241–250 of 440 posts
How about just leaving leaves for what they are. Just leave them and move on with your own life.
So, you don’t have a large maple next to your drive way, do you? If I didn’t have a leaf blower, my driveway would be solid ice in the winter, mud in the spring and fall, and dust in the summer.
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Elon Musk at one point once suggested Tesla would make a quiet leaf blower - due specifically to the noise. I wonder if Tesla perhaps has a whole bunch of technologies they're developing incognito in the background - or if he's perhaps being limited for some artificial reasons? It may just be a market size issue - and cities passing bylaws to disallow gas powered, only allow electric under a certain dBs is the fix; a…
Is that really what people want? Leaf blowers to me are possibly the least interesting, least appealing way to use modern tech To clarify, as a research project, cool. We can probably use any new developments elsewhere. But as a tesla product, just why?
How would an electric leaf blower (or anything electric/battery/motor related) released by Tesla be any different from a flamethrower made by Boring company? At least there's a bit of resemblance from the tech used, but a self-lighting gas device from a digs hole in ground company has nothing to do with anything.
"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…
Tuesday I mowed the lawn. Yesterday morning, I got up, made coffee, grabbed my shop broom and cleaned up out front. Not a leaf blower insight. Sure it took a couple of extra minutes but I also got some light exercise. I understand why a lawn service uses a leaf blower. I don't understand why my neighbors do.
How about just leaving leaves for what they are. Just leave them and move on with your own life.
In many cases, existing crafted landscapes can't handle the acidity/moisture-trapping/etc of decaying leaves. So you're really advocating for people to give up on expensive, considered, laborious projects that exist for functional or aesthetic reasons. Even if there are alternatives that are comparably functional or beautiful, what's there is there already and a lazy wilding doesn't necessarily lead to one of those agreeable alternatives.
It's a bigger ask than your phrasing suggests.
Isn't it called a leaf rake? Frankly I never understood the popularity of leaf blowers to begin with. They are noisy, less effective than a leaf rake and very bad for health and back of the users. It seems they exists only because people are stupid enough to think that something that makes noise and use a lot of energy would necessarily be better.
> less effective than a leaf rake and very bad for health and back of the users. Citation needed. I can clear my whole yard with an electric blower much faster than with a rake. I also have no idea how holding a leaf blower would be bad for my back or health.
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Many affluent areas have already banned gas leaf blowers and it’s incredible how quiet the battery powered replacements are. I was in Palm Springs recently and had nearly walked past a landscaper using one before if occurred to me just how quiet it was - didn’t even interrupt our conversation. I believe it was a Stihl backpack version (maybe https://www.stihlusa.com/products/blowers-and-shredder-vacs/... ) but yeah,…
It isn't so much the noise that bothers me, what I've never understood about leaf blowers is what are they meant to accomplish? When I watch people use them they either blow the leaves into the street or the neighbors yard. What do they think that does? Now on the other hand, I do own a very noisy leaf vacuum. But when I've collected a bag full I can just deposit the leaves in my collection container. They are taken…
It also shows that any of us could have done this with enough time and effort. And I don't mean literally any person- but there are a LOT of YouTube engineering channels that could likely have tackled this, had they been asked to.
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generally for landscapers it saves them the trouble of raking, which can put a lot of strain on your back — they'll blow the leaves onto a tarp and then wrap them up for easy removal in my experience, homeowners mostly dick around with them
I guess that would work, but I have never seen anyone do that.
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Keep in mind; in some towns a truck comes around and collects the leaves from the street with a vacuum (although I guess your town doesn't?). I have seen (predominately contractors) blow leaves into a tarp to take away on a truck though.
There is a pile of leaves so deep in the street in front of my house that it has an entire ecosystem living in it. At this point they have composted some, insects have begun to live in them and grass is growing from the pile.