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Students invent quieter leaf blower

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Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#51

Post by aftbit »

cwmma wrote: post #48

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…

Yeah except the electric ones that I've used kinda suck. I have an electric leaf blower from Ego and a gas backpack one. The electric one is awesome for blowing the grass off the driveway after mowing or other light tasks. OTOH I used it to manage the leaves in our quarter acre or so backyard last year, and it took me three charge cycles using two batteries each every time I tried to move the leaves. I ended up just raking both years. Last year I finally bought a backpack blower after trying one out with a friend on a much smaller property. It blows harder and has the endurance to actually finish the job.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#52

Post by goda90 »

akjetma wrote: post #39

This 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/17242…

I haven't put any leaves out on my curb the last two years, but I still use my electric leaf blower. Early in the season, I use my mower to mulch some of the first leaves to fall into the lawn(which consists of grass, clover, violets, dandelions, etc). But eventually there are just too many leaves to mulch, and they would smother everything, so I blow them into big piles. Then we take the dogs out to play in the piles. Then we scoop them up with tarps and spread them all over my veggie garden beds. In fact I went and "stole" some leaves from the piles my neighbors put on the curb to get even more coverage of my gardens. Now in spring, the leaves have smothered a lot of weeds, and the ones that do grow are easier to pull because they have to push through the leaves and the dirt stays moist longer. I see a lot of insect life living in the leaves as I go about weeding. I hope the ecosystem is strong to balance out pests on my veggies.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#53

Post by gumby »

kd5bjo wrote: post #8

Minor 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…

> Much more significant is the 12 dB reduction in the "shrill and annoying" frequency range.

Those higher frequencies travel farther than the lower frequencies, so cutting them has a bigger perceived effect (and this is all about perceived effect, I believe, not the health effects of the operator).

Just agreeing with you that acoustics is complicated and non unidimensional.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#56

Post by dylan604 »

unregistereddev wrote: post #33
dylan604 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do a combination of both. I have a compost pile that is fed by collecting the clippings from my mulching mower from half of my mow-able area, and then the rest is just mulched and left in place. Essentially, anything to not rake! The only time I rake/bag is from the leaves that collect along the curb. I'm on a cul-de-sac, so I get a lot collecting there. I don't use these for compost from all of the liquids from parked cars, trash, and other gross stuff that I wouldn't want in my garden.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#57

Post by nomel »

cnity wrote: post #46
KingOfCoders wrote: post #17

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.

Hear hear. Rakes can be more efficient[0], provide an upper-body workout, minimise impact to the environment, make next to no sound, cost almost nothing, and provide a relaxing experience if you know how to embrace it. 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…

Slightly less effort? Have you used a leaf blower before? It’s a 30 minute to 3 minute sort of difference.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#59

Post by hi-v-rocknroll »

About 10 years ago, I remember seeing someone using an electric leaf blower connected by extension cord to a Honda generator strapped down to a furniture dolly to circumvent the gas-powered leaf blower ban. It was still pretty damn loud and annoying, but less than the oft muffler-less, 2-stroke modified leaf blowers most gardening crews use unconcerned with emissions or noise pollution.

Re: Students invent quieter leaf blower

#60

Post by hi-v-rocknroll »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #17

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.

Extremely large rakes and brooms exist that can be used to clear areas efficiently with proper technique. In the past, I had to tend to a ¾ acre property with pine trees and at least a ½ acre of lawn.
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