Portland is the best! Now if they can ban gas cars that would be great!
Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect
51–60 of 134 posts
Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect
#52I bought a corded electric snow blower this year for my driveway. My neighbor has a gas powered one. I sold mine after two uses because it was so ineffective it mostly just clogged. It is a highly rated unit on Amazon. My neighbor has used his for years. I hope this kind of environmentalism never comes for winter gear. At least not until we have fuel cell technology that far exceeds what batteries can offer.
What is "this kind of environmentalism"?
Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect
#53Because it's too dangerous for ordinary citizens to use gas power? Context: https://www.oregon.gov/osfm/pages/self-serve-fueling.aspx
That's a jobs program, safety was just the thinly veiled excuse.
Bingo. Also, it's effectively dead. I live in Multnomah county and since that's gone into effect (in 2023), I have only ever pumped my own gas.
Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect
#54Good. I don't mind the noise since it happens during daytime. Put on headphones and lock in or something. But it's impossible to get good air quality during the day with them running nearby constantly. Always smelling the gas and thinking about the CO content and other toxins you're inhaling. Thus having to shut the windows and watch your CO2 levels rise, knowing it's degrading your mental acuity while you're trying to code..
Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect
#55I bought a corded electric snow blower this year for my driveway. My neighbor has a gas powered one. I sold mine after two uses because it was so ineffective it mostly just clogged. It is a highly rated unit on Amazon. My neighbor has used his for years. I hope this kind of environmentalism never comes for winter gear. At least not until we have fuel cell technology that far exceeds what batteries can offer.
I bought a 500 dollar snowblower and an additional 500 dollars in batteries (about 24A total) and it's totally insufficient.
I've converted to electric for everything but the the snowblower is the only thing Ive considering switching back to gas.
To be fair my driveway is 100+ feet. I think this unit would be fine for a smaller driveway.
Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect
#56Whilst 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…
This is such a bad idea I don't know if you're serious, or if you're satirizing these kinds of people or an accelerationist looking to burn down the credibility of your state legislature.
The right thing to do is to ban their use on a local level pursuant to some specific criteria is one thing (as many municipalities do, and Portland took a step further by doing categorically city wide). To ban their sale (but not use, are you kidding?) state wide is a great example of not only crap law, but the exact sort of minutia that the state level government should not be regulating and is necessarily proceeded by the sort of evil "I know best, damn the exceptions" world view that underpins much of the bad policy that sours people on the same institutions you are trying to use to solve what you perceive to be problems.
Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect
#57Whilst 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.
My neighbour has a golf court style yard and constantly provides friendly suggestions how to better take care of my yard - with fruit trees and wild flowers. There are no mechanisms he could force his views around here, but boy would he love that.
Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect
#58Whilst 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…
What I find interesting about this ban: probably mostly makes sense in the for city for low workloads however the electric blowers (even the good ones that I am sure the city isn't paying for) are underpowered for real work leaf workloads. They operate as a midlevel gas powered blower. As someone who is on board with electrify as much as possible - I still see where there are limitations and chokepoints. Though for n…
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.
Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect
#59We can make (more or less) silent gas engines for cars. Why can't we make the same for equipment?
The muffler in your car weighs a fair bit more than an entire leaf blower. The noise reduction is also aided by enclosing the engine in a compartment with sound deadening, and having 15ft of exhaust piping (and a resonator, and usually multiple catalytic converters). It just can't be done effectively for small engine tools that you have to physically carry around.
2 stroke engines are even worse (chainsaws, weed wackers) because the exhaust has to be tuned for resonance at specific frequencies in order for the engine to make power.
As an owner of some land and many pieces of small engine equipment, I will say that the difference between _no muffler_ and the little mufflers they typically have is still substantial.
Re: Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect
#60I bought a corded electric snow blower this year for my driveway. My neighbor has a gas powered one. I sold mine after two uses because it was so ineffective it mostly just clogged. It is a highly rated unit on Amazon. My neighbor has used his for years. I hope this kind of environmentalism never comes for winter gear. At least not until we have fuel cell technology that far exceeds what batteries can offer.
If you're in North America, you can only get 1800 watts from a cord. It's not enough to blow anything but light snow.
OTOH, an 80V battery can easily draw 1000 watts+. A good snow blower has 4 of those. That's more than enough, comparable to a gas engine but with way more torque.