41–50 of 75 posts
Is leaf blowing a worldwide nuisance or an American thing? I hate it. And it serves no ecological purpose.
I don't care about leaves on the lawn.
A 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.
Is leaf blowing a worldwide nuisance or an American thing? I hate it. And it serves no ecological purpose.
At least from my experience, it's not done for ecological purposes. It's primarialy done to clear pathways for safety, maintenance, and aesthetics.
Some people do blow a whole lawn, but that never struck me as useful. Cleaning up the path is nice though, and depending on your paths, makes plenty of noise already.
One thing i never understood: Why a blower instead of a vacuum type of device...?
One thing i never understood: Why a blower instead of a vacuum type of device...?
1. mine jams extremely easily when sticks or wet leaves get into it 2. their ability to actually move leaves is significantly less when in suck mode vs blow mode, this is not specific to moving leaves, try sucking sugar throw a straw vs blowing it, blowing moves stuff MUCH more.
After 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.
I suppose these days people take techno-efficiency over all else to the point of ruining the environment, other people's peace, their own air quality, their own wallet, and so on, all so that they can blow the leaves off of their lawn in a supposedly shorter time or for slightly less effort.
Congrats to these students for producing a clever solution to a real practical problem! I hope that the students will own the patent, and not the university. Many schools have a way of taking ownership of absolutely anything their students come up with. That said, I prefer just raking up leaves manually. It makes no noise, it's quiet, and it's good exercise.
I think a lot of folks in these discussions think only of lawns. That's a pretty small portion of where leaf blowers get used, in my experience. The lawn mower takes care of most of the leaves on the lawn, the blower gets used around bushes and other places a rake won't work at all.
It's mentioned in the article but easy to miss, this is an improvement on the already much much quieter electric leaf blowers that are readily available. The ones you are thinking of are two stroke gas powered ones which are loud as fuck and terrible for the environment, anyone using one of those could have gotten a quieter electric one but chose not to, which means they definitely aren't going to use this improved e…
But, keep in mind that "just going electric" isn't a good option universally. It's MUCH more expensive to put together an electric setup and the number of batteries necessary to do any significant amount of work than it is to buy even a mid range backpack 2-stroke blower. Especially if you do what a lot of people do and look for used equipment to save a ton of $.
If you have a small yard or are only ever doing stuff like blowing off a deck/patio/sidewalk/driveway: battery 100%. if you need to do any significant amount of leaf management in a larger area: good luck.
I have an m18 electric, and gas Echo backpack. If im cleaning off a sidewalk/patio, cleaning gutters, etc.. im 100% using the electric. Otherwise....not so much. I don't even clean up grass clippings, mulch and cut frequently enough that they aren't an issue.
Is leaf blowing a worldwide nuisance or an American thing? I hate it. And it serves no ecological purpose.
> And it serves no ecological purpose. At least from my experience, it's not done for ecological purposes. It's primarialy done to clear pathways for safety, maintenance, and aesthetics. Some people do blow a whole lawn, but that never struck me as useful. Cleaning up the path is nice though, and depending on your paths, makes plenty of noise already.
My neighborhood has a landscape crew do the leaves in the common areas 3x season. If we just had them do the paths and parking lot, it would be half the time (or less) with blowers.