I hate those fucking things so much. To anybody who uses one: I hate you!
Fully agree! I’ve read that devices that run on electricity are not so loud.It’s the mobile ones running on fossil fuel that are so loud.Even with ear-plugs in it is distracting me to be productive or to relax.I’ve talked with people I know, and told them about the unbearable noise.Their response : “Yeah, but think about elderly people that could slip because of all the leaves”.Well, how did people cope with this decades ago when these loud devices were not super popular ?
I have an electric leaf blower. It is indeed significantly quieter than a two stroke gasoline powered one, albeit not exactly what you’d call “silent.”
I primarily use it to dry off my bikes after washing, and to blow dust off my shop floor and outside. Sweeping is for chumps. I also use it to remove the grass clippings from my sidewalks (I just blow them back into the grass) because the very same Karens who bitch about leaf blower noise are also the very same Karens who bitch about the sidewalks being “untidy” and getting grass clippings on their shoes.
Unfortunately, my leaf blower is not powerful enough to blow them away.
Lol I will never for a moment care about people complaining about grass clippings on my sidewalk. The wind will always take care of it in the end. You do you, I have nothing against it, that just made me laugh.
and to blow dust off my shop floor and outside.
Shop vac wouldn’t work?
That’d take 10x the effort and time.
Do you mean use the vac as a blower? Less effective compared to a proper blower, and just as loud (maybe louder?) as an electric blower.
I had meant just to vacuum up all the dust.
My electric blower and lawnmower are pretty quiet.
So we can’t use technology to make life easier and faster?
Sure you can be out there for 10 hours fighting the wind with a broom doing a 60% job or you could be done in 10 minute with a leaf blower and be 99% done. It does it better in a fraction of the time.
Fuck people for getting chores done and enjoying life eh?
Better use a scythe to cut your grass, no mowers for you….
Alternatively, let the leaves lie - which is beneficial to insects as well. And lets your neighbours enjoy life :)
But a suggestion from the post you’re replying to is using an electric one.
Let the leaves lie on the grass sure (and mulch them assuming it’s not too many) but you still need a blower for all the other areas; concrete, landscaped rock, etc. They’re also used for snow all the time where I live. Nothing wrong with an electric blower.
Actually, you know what? With that bullshit attitude, yeah, maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to use technology to get your “chores” done faster. If you’re picking destructive and disturbing over leaves-on-the-ground, then you’ve proven yourself incapable of making good decisions at this time.
You understand blowers aren’t just used for leaves right? They’re great for all sorts of debris in all the difficult or impossible to get places (imagine rocky landscaping for example). Isn’t the issue 2-stroke blowers but not blowers in general? What’s wrong with electric?
I’ve got an electric powered one, it’s just as loud as a gas one, but still within municipal sound limits.
Sorry, find something else to complain about.
I’ve got an electric powered one, it’s just as loud as a gas one…
No it’s not.
Source: I have ears and have been around both.
Sure if you compare the loudest backpack blower to the quietest electric there’s a Night and day difference,.
But what about the quietest gas one compared to the loudest electric? I’ve got a 60v leaf blower, it’s iirc 13db louder than the 20v. And it’s far louder than a lot of gas ones people use for personal use.
If the deafening whine of a leaf blower feels inescapable, you’re not imagining it.
Leaf blowers produce a low-frequency buzz that “allows loud sound at harmful levels to travel over long distance and readily penetrate walls and windows,” said Banks, who published a peer-reviewed paper in 2017 analyzing noise pollution from the gas-powered lawn equipment.
The pilot study found that the loud noise produced from the machinery could travel up to 800 feet away from the source.
Short- and long-term exposure to noise pollution has links to a host of health impacts, including, in some cases, increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and other serious heart-related problems, and hearing loss. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers among the sources of loud noise that can damage hearing over time.
Electric leaf blowers are quieter. After testing both types, Consumer Reports gave electric devices an average score of 2.9 for noise at the ear, compared to 1.7 for gas models. (The lower the score, the worse the noise.) And when the sound was measured 50 feet away, the electric leaf blowers earned an average score of 4.8 versus 2.5 for gas.
“It dissipates over a much shorter distance and it can’t penetrate walls and windows easily either,” Banks said.
TL;DR - Not only quieter but the sound from and electric leaf blower doesn’t travel like the sounds from a gas leaf blower.
Electric just as loud… WHAT? ARE YOU EVEN A HUMAN?
They produce the same DB the percussive sound of the engine travels further. At the point of sound they can be just as loud.
I mean, all choices have tradeoffs, right? You might clear the leaves faster, but everyone else has to listen to the loud-ass blower and deal with just that little bit more pollution. In my opinion it would be better to have a hard noise pollution limit. If your blower is too loud (and it probably would be) you can still clear the leaves with a rake and the rest of us can live more peaceful lives.
I’m literally writing this comment listening to a leaf blower outside my house. I live in the suburbs. It’s usually louder outside my house than it is inside my house, thanks to the road noise and lawncare. That’s just not right.
It’s usually louder outside my house than it is inside my house
Isn’t this what you would expect almost anywhere, unless you live with someone who is unusually noisy? Even when I lived somewhere where I usually heard only natural sounds, it was louder outside my house than it was inside because of the ducks, chipmunks, cicadas, etc.
They do fit within municipal sound limitations…. So to your point, they should be perfectly fine.
Or the municipal sound limit isn’t the hard limit that Liz would like to have
Ever been right next to a tractor trailer or other heavy equipment the city uses? It’s all around 100db so unless you want absolutely nothing, not even buses. Thats not realistic.
They also need to account for construction, your house was built with equipment louder than leaf blowers for example. So how would your house be here with more restrictive sound limits.
Ever been right next to a tractor trailer or other heavy equipment the city uses? It’s all around 100db so unless you want absolutely nothing, not even buses. Thats not realistic.
Yes, and they’re usually gone in 30ish seconds. Those guys with leaf blowers run them a lot longer than that.
They also need to account for construction, your house was built with equipment louder than leaf blowers for example. So how would your house be here with more restrictive sound limits.
I bet if you plotted the noise, it would be numerous peaks and valleys of sound. Leaf blowers are a continuous solid line of noise.
People do still use reel mowers and such.
Golf courses, definitely. I managed a hardware store for a while and our primary customer for reel mowers, as well as sharpening services for the same, were golf courses.
but to make them, and ship them to you is more destructive than a scythe.
That’s how stupid these arguments are. Forgetting the big picture while looking at a blade of grass.
When I wrote my comment I was thinking of the municipality workers with these gadgets in my area, sometimes using no ear protection! Hardly anyone at home, where there’s mostly just small gardens, uses these super noisy things.The city council probably thinks that they are saving a lot of money and time and giving their workers a much easier time. And like I wrote : I’ve read that devices running on electricity are quite silent. If there can be electricity poles for E.V. why not for this ?
My electric battery one is just as noisy as most gas ones. They just aren’t feasible for city work since they would need a genset to charge them anyways, or they would be having to need 60 batteries for one crew for a day.
So we can’t use technology to make life easier and faster?
I can rake a yard in half the time it takes you to blow your leaves into a pile. People here in California spend hours - HOURS - blowing around leaves. It’s NOT efficient.
What job exactly? What are you trying to achieve that would outweigh the noise and pollution, you’re creating?
Clearing leaves in ten minutes with a minor annoyance to others while saving themselves what little time our corporate overlords allow us to have?
Leaf blowers strike me as a very American thing. People do use them here in the UK, but rarely
The US specializes in technologies that enable laziness
Ah yes, tools. The crutch of the lazy everywhere.
2 stroke bees
I get the sentiment of being anti 2-stroke leaf blower (at least for personal use. Electric isn’t feasible for industry/city use quite yet). I don’t get why this comic is anti all leaf blowers though?
Why isn’t it feasible?
cities don’t have electricity
Because they’re fucking annoying?
In my case it’s the AC units that ruin it for me. We have nice weather that would cool the apartment if we open the windows but if some of the closest neighbors has their unit on it makes it unbearable for the rest