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Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect

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Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect

#101
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They shouldn't be underpowered. Small electric motors are way more powerful per mass/volume than small gas motors. You'd have to use a backpack mounted battery pack, but contractors are already doing that.

Have they started doing that? I haven't seen the backpack mounted version in use in the wild. I haven't seen any electric blowers get to the same capability in the contractor market segment. Prosumer -- for sure no problems there.

Perhaps not. Businesses are way more conservative than consumers when adopting new tech, so there will be little demand at the beginning. And with little demand, there's little supply. Laws like the headline will break this chicken/egg problem.

Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect

#102
post #71
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corded yard tools will always suck because they can only pull It's always better to go with batteries for electric outdoor stuff for that (and other) reasons.

What kind of batteries are you running that can support the equivalent of 15A AC for hours? I have both a battery leafblower and a corded one. The corded is far more powerful and of course does not run out. The battery one is quick and convenient for small cleanups but only gets about 10 minutes from a full charge, then it's back to the charger for hours. Recently I cleaned up a large roof full of leaves, took about…

You cycle multiple packs to run for hours.

Your battery blower sounds like it's just not very good.

I can move piles of wet leaves easily with my makita blower that uses two 18v batteries. It's a pretty old model too.

Batteries can surge power and not risk fire hazard like AC over a long extension cord. Manufacturers know this and have to intentionally limit draw way below the 15A ceiling so a 100ft 14AWG cord doesn't trip breakers or burn houses down.

Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, nothing quiets the streets like the police literally running a damn dyno roadside on an elevated platform for the loudest vehicles they think they can find, which by itself would likely also make the police violators of the law since they are the one operating the vehicle in public at the time of the sound infraction they have induced.

> Ah yes, nothing quiets the streets like the police literally running a damn dyno It would be bad only if it didn't result in decrease of loud vehicles. If they run the dyno and impound vehicle, it means that this loud vehicle won't be coming back this street for some time.

If the police take my car and make loud noises with it, all that means is the police can potentially make loud noises with my car. Not that I personally made loud noises.

The only provable noise polluter in that case is the police.

I'm sure they could also put my car on a dyno and prove it could go 100mph on the 30mph street I was on too.

Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect

#104

Whilst I seriously doubt that this will be regularly or universally enforced, I think that gas powered gardening and construction equipment is incredibly loud and annoying, and that especially in built-up areas it's not really acceptable where good alternatives exist. Noise pollution is usually very avoidable, and it can be quite disruptive and sometimes damaging to health. Further, where I live (in the UK), there ne…

The notion of leafblowing is also mindboggling to me... You don't need a leafblower to clean up your driveway, and leaves on a lawn will turn into soil.

More likely leaves on a lawn will destroy it and will create a dirt patch, at least this is what happens in PNW (Seattle & Portland). I have giant maple trees next to my house and I get 2 feet of leaves in my backyard every fall, if you don't remove them you get a breeding ground for rodents, you get mold and dirt everywhere (and clogged gutters, clogged street drains) and standing water. And it's not only leaves, I'm getting fir/cedar needles and maple seeds on my drive way, good luck removing it without a blower.

Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect

#105

Whilst I seriously doubt that this will be regularly or universally enforced, I think that gas powered gardening and construction equipment is incredibly loud and annoying, and that especially in built-up areas it's not really acceptable where good alternatives exist. Noise pollution is usually very avoidable, and it can be quite disruptive and sometimes damaging to health. Further, where I live (in the UK), there ne…

We have the same problem where I live in the US. When I get some free time I'm going to lobby our state congress to have the sale of them banned, because it's the only way to get people to stop installing them. There is a law against driving them but it's impossible to enforce because there's no means of measuring the sound and associating it with the vehicle quickly enough to enforce it. I'd love to have an ALPR sys…

https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a60583398/nyc-noise-camera...

NYC installed these. Turns out with a city noise limit of 76 and ticketing those in excess of 84dBa, that you’ll ticket certain street ‘legal’ cars whose noise levels can reach into the 90s (!) if driven improperly in-city. Always glad to see technology progressing; I hope it spreads elsewhere.

Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ah yes, nothing quiets the streets like the police literally running a damn dyno It would be bad only if it didn't result in decrease of loud vehicles. If they run the dyno and impound vehicle, it means that this loud vehicle won't be coming back this street for some time.

If the police take my car and make loud noises with it, all that means is the police can potentially make loud noises with my car. Not that I personally made loud noises. The only provable noise polluter in that case is the police. I'm sure they could also put my car on a dyno and prove it could go 100mph on the 30mph street I was on too.

Presumably for a car to be sold from factory and registered by owner as street legal in Germany, it must not be able to make loud noises under reasonable operation — specifically, driven like someone would drive a car (up to 100% throttle, up to redline rpm) but not attempting to maliciously create problems (fuzzing the pedal inputs for backfire scenarios from factory). If the police are able to reasonably operate it on a dyno to create an illegal condition, then either it has a mechanical defect, an owner modification, or a design defect; and in all three cases, the vehicle would presumably therefore not be street legal, as proven on the roadside dyno. The loophole you’re describing wouldn’t hold up in front of a judge anywhere at first glance: “I don’t ever push the gas pedal that far down in my fancy sports car designed/modded to accelerate loudly when I push the gas pedal that far down” is not a particularly convincing argument when one is found to be operating said vehicle. A more convincing argument would be, “the pedal inputs by the police were improper for operation of a vehicle and do not conform to the training given to roadside dyno operators”; and, presumably dyno logs and body cam of the operator are available to defeat that as well. And arguing that the training itself is improperly having police operate the vehicle through all factory-provided regimes would almost certainly fail (even in the U.S. were such roadside dynos a thing here!), but if your case was that the training needs to be improved in a specific way rather than for termination of the roadside dyno program, you might get traction with that.

One assumes this process is generally reserved for vehicles whose driving has earned them a dyno inspection, as it would induce mockery were they to e.g. dyno an old beaten-up Geo Metro without cause, and that the fines are directed towards either the vehicle owner and/or manufacturer, as circumstances require, as the responsible parties for its mechanical-design and/or aftermarket-modded violations of the law. (I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice.)

Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect

#107
post #5

I actually didn't know this was coming up and just bought an electric. They all kind of suck except for the Ego and the Ego is like $250. Portland has gotten quite a bit more expensive. We've begun rejecting taxes, which as the self-selected second highest taxed city in the nation is new. Our economy has struggled to return post-COVID lockdowns. There's a lot more I could say but people are really feeling the economi…

> $250

Think of all the rakes you could buy with that!

Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect

#108
post #86
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Particularly for a contractor who uses it all day with no opportunity to recharge, they would need enough batteries to last all day. Not cheap at all.

Upfront not cheap, but long term they are not paying for gas and so it pays for itself. (a contractor will rig a dozen chargers onto the trailer and plug that in when they get home each night)

I doubt they are as serviceable as the stihl equipment they’ve been used to working with for years now. There is a reason why commercial stihl equipment in particular is practically standard issue among landscapers.

Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect

#109
post #25

This is a good thing. It might inconvenience some old suburban men that have no hobbies other than making their lawn look like astroturf, but those of us that breathe air regularly should be asking for this in their own jurisdiction. Unlike your car, a four-stroke engine with a catalytic converter, a leaf blower is a two-stroke that burns oil by design. The amount of particulate emissions is hard to understate, and t…

You should have seen my 70s era Kawasaki 3 cylinder 500 cc road bike back in the day.

I’m pretty sure the blue cloud that thing belched at startup alone aired more pollution than a weed eater makes all year.

Weight and speed carried more weight than emissions back then. I acknowledge a healthy planet is better, but boy were those bikes fun.

Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect

#110

Whilst I seriously doubt that this will be regularly or universally enforced, I think that gas powered gardening and construction equipment is incredibly loud and annoying, and that especially in built-up areas it's not really acceptable where good alternatives exist. Noise pollution is usually very avoidable, and it can be quite disruptive and sometimes damaging to health. Further, where I live (in the UK), there ne…

> there needs to be a serious reckoning about modified cars and road noise. At least 5-10x daily people drive through the city centre near my home with cars modified with unbelievably loud pop and bang ECU tunes and exhaust noise

I live in Portland and we have the same issue all over the city. They are much louder and more frequent than gas power leaf blowers. There are supposedly laws against them, but they are not enforced.

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