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Students invent quieter leaf blower

hub.jhu.edu

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Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#31

Post by [deleted] »

lowercased wrote: post #28
HPsquared wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally being a nuisance can be illegal, depending on the circumstances. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuisance If there's a quiet option and someone deliberately uses a noisy one, could that be considered a nuisance?

Not in rural areas. People shoot guns at 1am and... "god given freedoms" and "piss off back to the city y'all" and all that are trotted out anytime a complaint is made. Again, it may change in another couple generations, but it'll be slow.

[deleted]

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#32

Post by Maxion »

deadbunny wrote: post #18
infecto wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The switch to electric will help a lot in this situation. Unfortunately I don't think the equipment is good enough contractors yet.

Maybe it's just a UK thing but I can't think of the last time I even saw a non-electric lawn mower. Even going as far back as the 80s they were the standard, just don't mow over the cable!

Depends on where you live and the size of the yard. Electric are great when the size isn't that big. Once you go larger, it becomes very hard to do practically with electricity.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#34

Post by adolph »

HPsquared wrote: post #21
lowercased wrote: post #15

Won't help much until these are mandated by law, or.. we just wait for a couple generations to die out. There's a section of folks who enjoy loud engines. It's their jam, they love being 'outdoors' with loud gas powered engines, big trucks, riding lawn mowers. It's a fantasy escape world for them. Over time, the next couple generations may hopefully adopt more battery powered outdoor stuff (mowers, blowers, etc) beca…

Generally being a nuisance can be illegal, depending on the circumstances. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuisance If there's a quiet option and someone deliberately uses a noisy one, could that be considered a nuisance?

Making something officially transgressive often makes the thing more attractive.

Is one supposed to avoid purposefully releasing diesel particulates by rapidly increasing engine speed? Yes and people sometimes still do it for whatever reason.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#35

Post by NullPrefix »

lowercased wrote: post #15

Won't help much until these are mandated by law, or.. we just wait for a couple generations to die out. There's a section of folks who enjoy loud engines. It's their jam, they love being 'outdoors' with loud gas powered engines, big trucks, riding lawn mowers. It's a fantasy escape world for them. Over time, the next couple generations may hopefully adopt more battery powered outdoor stuff (mowers, blowers, etc) beca…

[flagged]

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#37

Post by goda90 »

lowercased wrote: post #15

Won't help much until these are mandated by law, or.. we just wait for a couple generations to die out. There's a section of folks who enjoy loud engines. It's their jam, they love being 'outdoors' with loud gas powered engines, big trucks, riding lawn mowers. It's a fantasy escape world for them. Over time, the next couple generations may hopefully adopt more battery powered outdoor stuff (mowers, blowers, etc) beca…

I was out weeding my garden yesterday evening and there was some pleasant bird song around me. And the droning of a gas mower a block away. And someone zooming back and forth on their crotch rocket on the main street in the other direction. At least the mower sound probably wasn't intentional...

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#38

Post by sokoloff »

omgJustTest wrote: post #16

"Their design cuts the most shrill and annoying frequencies by about 12 decibels, which all but removes them, making them 94% quieter. The team reduced the overall leaf blower noise by about two decibels, making the machine sound 37% quieter." [1] Somewhat upsetting here... I don't have a problem with people doing things like this and students need encouragement, but we are talking about shifting from the sound of a…

> JHU should make these comments!, and also offer their designs for free given these are public orgs using mostly public dollars

JHU is private. It seems like this research may have been sponsored by Black & Decker, also private.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#39

Post by addandsubtract »

xxs wrote: post #6

Unfortunately the article is very poor on details. The sound from the video is insufficient to tell. Personally, I'd be quite excited to see what are the changes engineering wise. I bet it'd make a proper addition to BOLTR. I still can't see how it'd be much quieter, as lots of the noise is just the air moving (and making sound waves), perhaps less vibrations, different frequencies due to different rpm?

I might be going deaf and losing high-pitched frequencies, but I couldn't tell much of a difference in the video example of before/after.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#40

Post by Aurornis »

lowercased wrote: post #15

Won't help much until these are mandated by law, or.. we just wait for a couple generations to die out. There's a section of folks who enjoy loud engines. It's their jam, they love being 'outdoors' with loud gas powered engines, big trucks, riding lawn mowers. It's a fantasy escape world for them. Over time, the next couple generations may hopefully adopt more battery powered outdoor stuff (mowers, blowers, etc) beca…

> There's a section of folks who enjoy loud engines. It's their jam, they love being 'outdoors' with loud gas powered engines, big trucks, riding lawn mowers. It's a fantasy escape world for them.

That’s an awfully uncharitable projection.

The lawn business people I know would love to adopt full electric fleets of gear. They aren’t sending their teams out with gas engines because it’s a “fantasy escape world”. They do it because gas engines are currently the only reasonable way to keep the crews running all day without spending thousands of dollars on batteries over and over again.

Current battery tech is hit or miss. The packs should be protected from over-discharge and last for hundreds of cycles, but in practice they got a lot of early failures. They also need extra packs to rotate while others are charging. At $100-200 per battery, they might be spending $1000 on batteries to operate a machine for a season, which would have bought them two gas powered machines and gas to operate them.

There’s also the issue of charging throughout the day. Getting a reliable charging setup that works on a truck inverter and getting crews to perfectly manage batteries throughout the day, including spares, is significantly harder than just filling up a gas tank.

Projecting all of this on to “fantasy escape world” is silly.

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