I watched the demo video, and, IMHO, even the muffled version of the leaf blower is way too loud.
Students invent quieter leaf blower
31–40 of 75 posts
Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower
#32I didn't know of electric-battery-powered leaf blowers! Here in France i always suffer gas engine blowers which are so annoyingly loud and smelly.
The problem with electric leaf blowers is that they're no good for people who need to blow leaves all day; and most of the leaf blowing is (in my experience) contracted out rather than done by home owners. I have an electric blower that I use for getting leaves off my decks (you can't rake a deck and it's actually a remarkable pain in the ass to brush leaves off a deck) but if I got a contractor in to do my garden (w…
Dewalt has battery packs that are quickly interchangeable and pods with rows of batteries that can be recharged inside a car or truck while on the go. I'm hoping this becomes adopted more and more as the tech is already here.
Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower
#33After reading all comments, not rushing to the comments, I have to say, I have a quiet leaf blower to, it is, as mentioned in this thread somewhere else, a rake and I would appreciate if more people would use one.
Why rake at all? Mulch them instead. Raking them into a bag to have removed from your property to add to a landfill just seems like a very strange decision to me.
Raking them into a pile, shredding them, and putting the mulch in a compost pile allows me to move the nitrogen into my garden. Maybe that starves part of my lawn, but the grass seems to be doing just fine - and moving natural nutrients to my garden helps me avoid using chemical fertilizers when growing food.
I am agreeing with you, for the record. It seems silly to throw leaves in a landfill.
Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower
#34After reading all comments, not rushing to the comments, I have to say, I have a quiet leaf blower to, it is, as mentioned in this thread somewhere else, a rake and I would appreciate if more people would use one.
>a rake and I would appreciate if more people would use one. Most of the leaf blower noise in neighborhoods is cleaning up tiny grass clippings off of driveways and sidewalks instead of handling the Fall season's dead leaves, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak5VoB-ceeU&t=0m06s Rakes don't help with grass cuttings. People could use brooms to sweep up the grass but homeowners and lawn crews don't do it that…
Another option is a hose, but that may be considered more wasteful.
I have a leaf blower, and I use it for about 5 minutes a week in the summer to clear grass clippings from walkways after I mow. I don't like being "that guy", so I pretty much run around the yard with it in order to finish as quickly as possible.
I know that the electric leaf blowers are quieter, but my neighbor's makes a high pitched squeal which bothers me more. I think that she has some sort of condition, because she's literally using the thing for about three hours a day. I don't know how many battery packs she has, but she runs it until it dies, swaps the pack, and gets back to it. It's not a huge yard, maybe 1/3 of an acre, but she is compelled to get every blade of grass off of her driveway.
Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower
#35A few years back Moxie (of Signal) put up a video[0] of a quiet leaf blower which was pretty sweet. His design appears to be quieter than this one. Either way this is great, as a person highly sensitive of sound I support all technologies that reduce excessive noise. [0]: https://x.com/moxie/status/1582154037700399104
I can't help but notice in that video that it's really not moving the leaves too much, and that's on the most ideal surface you could have.
Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower
#36Minor nitpick about the reporting: > The team reduced the overall leaf blower noise by about two decibels, making the machine sound 37% quieter. While a 2 dB reduction in noise does represent a 37% reduction in acoustic power, our perception of sound is logarithmic so this is extremely unlikely to "sound 37% quieter"-- Assuming the reduction is from 50 dB to 48 dB, it will sound about 4% quieter. Much more significan…
60db is normal conversation/background music level. I don't know why you'd assume a leaf blower would start at 50db?
Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
>a rake and I would appreciate if more people would use one. Most of the leaf blower noise in neighborhoods is cleaning up tiny grass clippings off of driveways and sidewalks instead of handling the Fall season's dead leaves, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak5VoB-ceeU&t=0m06s Rakes don't help with grass cuttings. People could use brooms to sweep up the grass but homeowners and lawn crews don't do it that…
Another option is a hose, but that may be considered more wasteful. I have a leaf blower, and I use it for about 5 minutes a week in the summer to clear grass clippings from walkways after I mow. I don't like being "that guy", so I pretty much run around the yard with it in order to finish as quickly as possible. I know that the electric leaf blowers are quieter, but my neighbor's makes a high pitched squeal which bo…
There's a guy in my neighborhood (who uses a backpack blower) and this is his main hobby. I really don't understand the appeal of doing what is a pretty monotonous task for such a long amount of time, given that in mere hours much of the pristine front yard moves back into "chaos".
I understand the satisfaction from being meticulous about things like this, but i don't understand the extreme end of it.
Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower
#38Is leaf blowing a worldwide nuisance or an American thing? I hate it. And it serves no ecological purpose.
France. I know my city workers use them to clean the streets in autumn. Wet leaves are slipery.
Then people mostly use rakes AFAIK, or the lawn mower.
Though I know some tools, such as branch shredders are regulated in some residential areas, but I don't frequent those.
Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower
#39This is great. I live in a dense suburb and the weekend is just a cacophony of deafening noise from leafblowers, table saws, pressure washers, lawn mowers, etc. My neighbor had a team of people grinding and cutting stone slabs for their patio from 9-5 last weekend. Wish people would chill out.
As a side note, leafblowers aren't just disruptive to the sound environment: https://twitter.com/touchmoonflower/status/17242321111447757...
Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower
#40One thing i never understood: Why a blower instead of a vacuum type of device...?