
  - henearkr 6y ago
    In most cities there are electrical outlets for municipal workers too (in urban context they are often protected by a lock). In many cases there is also a way to plug to the grid using traps on the side of streetlights.

Bud 6y ago

Next step: ban the electric leaf blowers, too. Get a rake. Or, just stop being a lawn fetishist—also a good option.

fossuser 6y ago

I think this has been banned in Palo Alto for years, but is never enforced and there are a lot of them running all of the time. The suburbs are surprisingly loud because of this, louder than the cities I've lived in.

retrac 6y ago

While people usually complain about the noise, the far bigger concern is pollution. Almost all of the power-weight advantage in the lightweight two-stroke engines used in these machines is gained with partial combustion of lubricant-enriched fuel and no emissions control. With some pollutants it is something like two to three magnitudes of order worse per unit of energy produced, compared to a low-emissions car engine.

enahs-sf 6y ago

This is all well and good, but i'd much prefer the city focus on things like cleaning up all the broken glass everywhere or addressing the unhoused issues before taking on such superfluous tasks.

ganoushoreilly 6y ago
This is simply to make people feel good. Easier to tackle issues like this than to actually invest in solving real problems.
- munk-a 6y ago
  There are some good examples elsewhere in the article responses but this legislation may significantly improve health outcomes for landscapers and provide a non-negligible effect on the environment. Two-stroke leafblower engines pollute a lot. It's not just about making people feel good or allowing audiophiles to listen to records undisturbed.
rektide 6y ago
Legislating that property owners not use anti-human systems doesn't take much effort, is easy to knock out. Using a zero-sum mentality, that good legislation in one place is incompatible with doing work elsewhere, is harmful. Especially when the work you talk about requires not just legislation, but significant resources invested. Here, we only mandate that companies do the right thing, at their own cost. This seems like an easy win, something worth knocking out early. Blocking easy at-hand work on all the backlog of big important hard to do work seems illogical.
vvillena 6y ago
How is it superflous? It improves air quality a lot, and it's free to implement. Also, it's not an exclusive policy, it can be done in addition to the things you propose.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > it's free to implement It's free to the city's coffers. It is a multi-million dollar capital expense to the city's businesses and residents. I support the measure. But it's far from free.

ehutch79 6y ago

My apt complex has 'landscapers' that use these. Landscapers in quotes because there's about 10 sq meters of lawn and a few plants. Every weekend they're out there blowing dirt around. It's not like it does anything besides making the pool unusable.

williesleg 6y ago

They need to outlaw trimming, that's killing photosynthesis providing life that takes carbon out of the air.

xt00 6y ago

I think a reasonable option for people that do this for a living would be a back-park worn battery pack that has an inverter to drive leaf blowers that typically use a 110VAC input, since the backpack could house the equivalent of maybe 10 of the normal small batteries that are used in the battery powered leaf blowers.. only problem is that they are pretty spendy.. likely the cost will come down once these are more mainstream.. but yea the noise of these things is horrible.. for example, lets say you live in a neighborhood where 8 of your neighbors all have lawn services that use them.. easily that means you could have one or two per day.. bwahhh bwahhhhh everyday.. super obnoxious.. Here is one backpack electric leaf blower: EGO BAX1501 56V 28Ah, $1300

tclancy 6y ago
I have an EGO backpack blower that works well on our two acres and it only cost $250.

nostromo 6y ago

Has anyone else noticed the trend of ever-increasing laws and ever-decreasing enforcement? It’s not a good mix. We end up with a system that punishes people following the rules and doesn’t do anything about the many people breaking the rules. It also creates the sense of unfairness and general lawlessness — that laws are recommendations that can mostly be ignored.

kepler1 6y ago
I echo this sentiment. It's either getting too expensive (people) to police laws with sufficient numbers, or we are not interested in offending people or doing the dirty work of putting teeth behind laws in the name of "equity" (for some things). I hate half-measures that inconvenience those that follow the rules, and do nothing to punish those who break them.
mike_d 6y ago
This is just peak NIMBY Karen at work: laws passed to address personal grievances.
proc0 6y ago
Yeah, it's just not an effective means to change small behavior like this. They could have instead banned loud noise making machines and/or machines with high pollution, and this would reduce the supply, and shift the demand to the alternatives, which by definition should now optimize for the proper features (silent and green). The way things happening now, especially in CA, is laws for everything such that it specifies behavior, not incentives. This then makes enforcement target individuals instead of market suppliers.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  > They could have instead banned loud noise making machines and/or machines with high pollution Isn't that what they did? Oh, are you saying they should ban the sale or posession, not just the use? Or you're saying they should ban more kinds of noise-making or polluting machines, not just leaf-blowers? Are you arguing for more expansive ban? Or I may be missing it.

mywacaday 6y ago

Seems like a disproportionate impact on landscaping companies, thinks are hard enough with COVID without adding the cost of retooling and buying a days worth of batteries for each piece of equipment

jandrese 6y ago
It would be ironic if this forced landscaping companies to all buy noisy diesel generators to run constantly so they can charge a bank of batteries while running on another set. On the other hand, a single big diesel generator is less harmful to the environment than a bunch of 2 stroke engines. It could theoretically even get some pollution controls that would be too heavy and expensive for the power equipment. Or maybe they'll buy those F150s with the built in power bank and have the truck idle to charge the batteries. That would be even better for noise level and the environment, as the truck comes with modern pollution controls.
- jandrese 6y ago
  Another thought is that this might open up a black market for people hacking gas powered equipment so it is quiet and can pass for electric powered from a distance.

KDJohnBrown 6y ago

LA did this like 20 years ago I believe. I’m surprised this took so long.

asdff 6y ago
Living in LA now and I didn't know they did this until I read through this thread. Gas mowers invade the neighborhood daily. No enforcement means nothing changes.

blobbers 6y ago

YES! If they're giving Tesla incentives give battery operated leaf blowers incentives as well. Super happy cities are starting to do this, hope my neighborhood could as well. State should step up subsidies to encourage this.

eatbitseveryday 6y ago

I wonder if landscaping companies will buy a fuel-powered generator to run their electrical equipment, seeing as they'd otherwise have to use the property's outlets to power their equipment (or risk not having access to electricity on some properties).

hellisothers 6y ago
I have seen this happen when I lived near Palo Alto :(
- xodice 6y ago
  It's still a win pollution wise. Those 4 stroke generators are far better re: emissions than a 2 stroke engine on ICE lawn tools.
reportingsjr 6y ago
It's possible, but even if this happens it's still a pretty big win over the two stroke engines that are prevalent in lawn equipment. You'd be surprised at how efficient a modern generator is compared to two stroke engines.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

aye01 6y ago

whole heartedly agree that this is a plus, but no way in hell are gardeners in oakland going to stop using them. i see most gardening truck around the city with their entire beds with just gas blowers. no way are companies with already low margins going to swap their equipment over this. its going to take years before we see the effects of this.

rmah 6y ago

I hope this ban spreads, not because of the air pollution, but because of the noise pollution. I hate when those things wake me up or keep me from enjoying my terrace.

ganoushoreilly 6y ago
They're just going to use Electrics and Generators. It doesn't really solve that side of the problem. A different approach would be needed to reduce noise pollution, such as Operating hours etc.
- 542354234235 6y ago
  Electric blowers are quieter than gas ones, and one generator is quieter than 3-4 individual gas engine lawn tools.
- sib 6y ago
  It's a lot easier to put an effective muffler on a generator than on a leaf blower that is person-portable. I just looked at the stats for some Honda generators and they have a 7000-W unit with 120v and 240v outputs that runs at 52-58dB. A new mid-range California (CARB)-compliant Echo gas leaf blower comes in at 74dB.

jeffbee 6y ago

Neighboring Berkeley banned these years ago but there is no mechanism for enforcement so it hasn't made any difference.

__turbobrew__ 6y ago
That is the west coast way: non-existent enforcement of laws.

at_a_remove 6y ago

I have been looking into the battery-powered lawncare ecosystem for a while but I have found the prospects a little daunting. As far as I can tell, there's one new entrant to the field, Ego. The others are either from companies that have dealt with batteries for a while (Dewalt, Ryobi) or are "house brands" found exclusively at the big box stores like Lowes, Home Depot, Menards, and so on. I am not afraid of spending money on items but I find it frustrating when the extra expenditure ends up being a dud, like my Toro (gas-powered) lawnmower which, despite the money spent and the numerous trips to the repair place, and the care lavished on it, has worked less than it has failed completely. My previous mower ran wonderfully without hardly any maintenance; this thing I have been changing oil, messing about with spark plugs, using special and such, all to no avail. Battery-powered sounds good but I don't know if the market shakeout has happened yet.

Blackthorn 6y ago
The battery powered options from the good tool brands like Makita and Ryobi are very good. I have a Makita and would definitely recommend. Best part? No small engine maintenance needed.
- ummonk 6y ago
  And brands usually use one battery model across their tool lineup so you can swap batteries.
- asdff 6y ago
  Decent lawncare equipment rarely needs much maintenance in my experience. My dad has had his ryobi mower for at least 20 years now and all that's ever been put into it is gas. Instead, you have different maintenance needs, they aren't gone entirely. Rather than occasionally having to do engine work (which you might never have to do), you now have a wear item to replace: the battery. Eventually, Ryobi or Makita or whoever will stop selling that particularly proprietary shaped battery for that model you bought, eventually forcing your hand to pay for a newer machine where you can still buy new batteries, and leaving you with a lawnmower sized hunk of junk in the form of your old, perhaps functional but unable to charge mower. I don't see this as the end of lawncare equipment maintenance, I see this as the end of being able to keep your equipment going for decades. These companies executive boards must be patting themselves on the back for figuring out how to break consumers out of being able to get by on $50 used mowers forever, and forcing them to pay retail for new models at regular intervals. It's like the printer ink racket.

lostphilosopher 6y ago

FWIW I've been very happy with the Ego line of electric (rechargeable batteries) lawn tools. I have, and use regularly, their leaf blower, weed whacker, and snow blower. 3 seasons of use so far.

CodeWriter23 6y ago

Los Angeles adopted such a law years ago. Net effect on the ground: every gardener still uses the gas-powered model. Because two reasons IMO a)lack of publicity and b) the gardener and the homeowner are liable for the fine, and who wants to rat on their neighbors (especially if “neighbor” = landlord as in my case)

Apocryphon 6y ago
> who wants to rat on their neighbors You'd imagine there would be more busybodies or easily-disturbed people who would be phoning anonymous tips over noise complaints. Maybe they would be doing that more if knowledge of the law was more widespread.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Density of busybodies increases as you go up the economic ladder (and then falls off a cliff at the top). You're gonna have a harder time getting people to narc on their neighbors in LA than in SF. Even then most people who would narc will just ask their neighbors to adjust the times which they do loud things and most neighbors will do so.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    LA is like five times the population of SF. There's probably more wealthy people there just based on the sheer size of the population alone.
anigbrowl 6y ago
Just give a private right of action. If the $500 fine is payable to the complainant (or split between the city and the complainant) then the problem will go away in short order.

sparkling 6y ago

The entry level blowers don't even have swap-able batteries. With these things standing in a cold, dusty, maybe humid garage 99% of the time, the battery will rapidly degrade and be dead after just a few years of usage. Then you have 15lbs of e-waste for the junk yard. Honestly not a ideal situation either.

xodice 6y ago
My Kobalt cordless blower is very much entry level and has swappable batteries that also swap with my other Kobalt tools. It's not the worlds greatest blower (480 CFM and 110 MPH) but it gets the job done on my modest yard (40mins of runtime).

plandis 6y ago

I have an electric weed trimmer, lawn mower and leaf blower. They are quite a bit less noise than gas equivalents I used growing up. The one huge downside is that these devices are pretty big energy consumers and battery life is horrible. My yard is tiny and I’ll routinely go through 2 240WHr batteries each time I cleanup my yard. I couldn’t imagine how annoying that would be with an actual big yard. Also good luck if you go on vacation and come back to tall grass, my electric mower (I have one from Ryobi) that struggles to increase the torque well enough to handle it.

xmprt 6y ago
A good result of this is that the technology is going to get a lot better now that there's a larger market for the electric alternatives.
egeozcan 6y ago
Why can't leaf blowers have just long cables and no battery? Would be completely fine for small gardens. Professional ones could have quickly interchangeable batteries. On lawn movers, you could put giant batteries as you don't carry them, it's just a matter of cost.
- bluGill 6y ago
  A cord cannot deliver enough power. They exist, but only smaller models and you quickly need more power.
- mnouquet 6y ago
  Because your standard 1.5HP 110V circuit has as much torque an as sloth, which is only slightly better than battery operated tools' having as much torque as an anemic sloth.
Jtsummers 6y ago
I bought a reel mower for my smaller yard. No charging, minor effort to keep it clean, stays sharp for a long time (at some point I'll have to deal with that, but it's been good so far), no gas, essentially no noise. It takes me just as long to mow my yard as with an electric or gas mower, though I do have to mow it twice a week during the peak growing season (it does not handle tall grass very well). But 20-30 minutes of walking & pushing exercise is not terrible twice a week, I run, row, and cycle a lot more than that. Last year I treated it as a warmup and followed it up with a 30+ minute run.

jimnotgym 6y ago

I would like to recommend an alternative to the leaf blower called a 'rake'. It takes no time at all to rake a lawn, the exercise is good for you, emissions are low and the noise levels are safe. How many times have you seen someone blow leaves away, only for the wind to blow them straight back. A rake is no use for starting pulse jet engines, however. https://youtu.be/zsXWspo5hrc https://youtu.be/zsXWspo5hrc

binarymax 6y ago
The past autumn my neighbors landscaper was using a leaf blower for 2 hours just trying to blow a whole wet pile into the wind to the curb - about 10 feet away. He was failing miserably, but didn't care and kept at it. Infuriated, I stormed out during my lunch break with a rake and just did it in under five minutes. He didn't know how to react, so he just stood there STILL USING THE BLOWER TRYING TO HELP. Strangest experience I'd had in awhile. Edit - this is getting popular, so here's my baby: https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lawn-and-garden/gardening-tools/rakes/7439565 https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lawn-and-garden/gard...
ummonk 6y ago
And a sharp hand-forged sickle is surprisingly effective at trimming.
asdff 6y ago
Try raking an acre lot and then you will be running to the Stihl store to get a backpack blower after you get your second blister two hours into the job. This task was literally my childhood. It would take five of us and two tarps to haul leaves to the woods over a couple days to rake out that yard, and don't get me started if the leaves were the least bit wet at all. Now, the job takes one person with a backpack blower an afternoon. You gotta think of the scale the average landscaper operates and their margins. They aren't going to employ five people for two days to rake one parcel. They are going to employ five people and buy five leaf blowers to do ten parcels in those two days instead. They don't live in the neighborhood, they don't care that they make noise, and outside the pandemic, no one else does either because they are at the office when they are busy landscaping.

sgt 6y ago

I have a gardener and I'm pretty sure he uses that trimmer like a swiss army knife to trim or cut pretty much anything. This means he'll be busy with it for hours each time. He also never fails to fill too much two stroke oil. Perhaps it's time I replaced it with an electric one.

KorematsuFred 6y ago

While the intentions behind this could be noble, these sort of heavy handed moves are anti-minority and hurt some of the poorest people. Lawn and Gardening jobs are mostly done by immigrants and other minorities in and around Oakland. For these cash strapped individuals it is going to be a major burden to replace all their equipment with battery operated devices, not to mention, it is going to be a problem to charge the batteries as these people often work around the clock and can't afford to keep the equipment idle. Some of these people will go out of business, or will have to seek loans from loan sharks or pay expensive fines to the city. Not sure Oakland can even make a dent it CO pollution in the world with this law but surely will destroy few more lives of city's minorities and vulnerable people.

Someone1234 6y ago

One major reason why electric lawn equipment isn't more popular for commercial: Excessive battery costs. If you're a home-owner you can rotate a couple of batteries and likely only use the ones included with the equipment bundle(s). But commercial users don't have that luxury, they're definitely buying additional batteries. Manufacturers commonly charge an excessive premium for add-on batteries. Example: - Toro Brushless Leaf Blower (51820) + 2.5 Ah battery (88625) & charger (88602): $199 - Toro 2.5 Ah battery (88625): $165 So the battery add-on costs 82%~ of the tools total cost alone. As a homeowner after n years you'll likely respond by just outright replacing the tool for a new bundle, but in a commercial context this just kills the whole idea. According to the manufacturer at the lowest speed setting each battery lasts 90 minutes, and nobody is using this at the lowest setting.

bopbeepboop 6y ago
That’s bonkers! If you’re somewhere you can’t charge, you’re talking $1500 to do 4 hours of heavy work. And that’s assuming your small battery pack can even put out enough torque to match a 2-stroke for heavy uses.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  Or you fit your pickup truck with an inverter (which you probably already have tbh) and charge batteries as you drive to the next job. And wait until you hear about some exciting products that require no battery at all, like Rake and Broom!
  - Someone1234 6y ago
    It takes 3 hours to recharge the provided battery on the provided charger. That means a battery could be used, at most, twice in a day therefore still requiring add-on batteries for commercial applications (3x~ per tool, per day). As to the "rake and broom," point: there's an innate time value to consider for commercial applications. If each job takes longer, you'll do fewer jobs, and could lose money overall. I'm not really clear on what point you were trying to make? That add-ons aren't overpriced? That commercial lawn care companies should wait 3 hrs between jobs? That manual raking and gas/electric blowers offer the same productivity?

bernardv 6y ago

Great move. The mostly North American leaf-blower addiction is so annoying. A good old rake will do the trick. Never understood the need to blow leaves around in a windstorm, as I’ve seen it practiced in the northeastern US.

bernardv 6y ago
Why was my comment voted down? Are the admins of this site so sensitive? Did I hurt anyone‘s feelings or use foul language?
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  There's a lot of 'you can't tell me what to do!' types on HN.

throwawaysea 6y ago

It's amazing that the city of Oakland has time for this but no time to enforce the law or hold arrested criminals accountable with actual charges. They've made no real progress on the streak of crimes against Asians committed by what seems like mostly African American suspects, and have been hesitant to use the 'hate crime' label which they use generously in other situations. Meanwhile, police chief LeRonne Armstrong arrested an Asian shopowner who legally used his firearm in defense (https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-cops-reluctant-to-arrest-store-owner-who-opened-fire-to-stop-robbery https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-cops-reluctant-to-arrest-s...). Even though the shopowner was later released with no charges (https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/03/02/no-charges-for-oakland-chinatown-shop-owner-whose-gunfire-broke-up-robbery-attempt/ https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/03/02/no-charges-for-oakla...), it gives away the lopsided politics and priorities of Oakland. And now here we are, with the city leadership spending time on minutia instead of the real problems that plague the bay. Regarding this ban - I can understand upholding noise codes, but the reality is that electric leaf blowers and trimmers are nowhere near as good and have limited run times. They are simply not a good substitute. Rather than banning them, I would rather see the cost of the externalities priced in or maybe a tighter number of hours when such equipment can be used. In general, the government should not get into the habit of controlling individual actions via widely-scoped hard bans.

leephillips 6y ago

I experience a kind of existential horror when observing someone standing for a full minute with the nozzle of one of these idiotic machines directed toward a single recalcitrant leaf that could be dislodged with a subsecond flick from a rake or a broom, while piles of birds fall dead from their nests behind him. It resembles the sensation that overcomes me when surrounded, at a fireworks display, by a throng of my fellow citizens all attempting to memorialize the spectacle with flash photography.

wcarron 6y ago

All for it. Hoping it becomes a statewide ban in the next few years. I'm really sick of Tues-Thurs having 30-40 2-stroke engines idling/running for basically 3 straight hours. It's noisy, and I can definitely smell it, and it definitely interrupts my work

asdff 6y ago
It's already banned in LA and you wouldn't know it from the amount of gas blowing still going around. In CA there are laws then there are the laws that actually go enforced by the police. This is not one of those.
- wcarron 6y ago
  Yeah I'd heard of that and was wondering exactly where that law covered? Just LA City or the whole county or what?
  - asdff 6y ago
    It's just for the city of LA, but other cities in the county like santa monica also might have their own laws. Hasn't stopped anyone it seems!

TwoBit 6y ago

We need to call on Home Depot etc. to stop selling these.

phkahler 6y ago

There goes my plan for a leaf powered leaf vacuum.

TheRealPomax 6y ago

Nice, now for everyone else. And for all lawncare tools.

kogir 6y ago

Will this play out like it did in Palo Alto? There, the landscaping services switched to small generators on little carts, pulled behind the new, electric leaf blowers. Still gas, still loud, still polluting - just one layer of indirection.

thatfrenchguy 6y ago
I think most likely they just end up ignoring the law.

carabiner 6y ago

The ideal device for turning dinosaurs into noise. Thank god.

tanseydavid 6y ago

...and now Marin County, too -- please, God!

chrisBob 6y ago

I have been following electric garden tools for a little while. The biggest issue I have is the up front cost, mostly related to batteries. Stihl and Husqvarna recently released options where I could replace my $400 chainsaw with a battery option, but it would be $600 to run for 30 minutes, and another $150/battery to add another 30 minutes of run time. I don't often run it for a long time, but when I get the chance I don't want to have to cut my work time short or spend an extra $300 to cut down trees and not have to worry about the running time. There is also a company that offers a stand on mower comparable to what I use at home, but it would be about $18k to replace my $4k mower with an electric option. I am interested in the responsible, environmentally friendly, option, but it is hard to swallow.

hedora 6y ago
30 minutes run time is a long time for a chain saw for tasks where you spend more time moving logs and positioning the saw than actively cutting. Those prices do seem high compared to eGo, though I haven’t measured the runtime of my chainsaw, and lack of local service shops is an issue. On the other hand, the same batteries will power their other tools (string trimmers, push behind lawnmowers, etc), so you can have lots of tools for less total money, assuming sporadic use. Either way, the reduced noise, air pollution and maintenance make electric tools a no brainer for most use cases.
- asdff 6y ago
  It depends on how the cutting goes I suppose. Will the electric saw cut as easily as the STIHL? Or, will it be binding up into the wood and struggle with knots? These sorts of complicated cuts we take for granted with our overpowered gas saws might be more challenging and take more time under higher load for a lower powered saw, and those run times probably assume the chainsaw is not under full load and is ran in best conditions (such as, not freezing outside, factory new battery).

ogre_codes 6y ago

On top of air pollutants, they are also obnoxiously loud for what often amounts to a vanity product. I know this isn’t why they were banned, but a little peace and quiet is a nice side effect.

screye 6y ago

Controversial opinion: Privately owned lawns (not gardens) are an abomination. It is the only other 'weed' that's made it. Grass consumes a lot of water + manpower, while providing almost nothing in return. Lawns in public places makes sense. They get enough use to be justifiable. But, private lawns are so underused that even stepping on some is considered impolite. Most privately owned lawns are too little to do anything useful with, besides being a summer hangout for a backyard grill. We could grow trees & plants in the same area, get shade, better soil retention, a cooling effect and have a real ecosystem going. IMO, it looks prettier too. Lawns are not Greenery. They are merely green, but they are the locusts of the plant world. Historians will look back at the American Dream as THE cultural idea that kick started an era of gross unsustainability.

orthecreedence 6y ago
I recognize that this is a somewhat controversial opinion, especially given the downvotes you had when I stumbled across the comment, but I want to say that I agree and think our current views towards lawns, grass, and weeds are a point of cultural insanity. I grew up in northern MN, and routinely people would spray disgusting pesticides in their lawns that would drift across the neighborhood, all to get rid of dandelions. Why? Dandelions are flowers, and not just regular flowers, but ones that kids like me enjoyed kicking or blowing on when they went to seed. These people created dead zones for plants and animals all for some bizarre aesthetic that doesn't even look good. I'm hoping newer generations will find big lawns as ugly and gag-inducing as I do. Get rid of your lawn. Fill the space with gardens, mini-farms, and native pollen-producing plants.
asdff 6y ago
This is what I like about where I live. People are trying to get productivity out of their lawns and outdoor spaces. They are growing fruit. They are growing weed. It's where they store bulky items like kayaks, and surfboards, and grills, and their kids playset. They have some sort of side hustle going on in the front or the back yard that might look like hell from the street, but it's totally that person's thing. One neighbor has their lawn littered in sculptures they've produced from found objects and granite. Another works on their project cars. Someone nearby has roosters. Some even keep bees. It's a part of your life you can make yours and work on continually without having to hire someone to bust out a wall or look at the wiring, along with the required paperwork to city hall that entails. It's both your farm and your workshop. All of this happens when you strip the regulation from the lawn. In many cities in the U.S., you can get cited if you don't maintain your lawn to the standard of the city code. You might not be able to do something as simple as grow vegetables in front of your house at all.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Robotic lawnmowers that slowly work on the yard all night long are the future.

subsaharancoder 6y ago

Oakland is grappling with rising crime, drug use, unemployment, businesses closing, schools not reopening etc and the city council dedicated their time and money to address this inane issue

jmugan 6y ago

I think we need a bigger appreciation of noise pollution in general. People fly private planes and helicopters over while we are trying to enjoy nature, or trucks go beep beep beep when we are trying to think, or unnecessarily loud vehicles rumble when we are trying to relax.

hedora 6y ago

They should ban leaf blowers outright. Even without the engine exhaust, they kick up particulates (allergens, car exhaust/tire dust, etc), and put them back in the atmosphere. Also, most people that use them don’t actually put the result in a pile, and haul it away. They just push crap back and forth across property lines. Get a rake and a tarp already. Back in my bike commuting days, it was obvious that one leaf blower was putting out more (non CO2) pollution than a long line of idling cars. Still, this is a step in the right direction.

nate_meurer 6y ago
> they kick up particulates (allergens, car exhaust/tire dust, etc), and put them back in the atmosphere. You know what really needs to be banned? Wind. Fucking wind blows literally a million times more shit everywhere. Something must be done.

frEdmbx 6y ago

Adam Carolla will be happy to hear this.

dba7dba 6y ago

Abut 10 years ago, City of Los Angeles tried to ban engine-powered leaf blowers (driven by people tired of the noise pollution) but was reversed when local gardeners made a big stink about it.

wdr1 6y ago

I like that Oakland has only banned combustion leaf blowers. Here in Santa Monica, they also banned electric ones (because they "kick up dust which causes pollution") which has resulted in nobody following it all.

asdff 6y ago
They do make everything dirty. I live across from another apartment. One day my groundskeeper blows all the crap out of mine and into their area, and the next day their groundskeeper comes and blows it all back. Who knew that blowing around dust back and forth doesn't clean anything in a place that rains 5 times a year?

aaron695 6y ago

Honestly the delusional hate here is humanity at it's worst. Yes they have issues, yes they allow people to do amazing stuff. For us it's our goats who share a space with us. It'd be unmanageable without a leaf blower. Ours is electric, Ryobi ONE+, which shares batteries with 7 regular tools we use (And another 5 that gather dust) If you want to make the world a better place, how about we stop rewarding university press releases of this weeks new BS battery tech, and work on getting handyman batteries down in price (they are exorbitant) and cross compatibility wouldn't hurt. Or like Dyson (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/06/dyson-silent-fan https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/06/dyson-sil...) get someone working on a quieter leaf blower. Picking on people because they have a different life is boring, some people like to travel, some people smash alcohol to 5am and some people like a nice garden that's prim and proper. And those can be all the same person at different points of life. People are literally making up pollution figures here for this and jumping on just so stories as if they explain everything, people have to stop joining these group hate subcultures, that's what we have sports for.

danaliv 6y ago
And some people like to have some peace in their own homes. No one is picking on people for having a different life. I don’t care if people want to have lawns. I care if they run a goddamn engine right outside my home every single day of the week. You can have your lawn. I really could not care less about it. What you can’t have is my acceptance of constant engine noise in the place where I live.

RickJWagner 6y ago

Oakland is famous for crime. I wonder if they'll actually send cops out for violators. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Oakland,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Oakland,_California

CryptoPunk 6y ago

It bothers me when wealthy cities with horrible law and order problems start focusing on peripheral issues like environmental protection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Oakland,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Oakland,_California

thenoblesunfish 6y ago

Fantastic. I can’t wait for those horrible things to go the way of car alarms.

wolfretcrap 6y ago

I think combustion powered lawn movers and chainsaw are more popular than these, should have been that candidate for ban.

JudasGoat 6y ago

From some quick research, battery technology isn't able to provide more than an hour and a half in a $1400 backpack battery. So a Company owner that can't recharge on the fly would need 5 or 6 battery packs per employee to last the day. Or worse they might run a generator continuously on the truck to recharge them.

RhysU 6y ago

There's no gas-blown air there.