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Leaf blowers are a scourge. Why is it hard to get rid of them?
- adrianN 3y agoElectric leaf blowers are much quieter and don’t stink.
- pbj1968 3y agoThe official soundtrack of Houston, TX. The noise is so ubiquitous it is almost noteworthy when you can’t hear it. Paradoxically, the better the neighborhood, the worse the noise.
- varelse 3y ago[dead]
- smolder 3y agoMaybe it's worth rethinking what a "better neighborhood" is to exclude their use. Do appraisers put extra value in manicured lawns having pesticides in them and the leaves blown off? When someone says you can't have X on your property or you need Y there to maximize the value of a property, that's all the excuse people need to act like assholes sometimes, imposing stupid HOA rules or, in this case maybe, polluting & making a racket. Edit: Seems like I wasn't far off. Stopping homeowners from making bad choices will need to include real estate agents not playing into the idea that a leaf-free, poison sprayed lawn is more valuable. > Lawn care specialists have claimed for years this strategy leads to better lawns, but it would only work if customers are willing to accept a change to the manicured status quo, a look that real estate agents and landscapers claim boosts home values and that some homeowners associations require in their bylaws.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoThere actual is a way to define "better neighborhood" (property value or desirability) with data independent of human occupancy and qualitative appearance: count of large trees.
- petermcneeley 3y ago"Paradoxically"
- 1letterunixname 3y agoIt's the same wasteful, inane absurdity of Irvine, CA over-manicured emerald lawns. My late grandparents were adherents of Orientalism landscaping and interior decorating and on this train of 19th century French aristocracy subsumed by Americana. Visit somewhere like the quieter residential neighborhoods in Palo Alto where native plants and the natural look is less effort, cheaper, more efficient, and less noisy.
- ssl232 3y agoRight at the very bottom the article suggests the correct way to deal with fallen leaves: leave them alone. They decompose and provide nutrients to the grass.
- djha-skin 3y agoSo does the weed'n'feed I pay for, and it's much prettier.
- lancesells 3y agoI really don't understand moving leaves unless it's walkways and driveways. Fallen leaves are the ways trees work and have always worked.
- blinkingled 3y agoThis right here. But then HOAs gotta have lawns which also take mowing most of the times by leisurely ridden gas mowers. The leaves on the lawn obstruct water and sunlight from getting to the roots of the lawn and makes the lawn look not green. So now you have to blow the leaves so you can mow the lawn or just mow the lawn to crush out the leaves. Either way there's double whammy of gas and noise ruining your weekends. The one thing that helped somewhat is replacing windows on my house - new windows seem a lot better at noise reduction. I am also seriously considering synthetic grass and getting rid of the stupid Oak trees on my lawn - I don't think those leaves decompose soon enough!
- krupan 3y agoIf leaves are just left alone they cover your grass and kill it
- jetpks 3y agoi tried this with the 50 foot sycamore in my back yard and the leaves didn't decompose at all. they fell and froze. then in the spring when things thawed out, they formed a thick wet mat that suffocated and killed everything underneath.
- offtrail 3y ago
- lucidguppy 3y agoI don't get leaf blowers really. I'd love to have some sort of paper bag and connector to my lawn mower. I have my bag and just getting it into the brown bag is a little bit of a pain. But man - you just do it once and you don't have to cajole the leaves for 10s of minutes.
- SaintGhurka 3y agoIs there a reason you don't just let the lawn mower mulch them up and leave them on the ground? After I mow over my leaves they pretty much disappear into the grass.
- lucidguppy 3y agoI do that to if the leaf cover is less than 90%.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoIt’s just a symptom of the larger problem of manicured lawns being the number one “managed crop” in America. Eliminating home lawn is probably one of the singular things that would significantly slow down our destruction of the planet I’m sure someone will post some reason why their lawn is different somehow [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lawn-largest-crop-america_n_55d0dc06e4b07addcb43435d https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lawn-largest-crop-america_n_5... [2] https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/31/this-heatwave-is-a-reminder-that-grass-lawns-are-terrible-for-the-environment https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/31/this-h...
- Waterluvian 3y agoI’ve never seen a leaf blower used for grass up here. Only leaves. But I also never see the gas powered backpack blowers portrayed on TV so maybe I’m perceiving a different context.
- discordance 3y agoI think the point was, if we didn't have lawns then leaves could remain where they fall and mulch the soil.
- chmod600 3y agoLeaves get everywhere and cover sidewalks, roads, roofs and gutters, etc. Over time, they degrade into an unsafe slimy surface.
- campboy 3y agoEven without lawns people will use leaf blowers to blow leaves, off their driveways or xeriscapes or whatever. So we should ban gas powered leaf blowers regardless.
- mcpackieh 3y agoI think he means that everybody should be made to live in apartments or condos, without any sort of garden, patios, etc. Dense urban living for everybody.
- redandblack 3y agoNJ resident who has never cleared leaves in the last 18 years in my suburban home - I just let it degrade over winter and the lawn care companies take care of it in spring. I don't live in a HOA community, which I think is a bane (one of many) of US living
- chmod600 3y agoWhere do the leaves fall, and do you use that surface for anything else?
- al_borland 3y agoI’ve been listening to a leaf blower running for probably the last hour. I was trying to sleep, and it woke me up and has kept me up… it just keeps going. How many leaves can they possible have.
- cameldrv 3y agoThey just banned gas leaf blowers in my town. The electric ones are much quieter.
- demondemidi 3y ago“40% of homeowners with lawns pay for landscaping services”?!? Wow. I had no idea the number was that large. That seems so … lazy. EDIT: I should say that I'm biased and think green thick pristine lawns are a blight. (Irony noted.)
- underseacables 3y agoUntil my kids are old enough to put to work maintaining the yard, it has been way more convenient to pay someone else.
- mikestew 3y agoHigher than that in my neighborhood in Redmond, and it is not even one of the nicer neighborhoods. Myself and a couple others do our own mowing, the rest hire someone. I mean, anyone that can afford to live in Redmond could afford to hire someone, but it would take me longer to write the check than do it myself, because our lots are about 7-8K square feet. IOW, small SFHs on tiny little lots. Half hour of mowing, tops.
- uxp100 3y agoYeah, they cite that, but their rephrasing is a little dubious. If you follow the link, it is 40% of homeowners have paid for landscaping services in the past year. So I mow my own lawn, not much work with a reel mower, small lot, the highest setting, maybe twice a month. However, this spring I hired somebody to trim a hedge that I’ve done myself in the past but requires a tall ladder, which I had borrowed from someone who moved. If you have someone come out and look at a damaged or diseased tree, that would also do it I think (unless arborists are separated out)
- rootusrootus 3y agoMy yard guy does more and better quality work in 30 minutes than I could do in an afternoon. I’m happy to pay him to do that while I work on the things I’m good at.
- brookst 3y agoI’m one of the 40%. It frees up a couple of hours a week, which is all of the hobby time I get. No regrets.
- mcpackieh 3y agoWhen a landscaping company uses a gas leaf blower, enforcement of the ban should be targeted at the property owner instead of the landscaping company. Most cops aren't particularly excited about bullying a hardworking landscaping worker so if you call them they won't even show up in time to give the landscaping company a ticket. On the other hand, if you could simply submit a video of the offense to local officials they could easily tie the offense to the property itself, and fine the property owner. No cops necessary. Then property owners could weigh the cost of eating these fines against simply raking their yard themselves.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y agoIt sounds like the root cause of the issue you describe is cops not doing their job. Perhaps the efforts of the city can be better targeted to the root cause, rather than creating additional bureaucracy, or engaging in collective punishment because it's more convenient. It also doesn't seem like it would work because most property owners are even less excited than cops about confronting a hardworking landscaping worker, particularly given that it's the cops' job to do so, not theirs.
- rootusrootus 3y agoYou actually want cops to police leaf blowers? Are you joking? We won’t even hire enough so they can police petty crime.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago> You actually want [police] to police [law breaking]? Are you joking? If this is what you meant to ask, the answer is obviously yes. Do you actually want homeowners to police law breaking? Are you joking? It's not even their job, and enforcing the law is literally what we pay police to do, that's why their job is called "policing" and their employer is the "police". You want to talk about hiring budgets, what's the government-provided officer hiring budget for homeowners? Or do you expect homeowners to solve the problem with $0 while the police receive significantly more than $0 to ignore the problem? I mean, if the police abdicate their responsibilities and burden private citizens with them instead, obviously those citizens should receive the money the police were receiving. Meanwhile, I see a lot of police sitting around in cars, at speed traps, etc. Are we sure they're doing as much as they can with the resources they have? Are we sure they're directing resources to where we want them to (in terms of both geographical areas and types of crimes)? I think it's fair for them to be able to present a request for more staffing budget, along with reports on their progress using existing resources, on current deployment of resources, on progress towards having public disciplinary hearings and publicly closing out IA complaints, etc.
- datameta 3y ago"California Air Resources Board says a gas-powered backpack leaf blower produces the same amount of harmful emissions in an hour as driving a car for 1.1k miles." The article mentions two stroke backpack blowers are 75% of the market, with landscape company owned tow behind four-strokes making up the rest.
- xoa 3y agoWell, fact is they're very, very useful. I spent a solid couple of decades poo pooing them. Finally tried one, and was instantly sold. It's not just the time savings either, blowers allow doing jobs that just aren't very feasible otherwise. I can get rid of leaves and debris from stony/leafy surfaces and structures that can't be raked. I can clear snow from rough whole rock paths all winter, and it will completely clear the rocks and get between them unlike snow shoveling, which prevents the snow from getting compacted and turning to ice. I eliminated like 99% of the need to ever apply any sand or ice melt when I switched to clearing with a blower. Feet of snow on cars, my solar panels, etc can be blasted off quickly and effectively with zero risk of surface scratching. The ROI has been high, even though I don't actually use them for leaves on my lawn those I just mulch. But getting acorns and such off the lawn and blowing leaves onto it from driveway and walkways for mulching is helpful. However mixed fuel ones really do suck, but happily electric ones are finally getting really solid too. I got an Ego 600 CFM as soon as it became available and while air velocity and total volume are somewhat lower than my Stihl it was able to take over a good 70% of the work. For this fall and winter season (about a month ago) I got an upgraded 800 CFM Ego Commercial one that takes double battery packs and look forward to putting it through its full paces, but so far I'd estimate that has closed the gap to something like 90-95%. Maybe even enough to completely get rid of the gas though the winter will be the real proof. But the pace of advancement has been pretty solid. They're far far quieter, they don't produce all the awful fumes, they're incredibly reliable and convenient in terms of instant start. The remaining flies in the ointment are just lack of standardization in batteries and interfaces and upfront battery cost (when used a decent amount I think the value vs cost of fuel and oil is often positive over lifetime, but that doesn't change the fact that it's hard for many people to plunk down hundreds/thousands upfront vs as opex buying fuel). Both hopefully will get addressed over time. But I think at least the capabilities to match/exceed 2-stroke in raw performance is there for nearly everyone which is a good change and makes it politically much easier for governments to step in and start accelerating the transition.
- downut 3y agoNew electric blower owner here, thanks for the additional detail. Mine has 2 batteries too and I don't come close to discharging them in 15 minutes, so a big win. I don't think I've had to use the maximum flow setting yet.
- FredPret 3y agoThey use blowers to move snow around in Canada as well. I was a little unnerving to wake up to what sounded like lawnmowers on my first night in Calgary, Alberta, in the middle of winter. I wonder if the electric ones are quieter and can still get the job done.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoYes this entire thing is a hullabaloo over a soon to be solved problem. All ICE devices are more expensive than battery based ones fundamentally, it's just that the economies of scale and battery tech is still a couple notches down. Well, and the battery based devices are "luxury" versions of the "dirty ICE" variants, so they currently command a ridiculous premium. I keep waiting for plunging battery economics to come to eGo battery packs and they don't. This isn't just someone bitching about prices of a lock-in tool company, lawncare is a MASSIVE carbon and air pollution problem, and switchover costs to non-ICE tools is much less of a lift than a 30,000$ car. Like ebikes, there should be aggressive incentives for consumers to get electric tools for lawn care, and aggressive pressure on companies to drop battery pack prices. And like the torque advantage of electric motors in cars for racing off the line, the EV torque advantage typically provides a superior tool.
- jejeyyy77 3y agoeh, have you actually used equipment like this? Electric mowers/blowers/etc vs gas. Never runs out of charge, powerful, reliable, etc. It has nothing to do with the price (in fact, gas equipment is more expensive).
- thelastgallon 3y agoAmericans use more than seventy million pounds of pesticide annually to maintain their lawns. That's ten times more poison per acre than all of America's farmers use on their crops: https://progressive.org/magazine/vox-populist-lush-lawn-killing-mother-nature-hightower https://progressive.org/magazine/vox-populist-lush-lawn-kill...
- petermcneeley 3y agoWhat is this article about? If it is getting rid of noisy gas leafblowers im sure we are all on board. If it is about getting rid of beautiful suburbia and replacing it with Magnasanti then I think only a tiny minority want that. MAGNASANTI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU
- sokoloff 3y ago> some landscapers may charge Montclair customers as much $95 per man-hour for leaf removal, compared to ~$60 per man-hour with gas-powered blowers. It seems strange to charge more per-hour for raking vs blowing. Per job? Sure, but per-hour seems weird.
- PhilipRoman 3y agoLeaf blowers have always seemed to me like a very inefficient use of technology (when used on grass, not asphalt). I see people struggling all the time to scrape those few leaves at the bottom that just won't move no matter how much air you blow on them. I've always preferred to use a rake.
- jetrink 3y agoIf you spend Saturday morning revving multiple 90dB engines in your front yard, the police will come and ask you to stop... unless you're using them to blow leaves around. Leaf blowers don't need to be banned, we simply need to stop treating them as an exception. It seems to me that the best solution would be to enforce existing noise and pollution ordinances and require landscapers to get quieter (possibly electric) equipment.
- bigfryo 3y agoLoud mufflers are a scourge and everyone hates them but we can't get rid of them because companies are making money off of them and they pay the politicians
- smolder 3y agoMufflers? So there's actually some more nuance to this. Quiet mufflers on ICEs come with some efficiency cost, partly due to weight (for vehicles) and partly due to flow restriction of exhaust, particularly at higher flows, closer to the engines maximum output. Depending on the application, quieter mufflers are not always "better".
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoDC banned gas blowers. There is one dude left in the neighborhood but everyone else has converted in the neighborhood. It's fantastic. Especially working from home, it just felt like there were only brief intermissions of relative quiet. It's wild how you can hear that 2 stroke whine from blocks and blocks away. Now, it's just nice out. (Also a lot less air pollution to boot!) Your city can do it to! We also recently banned right turn on red, another recent submission; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38147864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38147864
- unnamed_cell 3y agoI'm surprised not to see any mention of bacteria and funghi being blown into the air. Guess we'll have to wait for climate change and valley fever (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37632653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37632653) to do their thing.
- nunez 3y agoelectric leaf blowers are the solution. much quieter, good enough power. i had one for two years when we lived in a suburban house. it was amazing. i miss it. will probably get another one.
- KevinMS 3y ago"its a nice warm fall day, I think I'll open my windows" -- you "its a nice warm fall day, I think I'll go blow some leaves" -- your neighborhood
- 1letterunixname 3y agoThe problem isn't leaf blowers per se. The problem is noisy, polluting, and sometimes exhaust-modified 2-stroke leaf blowers. Palo Alto banned them. There were a few who switched to electric with a gas generator on wheels, but otherwise it solved the problem of noise pollution. In urban and suburban areas, it's essential to remove leaves from surfaces used by people and vehicles. There isn't an absolute need to remove them from anywhere else.
- h0ek 3y agoIn Poland, the town where I live, the problem is even funnier. They use these blowers to push the leaves from the pavements and streets onto the lawns every day at 8 a.m. and nobody collects the leaves. When the guy finishes his work, the wind blows the leaves back onto the pavements and streets. When we reported this to the council, no one saw a problem and the cleaner was happy because he had work every day. The leaves are only collected once before winter, when there are no leaves on the trees.