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> I fucking loathe leaf blowers...Get a damn rake! I fucking loathe chain saws...Get a damn axe! I fucking loathe lawn mowers...Get a damn scythe! I fucking

> I fucking loathe leaf blowers...Get a damn rake! I fucking loathe chain saws...Get a damn axe! I fucking loathe lawn mowers...Get a damn scythe! I fucking loathe loud diesel trucks...Get a damn wagon train! I fucking loathe cellphone ringers...Get a damn semaphore! Seriously, until you've done a full day's landscape maintenance yourself, you're not qualified to talk about leaf blowers. Luckily battery powered leaf blowers are getting better, and will be up to most households' maintenance needs soon, hopefully. I believe we're still a ways off from battery blowers being good enough for commercial crews though.

iostream24 5y ago
Reductio ad absurdum Blowing leaves is perhaps not the way to manage the organic matter that needs to be embedded in that soil the temporary owner is trying to destroy by monocropping homogeneous “grass”, I’ll hope that generally makes collecting organic matter to waste wrapped in individual virgin plastic bags obsolete itself. Groundskeeping could do with a 21st century ecological update… we even had the native plants movement in the 80s I dunno, what about mulching it in sítio? Leaf blowers are also futile in wind.
- smallerfish 5y ago
  > Blowing leaves is perhaps not the way to manage the organic matter that needs to be embedded in that soil You're doing your own reductionism. Not all leaf blowing is to collect leaves for disposal in plastic bags (and I'm 100% for using leaves as mulch where they fall on beds, and also with not having lawns). Leaves need to be blown out of gutters, drains, and ditches - otherwise the road will start being eroded. Leaves need to be removed from paths and patios, otherwise they will stain the concrete, let moss grow, and make the surface slippery. You try doing that by hand on 8-10 properties in a day, on minimum wage, without health insurance (the situation of most landscape maintenance workers in the US) - and then tell me that banning leaf blowers is a good idea. Leaves on the lawn can easily be mulched in place and used to build up organic matter, as you point out - but that too requires a gasoline engine powered machine. The call should be for banning lawns, if that's the concern - not banning leaf blowers. (I should also mention that if you don't live somewhere with a real winter or dry season that causes heavy leaf fall, your situation isn't representative.)
  - nradov 5y ago
    How did landscape maintenance workers perform that task before leaf blowers?
    - smallerfish 5y ago
      How did people cope before cellphones existed? It's the same as my original point - it's a nonsense question. If you want to create additional work for people by doing it in a less technological manner, focus on the served in the society rather than underserved, who are trying to get a leg up in the economy.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      They didn't. The standards to which we maintained things were far, far lower in the past because doing so was much more laborious and therefore expensive.
      - nradov 5y ago
        It works seem that those lower standards have no significant adverse effect. They only impact trivial stuff like aesthetics.
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        You couldn't slip on wet leaves and expect to sue the property owner back then.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      You didn't have trees in lawns, basically. Look at the pictures of old English manors - there would be hedges next to grass lawns but the trees were few and far between in the lawns. The areas of the garden with trees would be a different thing.
      - nradov 5y ago
        I don't know about England, but trees were common in American lawns since long before leaf blowers existed.
colanderman 5y ago
50% of the time my neighbor's maintenance company spends with leaf blowers is chasing individual leaves across the yard and through shrubbery (not exaggerating). They'd save themselves time if they just bent down and picked up the damn leaves with their hands. Or -- novel idea -- left the last couple leaves anyway, because just as many more will accumulate 30 minutes after they leave.
- smallerfish 5y ago
  Fully agree. Leaves happen. I'm just pointing out (apparently in a too sarcastic manner) that the technology is the best we have right now for clearing a lot of leaves within a ton of manual labor (raking leaves over a large area is a decent workout). Banning a technology when its overuse is due to poor landscape planning is a knee-jerk reaction that doesn't address the underlying thing that's really causing the frustration. I.e. we'd all be better off if houses had gardens designed with lower maintenance requirements in mind.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  > 50% of the time my neighbor's maintenance company spends with leaf blowers is chasing individual leaves across the yard and through shrubbery Neighbor here blows for 2-4 hours regularly, carefully hitting every sq in of the lawn. Most of that time is spent blowing clean grass, with the nearest leaf (there are only a few to begin with) being a doz yards away.
everdrive 5y ago
The point is exactly that leafblowers do not represent a technological improvement: they have too many downsides, and accomplish too little. No one is arguing that all technological progress is bad. Rather, in the specific case of leafblowers they represent a detriment, and should be used infrequently-to-never.
mechanical_bear 5y ago
I was a landscaper for several years before college. We mostly serviced estates in the country or with very large lots. I used both a backpack blower and handheld. I understand the efficiencies gained by their use in some instances. I also know that on the smaller residential lots that a big backpack blower was overkill. A rake could have sufficed more often than not. In the case of other equipment; a lawnmower can’t reasonably be replaced with a scythe, it will not produce adequate results, a weed eater can’t be replaced for the same reason. A rake can produce adequate results with only a bit more work. And in cases where a blower is “necessary”, it doesn’t need to be used to chase every damn leaf for two hours on a residential property. I am not morally opposed to leaf blowers, just the noise that is foisted on everyone else by their use. I couldn’t go down to my garage and rip the throttle on my two stroke motorcycle for two hours once a week without getting the police called on me, yet the leaf blowers have become normalized. It’s nuts.

iostream24 5y ago

Reductio ad absurdum Blowing leaves is perhaps not the way to manage the organic matter that needs to be embedded in that soil the temporary owner is trying to destroy by monocropping homogeneous “grass”, I’ll hope that generally makes collecting organic matter to waste wrapped in individual virgin plastic bags obsolete itself. Groundskeeping could do with a 21st century ecological update… we even had the native plants movement in the 80s I dunno, what about mulching it in sítio? Leaf blowers are also futile in wind.

smallerfish 5y ago
> Blowing leaves is perhaps not the way to manage the organic matter that needs to be embedded in that soil You're doing your own reductionism. Not all leaf blowing is to collect leaves for disposal in plastic bags (and I'm 100% for using leaves as mulch where they fall on beds, and also with not having lawns). Leaves need to be blown out of gutters, drains, and ditches - otherwise the road will start being eroded. Leaves need to be removed from paths and patios, otherwise they will stain the concrete, let moss grow, and make the surface slippery. You try doing that by hand on 8-10 properties in a day, on minimum wage, without health insurance (the situation of most landscape maintenance workers in the US) - and then tell me that banning leaf blowers is a good idea. Leaves on the lawn can easily be mulched in place and used to build up organic matter, as you point out - but that too requires a gasoline engine powered machine. The call should be for banning lawns, if that's the concern - not banning leaf blowers. (I should also mention that if you don't live somewhere with a real winter or dry season that causes heavy leaf fall, your situation isn't representative.)
- nradov 5y ago
  How did landscape maintenance workers perform that task before leaf blowers?
  - smallerfish 5y ago
    How did people cope before cellphones existed? It's the same as my original point - it's a nonsense question. If you want to create additional work for people by doing it in a less technological manner, focus on the served in the society rather than underserved, who are trying to get a leg up in the economy.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    They didn't. The standards to which we maintained things were far, far lower in the past because doing so was much more laborious and therefore expensive.
    - nradov 5y ago
      It works seem that those lower standards have no significant adverse effect. They only impact trivial stuff like aesthetics.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        You couldn't slip on wet leaves and expect to sue the property owner back then.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    You didn't have trees in lawns, basically. Look at the pictures of old English manors - there would be hedges next to grass lawns but the trees were few and far between in the lawns. The areas of the garden with trees would be a different thing.
    - nradov 5y ago
      I don't know about England, but trees were common in American lawns since long before leaf blowers existed.

colanderman 5y ago

50% of the time my neighbor's maintenance company spends with leaf blowers is chasing individual leaves across the yard and through shrubbery (not exaggerating). They'd save themselves time if they just bent down and picked up the damn leaves with their hands. Or -- novel idea -- left the last couple leaves anyway, because just as many more will accumulate 30 minutes after they leave.

smallerfish 5y ago
Fully agree. Leaves happen. I'm just pointing out (apparently in a too sarcastic manner) that the technology is the best we have right now for clearing a lot of leaves within a ton of manual labor (raking leaves over a large area is a decent workout). Banning a technology when its overuse is due to poor landscape planning is a knee-jerk reaction that doesn't address the underlying thing that's really causing the frustration. I.e. we'd all be better off if houses had gardens designed with lower maintenance requirements in mind.
WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
> 50% of the time my neighbor's maintenance company spends with leaf blowers is chasing individual leaves across the yard and through shrubbery Neighbor here blows for 2-4 hours regularly, carefully hitting every sq in of the lawn. Most of that time is spent blowing clean grass, with the nearest leaf (there are only a few to begin with) being a doz yards away.

everdrive 5y ago

The point is exactly that leafblowers do not represent a technological improvement: they have too many downsides, and accomplish too little. No one is arguing that all technological progress is bad. Rather, in the specific case of leafblowers they represent a detriment, and should be used infrequently-to-never.

mechanical_bear 5y ago

I was a landscaper for several years before college. We mostly serviced estates in the country or with very large lots. I used both a backpack blower and handheld. I understand the efficiencies gained by their use in some instances. I also know that on the smaller residential lots that a big backpack blower was overkill. A rake could have sufficed more often than not. In the case of other equipment; a lawnmower can’t reasonably be replaced with a scythe, it will not produce adequate results, a weed eater can’t be replaced for the same reason. A rake can produce adequate results with only a bit more work. And in cases where a blower is “necessary”, it doesn’t need to be used to chase every damn leaf for two hours on a residential property. I am not morally opposed to leaf blowers, just the noise that is foisted on everyone else by their use. I couldn’t go down to my garage and rip the throttle on my two stroke motorcycle for two hours once a week without getting the police called on me, yet the leaf blowers have become normalized. It’s nuts.