When I was younger I spent an afternoon hanging out with my grandfather. We sat on the porch of my fathers house smoking cigarettes. My mom came outside and asked me to clear the fallen leaves off the porch. Well, young me went to the garage and pulled out the awesome backpack leaf blower my Dad had. Proceeded to spend a few very noisy minutes trying to get some leaves out of a corner, when my grandfather laughed and said, “you know, sometimes the harder way is easier.” and handed me a broom. Took all of a 5 minutes to sweep everything off nicely, whereas I was getting nowhere blowing leaves every which way.
I don’t even own a leaf blower now, don’t need one.
It’s warm enough here that we can open the windows and turn off the heating. Not hot enough to need AC yet. So what do I hear all day today?
Lawnmowers.
I mean, we have a lawnmower too, but ours is 100% electric. So we basically mow the lawn in stealth mode. I don’t think anyone realises we’re doing it unless they physically see us out there with it. We’re good neighbors. As for our neighbors… Ehhh, not so much.
My electric mower has some noise generating nonsense grafted to it; my ears would love a stealth mower. It would be infuriating, if not for all the advantages. Eight years and I have yet to drop everything to run to the gas station, gap a spark plug, or change oil.
Related: AC. I live in an apartment complex in which each unit has a shitty, absurdly loud AC unit. Come 17 °C and one jackass ruins it for everyone else who might to sit outside or have their windows open. Between that and landscaping…
I feel like the biggest crime is apartment and condo buildings putting individual ACs for every single unit instead of a more efficient full building system. There’s fancy systems that pump the heat from the air into the waterheaters and between units to run at more efficient ratios, or radiant systems that basically run a “cold” utility through the building to be tapped into by units and has the benefit of economies of scale, etc.
Electric lawn tools are pretty great. The blower is still pretty loud but everything else is comfortable without ear protection. And they don’t stink or require as much maintenance. I can’t see why they aren’t more popular.
Yeah, I am always surprised when I visit friends in the suburban parts of Germany. We live in an appartment in the middle of the city and it is so much calmer here. :)
But German suburbia at least has sundays when lawnmower (etc.) are illegal to be used.
People put so much energy into growing grass. Seeding, liming, fertilising, watering… so they can create endless, mindless busywork and destroy biodiversity.
Lawns were originally a status symbol. A “hey lol look at me I have enough land I don’t have to grow food.” Shameful that it took off as a defacto standard.
People put so much energy into growing grass. Seeding, liming, fertilising, watering… so they can create endless, mindless busywork and destroy biodiversity.
Lawns were originally a status symbol. A “hey lol look at me I have enough land I don’t have to grow food.” Shameful that it took off as a defacto standard.
Good point. As a matter of fact a friend of mine living in another country in Europe told me that in his country it is forbidden for people to have a garden and put only stones and tiles (sp?) in it so it cannot breath. In my country there has been a trend for many years that people turned from a garden with plants and flowers to a garden with just stones and zero green. This week I saw in an on-line newspaper that lots of people in my country are now getting rid of the stones and buying plants. The “help-the-bees” cry of help which some people have been talking about seems to finally take off with larger numbers! Fingers crossed.
I’m in the process of overseeding my yard with clover so I have an excuse to not mow nearly as often. Literally the first mow of the season was just to chop it down to give the clover room to grow.
I have a lot of clover covering my yard. I really love it when it blooms. My whole yard looks magnificent and I don’t mow for about 2 weeks as I enjoy the carpet of color.
Thanks! I’ve been itching to get this done for a couple months (because I fucking love clover), but weather and waiting to see pollinators prior to mowing were keeping me from getting it done. Can’t wait for it to start growing!
I take advantage of not having an HOA and have curtailed lawn mowing to 3-4 “harvests” a year in order to comply with county ordinances. Clearly this is helping the local ecology as we have a robust population of lighting bugs every summer, unlike the neighbor’s yards.
That’s actually amazing. For real, thanks for sharing that. I love hearing about these decisions can have such a positive impact in our small corners of the world.
This. I am SO sick of lawn mowers! My neighbor does the lawns once every single week. She will spend all day mowing it and using weed whackers etc. I am so sick of the noise! I don’t want to always be forced to wear my noise canceling earbuds. I want to hear the birds and the wind for god sake…
Also, people driving slowly down the street with their car music so damn loud that you can hear/feel them coming 2 streets away because of the subwoofer…
Until about a year ago I had neighbors on 2 sides of me who’d mow 1-2 times a week. Elderly retired neighbors who seemed to mow as their hobby. I subscribe to the No Mow May philosophy. I don’t mow until May because that’s about as long as I can get away with before my grass start’s getting too excited. I also mow every 2-3 weeks depending on the rate of regrowth to keep it reasonable but also not over-mow. Its a balancing act of what I can do for the environment without having to fight my neighbors, in-laws or city
I know it’s spring because that’s when the drone of small gas motors starts up. Non-stop mowers, blowers, trimmers, and chain saws.
I’ve started moving towards electric. Some of the newer, smaller equipment like trimmers have gotten really good with good power and longevity. I prefer it to gas. However, bigger equipment like mowers haven’t caught up yet, there are quite a few for smaller lawns, but bigger lawnmowers are quite expensive so far.
Hope that continues to improve.
E: it takes me an hour to do my lawn with a gas ZT mower, we have a large lot with lots of trees. Thank you, northeast US, for large lawns being in style when this house was built. Yes, we’ve looked/are looking at low/no-mow lawn alternatives. The closest in performance replacement mower in electric costs nearly $6k. It’s just not in the budget.
Honestly, if you have a relatively small yard, an electric one works great. I had cheap, battery powered Ryobi mower back when I had a yard. It lasted two years without an issue before I moved and didn’t need it anymore. I’ve definitely had gas mowers that cost more that started needing extra attention after the first year.
Mate I got my mom a ryobi 40v to cut her lawn and i can do the whole thing on a half a charge. If you need more, it can carry an additional battery on board and youre total capacity is as unlimited as gasoline.
I use a pair of snips to do the edges. No stupid fucking weed whacker is even necessary.
I have the 40v Ryobi mower and it works great. Also have the 40v weed wacker and it works equally as well (I also have the pole saw attachment for it.) And I have the 18v leaf blower. All electric and no issues in the 4 years I’ve had them.
The timing of this post could not be more perfect. I’m sitting at my desk at home, with the windows open for the first time this year, sipping coffee and browsing Lemmy… and the duet of leafblower and weedwhacker begins next door. The most infuriating part: the property in question is a NEVER-used artist’s studio/gallery that nonetheless gets multiple visits per week from landscapers/caretakers/contractors/etc. I’ve lived next to the property longer than the studio has even existed, and I’ve seen the owner once.
I used to have a neighbour who would use a leaf blower purely to blow away litter from his driveway, which would then blow back onto his driveway shortly after.
I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just use a brush like a normal person.
I really hope noise pollution in general becomes a bigger topic of conversations. Yes, I hate gas leaf blowers and they ruin so many spring and fall days. But what about my annoying neighbor who insists on revving his Corvette at 5:30am? I hear that damn car for a good five minutes as they are driving away from the neighborhood.
I think even skimming under the noise limit won’t remove the annoyance of these things. And why is it even necessary to blow grass clippings off the sidewalk? If it’s really that bad it didn’t take much more effort to just sweep them back on the grass.
There are apps to let your phone do both or more reasonable would be to set up a security camera to record your backyard or something innocuous, use it to file a report and if nothing happens from the police report take it to the city council to show they aren’t enforcing city ordinances. I’ve seen a few people take noise complaints to council to get it enforced.
In my case it’s the AC units that ruin it for me. We have nice weather that would cool the apartment if we open the windows but if some of the closest neighbors has their unit on it makes it unbearable for the rest
it’d help if AC units weren’t so shittily constructed, and the motors maintained properly. We recently had ours replaced, it was quieter, it’s gotten louder over the years. Presumably due to bearing wear.
I get the sentiment of being anti 2-stroke leaf blower (at least for personal use. Electric isn’t feasible for industry/city use quite yet). I don’t get why this comic is anti all leaf blowers though?
Switching to electric means buying multiple batteries and replacing all of your kit and outfitting the vehicles with the capability to charge those batteries during the day (because charging takes time and isn’t as quick as just filling up a tank of gas).
Sticking with the existing gas ones costs nothing.
Yes there are potentially long-term cost savings and yes it would reduce noise pollution but if anyone thinks these kinds of purchasing decisions are made on the basis of what would be sensible in the long term, they need to get out and live in the real world a little. Sad but true.
Practicalities of life, innit? Isn’t enough money to invest in the long-term best options for everything so you pick your battles. Id rather see investments in big infra and updating the energy grid, not replacing the odd leaf blower.
Municipalities/contractors need to be able to run them all or most of the day, and you’d need a way to charge the batteries and/or a giant stack of them to keep going. Fossil fuels are pretty energy dense so you can just have a jerry can to refuel and keep on going.
I think they can last about an hour these days (the backpack ones anyway) but if you’re anywhere away from a charging source then you’d need so many spare charged batteries to compete with a few litres of fuel. Again, not talking about home use; most people probably don’t even need cordless and can just run an extension cord to an electric hand-held blower.
Battery technology is getting better all the time though so hopefully soon as old machines wear out they can be replaced by electric alternatives.
? I know they’re called leaf blowers, but they’re just blowers. They let you use them for stuff other than leaves.
Specifically springtime? Here they’re used to blow all the little rocks and debris off of landscaped areas that accumulated over the winter so they can be swept up.
That said, they get used all year round… They’re a must have for any municipal/contactor snow removal. Shovels are not only way more work/slower for a light bit of snow, the blowers can take the snow off clean meaning no ice melt required (and you want to use that stuff sparingly for the sake of your concrete and the environment).
Battery powered leaf blowers are absolutely feasible. Battery tech has come along way and it takes less time to swap out a battery than fill a gas tank.
industry use i suppose, but what the fuck are you using leaf blowers for in industry? Yall have had squirrel cage blowers since forever. Dude even F2? I think? Uses electric leaf blowers lmao.
even if it is just as loud, it’s likely a much higher pitch noise, so as a result travels a lot less than a 2 stroke engine does. I swear i’m getting hearing damage from even being inside my home with the windows open from those 2 stroke blowers, it’s insane
Fully agree! I’ve read that devices that run on electricity are not so loud.It’s the mobile ones running on fossil fuel that are so loud.Even with ear-plugs in it is distracting me to be productive or to relax.I’ve talked with people I know, and told them about the unbearable noise.Their response : “Yeah, but think about elderly people that could slip because of all the leaves”.Well, how did people cope with this decades ago when these loud devices were not super popular ?
deaf people are generally very perceptive of the fact that they cannot hear, not like people constantly exposed to the noise of lawn equipment, who in turn, block it out mentally, because it means nothing. Only to find out, that actually it means something.
I have an electric leaf blower. It is indeed significantly quieter than a two stroke gasoline powered one, albeit not exactly what you’d call “silent.”
I primarily use it to dry off my bikes after washing, and to blow dust off my shop floor and outside. Sweeping is for chumps. I also use it to remove the grass clippings from my sidewalks (I just blow them back into the grass) because the very same Karens who bitch about leaf blower noise are also the very same Karens who bitch about the sidewalks being “untidy” and getting grass clippings on their shoes.
Unfortunately, my leaf blower is not powerful enough to blow them away.
Oh, then the blower is still better but for different reasons. Shop vac is just as loud as an electric blower, and will take significantly more time and energy.
It would work, and it does work better for specific applications like metal chips around the drill press and grinders. But doing the entire floor with it would take all day. The nozzle is only 9" wide.
Lol I will never for a moment care about people complaining about grass clippings on my sidewalk. The wind will always take care of it in the end. You do you, I have nothing against it, that just made me laugh.
So we can’t use technology to make life easier and faster?
Sure you can be out there for 10 hours fighting the wind with a broom doing a 60% job or you could be done in 10 minute with a leaf blower and be 99% done. It does it better in a fraction of the time.
Fuck people for getting chores done and enjoying life eh?
Better use a scythe to cut your grass, no mowers for you….
Actually, you know what? With that bullshit attitude, yeah, maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to use technology to get your “chores” done faster. If you’re picking destructive and disturbing over leaves-on-the-ground, then you’ve proven yourself incapable of making good decisions at this time.
Sure if you compare the loudest backpack blower to the quietest electric there’s a Night and day difference,.
But what about the quietest gas one compared to the loudest electric? I’ve got a 60v leaf blower, it’s iirc 13db louder than the 20v. And it’s far louder than a lot of gas ones people use for personal use.
If the deafening whine of a leaf blower feels inescapable, you’re not imagining it.
Leaf blowers produce a low-frequency buzz that “allows loud sound at harmful levels to travel over long distance and readily penetrate walls and windows,” said Banks, who published a peer-reviewed paper in 2017 analyzing noise pollution from the gas-powered lawn equipment.
The pilot study found that the loud noise produced from the machinery could travel up to 800 feet away from the source.
Short- and long-term exposure to noise pollution has links to a host of health impacts, including, in some cases, increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and other serious heart-related problems, and hearing loss. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers among the sources of loud noise that can damage hearing over time.
Electric leaf blowers are quieter. After testing both types, Consumer Reports gave electric devices an average score of 2.9 for noise at the ear, compared to 1.7 for gas models. (The lower the score, the worse the noise.) And when the sound was measured 50 feet away, the electric leaf blowers earned an average score of 4.8 versus 2.5 for gas.
“It dissipates over a much shorter distance and it can’t penetrate walls and windows easily either,” Banks said.
This is a well known fact about how sound travels through the environment. Lower pitch noises (gas engines) tend to travel very far and very aggressively. They’re so much more potent.
High pitched whining sounds (electric motors) don’t travel nearly as well as lower pitch sounds, and they tend to be much much quieter at distance.
Combine that with the sound profiles of the ICEs compared to the constant whine of an electric motor in a certain part of the spectrum of audible sound. Now you have modulation on the ICE which is going to be much more potent to begin with, since it’s an entirely different sound profile. As well as being much harder to tune out, given the fact that it’s not just a persistent whine.
This is why the abrams powered by a gas turbine are known for being incredibly quiet, even though when up close, you can still hear them loud as shit. The sound just can’t travel through the environment as effectively, and like i said, even if it does. It’s not exactly the incredibly distinct sound of an ICE.
I mean sure you might have to wear hearing pro still. But that’s not my problem, what is my problem is having unavoidable hearing damage from my neighbors who are currently mowing.
You understand blowers aren’t just used for leaves right? They’re great for all sorts of debris in all the difficult or impossible to get places (imagine rocky landscaping for example). Isn’t the issue 2-stroke blowers but not blowers in general? What’s wrong with electric?
They’re less annoying and polluting but still a fucking nuisance. And most of the time they’re just used to achieve some idiotic standard of cleanliness, without any practical usefulness.
I’ll push back a little on the “most of the time it’s just for idiotic cleanliness standards” part there as I’ll assume it’s referring to homeowner use which I’d argue is likely not the ones using blowers the most often. Keeping walkways and ramps etc clear of slippery leaves, snow, or other debris is super important in all our public spaces and nothing does that job as quickly or as well as a blower.
Golf courses, definitely. I managed a hardware store for a while and our primary customer for reel mowers, as well as sharpening services for the same, were golf courses.
Let the leaves lie on the grass sure (and mulch them assuming it’s not too many) but you still need a blower for all the other areas; concrete, landscaped rock, etc. They’re also used for snow all the time where I live. Nothing wrong with an electric blower.
i’m still trying to figure out why a blower is going to do anything for snow? You know that snow blowers exist right? I can’t imagine anything other than a snowblower/shovel is going to work effectively on anything that isn’t a very small layer of fluffy snow, god forbid you get any heavy snowfall, or it thaws and refreezes. Just seems like a complete nightmare to me.
When I wrote my comment I was thinking of the municipality workers with these gadgets in my area, sometimes using no ear protection! Hardly anyone at home, where there’s mostly just small gardens, uses these super noisy things.The city council probably thinks that they are saving a lot of money and time and giving their workers a much easier time. And like I wrote : I’ve read that devices running on electricity are quite silent. If there can be electricity poles for E.V. why not for this ?
My electric battery one is just as noisy as most gas ones. They just aren’t feasible for city work since they would need a genset to charge them anyways, or they would be having to need 60 batteries for one crew for a day.
So we can’t use technology to make life easier and faster?
I can rake a yard in half the time it takes you to blow your leaves into a pile. People here in California spend hours - HOURS - blowing around leaves. It’s NOT efficient.
I mean, all choices have tradeoffs, right? You might clear the leaves faster, but everyone else has to listen to the loud-ass blower and deal with just that little bit more pollution. In my opinion it would be better to have a hard noise pollution limit. If your blower is too loud (and it probably would be) you can still clear the leaves with a rake and the rest of us can live more peaceful lives.
I’m literally writing this comment listening to a leaf blower outside my house. I live in the suburbs. It’s usually louder outside my house than it is inside my house, thanks to the road noise and lawncare. That’s just not right.
It’s usually louder outside my house than it is inside my house
Isn’t this what you would expect almost anywhere, unless you live with someone who is unusually noisy? Even when I lived somewhere where I usually heard only natural sounds, it was louder outside my house than it was inside because of the ducks, chipmunks, cicadas, etc.
generally i would expect it to be louder inside my house, than outside my house, considering that im living in my own fucking home.
Sure if you’re doing literally nothing, just sitting there in silence, staring at paint dry or something, it’s probably going to be louder outside than inside. But humans aren’t exactly known for doing that.
also tbf, cicadas are a fucking hellspawn. They’re equally as bad as this lawn equipment lmao.
Ever been right next to a tractor trailer or other heavy equipment the city uses? It’s all around 100db so unless you want absolutely nothing, not even buses. Thats not realistic.
They also need to account for construction, your house was built with equipment louder than leaf blowers for example. So how would your house be here with more restrictive sound limits.
Ever been right next to a tractor trailer or other heavy equipment the city uses? It’s all around 100db so unless you want absolutely nothing, not even buses. Thats not realistic.
Yes, and they’re usually gone in 30ish seconds. Those guys with leaf blowers run them a lot longer than that.
They also need to account for construction, your house was built with equipment louder than leaf blowers for example. So how would your house be here with more restrictive sound limits.
I bet if you plotted the noise, it would be numerous peaks and valleys of sound. Leaf blowers are a continuous solid line of noise.
If there’s peak and valleys the people aren’t working consistently…
An excavator or compactor are constant noise all day if they are working effectively. Other than lunch breaks, but sometime they rotate so the expensive equipment doesn’t sit.
No one is gonna pay $300 an hour for equipment and it stay idle 50% of the day, just pissing money away dude.
If there’s peak and valleys the people aren’t working consistently…
So when you work your job your output is 100% all the time? No, there’s peaks and valleys in your work. Same with construction.
An excavator or compactor are constant noise all day if they are working effectively. Other than lunch breaks, but sometime they rotate so the expensive equipment doesn’t sit.
Sure, but how long are they onsite for? Not the entire project. Why?
No one is gonna pay $300 an hour for equipment and it stay idle 50% of the day, just pissing money away dude.
Exactly. Which means peaks and valleys in sound. That excavator and compactor get shut off when they’re not in use.
Exactly. Which means peaks and valleys in sound. That excavator and compactor get shut off when they’re not in use.
So at the end of a 12 hour shift…. They sit at a constant rev all day so the oils and hydraulics don’t get cold and stiff, it’s also terrible for seals to be constantly dried out from starts and stops.
You’re being disingenuous about the actual severity and longevity of construction projects and equipment.
Sorry, perhaps that want great communication on my part. “Hard limit” as in, “very restrictive.” I.E. If your equipment isn’t quiet, it ain’t allowed to run.
We can make an exception for “one time” tools or locations that have no reasonable quiet alternative. Lawn mowers, leaf blowers, cars, motorcycles, and so forth are all examples of regular use tools, while a literal jack-hammer is not. Simply designate an area a construction area and a different set of noise and safety laws would apply.
Of course it’s possible to build a building quietly, but even I recognize that it would be unreasonable to ask people to do so.
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