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A group of activists got leaf blowers banned in the nation’s capital (2019)

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Re: A group of activists got leaf blowers banned in the nation’s capital (2019)

#161

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

feet wrote: post #154
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawns serve an unacknowledged purpose in many places, they keep the land clear. Without cutting the land will revert to scrub. Even if you wanted to grow vegetables you’d still need to cut the grass and keep saplings from growing wherever they happen to sprout.

Why is keeping land clear important? That's an ecosystem where numerous organisms live, its not like it's "unused" See my other comment about bugs. Almost any option is better than a wasteful grass lawn

I’m not pro-lawn in the sense of believing that a well manicured monoculture of some non-native grass is the ideal use of residential land. That’s bad. Letting dandelions grow and having a spot for butterflies and native bugs is a great thing and should be encouraged. Using part of the lawn for a food garden is also laudable.

Keep in mind that when I talk about lawns serving a purpose I’m using the context of small, reasonably sized homes. In that context, you don’t want a dense thicket of brush reducing accessibility and potentially causing issues with the plumbing and foundation. You want to keep some free space to roam and work with as well. You don’t want a home where you open the door into a bunch of unkept flora. You don’t want to have to wade through waist high brush in order to get around the outside of your house.

It may sound a little extreme, but again I’m not advocating for perfectly manicured lawns - just reasonably kept ones with minimal pesticides.

Re: A group of activists got leaf blowers banned in the nation’s capital (2019)

#162

Post by bluefirebrand »

feet wrote: post #154
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawns serve an unacknowledged purpose in many places, they keep the land clear. Without cutting the land will revert to scrub. Even if you wanted to grow vegetables you’d still need to cut the grass and keep saplings from growing wherever they happen to sprout.

Why is keeping land clear important? That's an ecosystem where numerous organisms live, its not like it's "unused" See my other comment about bugs. Almost any option is better than a wasteful grass lawn

Well you don't want the areas people live in to get too overgrown because animals move in.

Many animals are harmless of course, but many aren't and the ones that are harmless living in your yard are the ones that dangerous animals prey on.

I don't carefully manicure my lawn by any means but I do make sure it's not too overgrown because I don't want skunks to move into my back yard

Re: A group of activists got leaf blowers banned in the nation’s capital (2019)

#163

Post by bluefirebrand »

koheripbal wrote: post #72
criddell wrote: post #2

Gasoline powered leaf blowers. I believe electric blowers are still permitted.

The issue with the electric ones is that those lawn care companies have crews that run leaf blowers all day long from one house to another. This is no longer possible as they take hours to recharge after each use. It works if each home owner buys a leaf blower of his own, but that's way less efficient from a manufacturing/maintenance perspective. We're just increasing inefficiencies.

> The issue with the electric ones is that those lawn care companies have crews that run leaf blowers all day long from one house to another. This is no longer possible

Why does this matter though? Does this army of leaf blowers that run all day actually contribute anything useful?

I get some people like a tidy yard or tidy lawn or whatever. Who cares though? It shouldn't be treated as some inalienable right to have a tidy driveway so leaf blowers must be allowed.

> We're just increasing inefficiencies.

Yes but it doesn't matter because the job of blowing leaves doesn't matter. It's just control freaks trying to tightly control nature and franky, who cares. They can pay more for the privilege of having someone use a rake or broom to clean up leaves instead.

Re: A group of activists got leaf blowers banned in the nation’s capital (2019)

#164

Post by batmanturkey »

I woke up to one in front of my window this morning.

Keep up the good work.

Those vile contraptions should be banned globally.

They don’t clean anything, spit out fumes and ultra loud noise like the tiny engines they contain, and spray pollution and dust everywhere, making aerosol out of settled dust.

Re: A group of activists got leaf blowers banned in the nation’s capital (2019)

#166

Post by bradfa »

feet wrote: post #53
bradfa wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is now fuel injected 2-stroke engines which will pass the current Euro4 emissions rules for dirt bikes and motorcycles. There's no reason that a small 2-stroke can't have lower emissions today. It's clearly more expensive to make a fuel and oil injected 2-stroke engine than a simple pre-mix 2-stroke, but it's possible and then you get all the benefits (and even more!) of a traditional 2-stroke in terms of power…

I'm willing to bet that computer controlled fuel injection wouldn't solve the issue. It may lower emissions slightly but two strokes still require lubricant to be mixed with the fuel, I'd bet my hat that's where the high VOC emission is really coming from. They're constantly burning oil, literally.

The oil is injected separately from the gas. So only as much oil as is needed for the engine load and speed is injected, which allows varying the oil mix as low as even below 100:1 compared to normal pre-mix concentrations of 40:1 or 50:1. So the amount of oil burned is significantly less on the injected 2-strokes as it’s only injecting what the engine needs for lubricity and nothing more.

Re: A group of activists got leaf blowers banned in the nation’s capital (2019)

#167

Post by feet »

bradfa wrote: post #166
feet wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to bet that computer controlled fuel injection wouldn't solve the issue. It may lower emissions slightly but two strokes still require lubricant to be mixed with the fuel, I'd bet my hat that's where the high VOC emission is really coming from. They're constantly burning oil, literally.

The oil is injected separately from the gas. So only as much oil as is needed for the engine load and speed is injected, which allows varying the oil mix as low as even below 100:1 compared to normal pre-mix concentrations of 40:1 or 50:1. So the amount of oil burned is significantly less on the injected 2-strokes as it’s only injecting what the engine needs for lubricity and nothing more.

That's interesting, I wasn't aware they get injected separately. While this would decrease VOC emission greatly, I can still see these engine designs being higher emission than a comparable four stroke although I may be wrong. I'm not a mechanical engineer.

My reasoning is that oil still gets burned, likely at a higher rate than any oil that gets through on the four stroke. It would be interesting to see if two strokes could be redesigned to place the oil outside of the combustion chamber, I think that would be a serious game changer for ICEs.

That being said, I'm definitely an advocate for moving away from combustion altogether.

Re: A group of activists got leaf blowers banned in the nation’s capital (2019)

#168

Post by feet »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #161
feet wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is keeping land clear important? That's an ecosystem where numerous organisms live, its not like it's "unused" See my other comment about bugs. Almost any option is better than a wasteful grass lawn

I’m not pro-lawn in the sense of believing that a well manicured monoculture of some non-native grass is the ideal use of residential land. That’s bad. Letting dandelions grow and having a spot for butterflies and native bugs is a great thing and should be encouraged. Using part of the lawn for a food garden is also laudable. Keep in mind that when I talk about lawns serving a purpose I’m using the context of small,…

I think that's a reasonable view to have. It doesn't take up a lot of space while allowing for natural ecosystems to exist alongside human single family residences.

Another idea could be to increase density of human housing while providing vertically built parks integrated into the housing for people who want to use them and keeping larger areas in their more natural state to foster vibrant ecosystems. This would allow people in the high density housing to have space to roam or work while giving the least human interference on the surroundings, in theory at least.

We could even move transportation underground with high density transit networks to decrease impact on surface ecosystems even further.

Re: A group of activists got leaf blowers banned in the nation’s capital (2019)

#169

Post by feet »

nkrisc wrote: post #143
chrisseaton wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because someone asked 'why do they do this in America when they don't do it in Europe' and your explanation was 'because if you have lawns trees can smother them'. That doesn't make sense as an explanation to the question unless you think having lawns and trees or not is a difference between Americans and Europeans. Otherwise how does it apply?

All I stated was that if you have a lawn, it is possible for uncollected leaves to kill or damage parts of your lawn. I don't know why "they" don't do it in Europe, I have no idea where the commenter I replied to is from in Europe. I was just stating one reason why people do it here. Q: "Why do people in America clean leaves off the lawn?" A: "Because it's possible it can damage the lawn if you don't in some circumst…

Why would it be any different elsewhere? Plants generally work the same no matter which country you're in.

Re: A group of activists got leaf blowers banned in the nation’s capital (2019)

#170

Post by mizzack »

tzs wrote: post #86
sojournerc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intuitively I think an injected engine would be more reliable. Gummed up carburator causes the pull-start blues for me frequently on my chainsaw when I haven't used it for a while. I do get a nice arm workout though.

It was the same with my lawn mower. It only gets used maybe 6-8 times a year. For some recent years here were how many days it had been idle before each use: (245, 22, 14, 15, 14, 33), (258, 24, 12, 13, 17, 11, 38, 71), (167, 21, 21, 20, 15, 61). Two simple things fixed that: 1. I switched to gasoline that does not have ethanol added. 2. Once every 2 to 4 weeks in the off season I start it and run the engine for a mi…

100% agree on the ethanol-free gas to reduce carb gumming.

For overwintering, I just detach the hose after the fuel filter and drain the remaining mower fuel back into the can. Or, on small push mowers where this isn't possible, use the fuel shutoff and just leave the gas in the tank.

Then run the mower until it dies. Doesn't take more than a minute.

Finally, unscrew sparkplug(s), pour a teaspoon of motor oil into the cylinder (keeps rings from seizing/rusting).

Leftover gas in the can gets put into vehicles at the end of the season so I'm not storing stale gas.

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