I look forward to seeing more electric leaf blowers. Sure they have a bit of an annoying high pitched whine when you’re close by, but you’re not going to hear it more than 5 meters away. I’ve also been seeing more electric lawn mowers which are also much quieter.
I commonly use an electric leafblower for work, it’s loud as fuck
I look forward to seeing less leaf blowers in general. I don’t get the obsession with getting rid of leaves. You’re damaging the local ecosystem for what? The ability to watch your grass turn brown?
Hi, leaf pilled person here. I still have a leaf blower to get them off my driveway. IN FACT! I use a leaf blower to get them off the pavement and onto the ground where they’ll be beneficial. They’re still a useful piece of equipment.
a broom would work better, be quicker, and not cause as much stress to your human and animal neighbors.
The last part may be true, but the first two are definitely not.
Way to out yourself as someone who has never done manual labor.
no, i’ve just done enough, both with and without power tools, to know how to pick the right tool for the job.
if you need to blow some dirt off a road just to make it look nicer at the end of a roadworks project, or get the bulk of the small branches out of the way after a tree trimming, and don’t care about being thorough, then sure, i guess a leaf blower will get the job done (and you’ve been running much louder and heavier equipment all day, so who gives a fuck about the noise pollution).
but if you just want to clear some wet fallen leaves off a driveway so it looks nicer, i’d pick the pushbroom every single time. it’ll get the job done quicker, cleaner, and with far less making my neighbors hate me. having a leaf blower for personal use seems completely insane to me.
I just use my bare hands personally. Green to the core
You severely overestimate how long it takes to blow my driveway. Well under five minutes. I do it less than once a month. Maybe once a week in the fall, if even. I think the animal neighbors in my dirt are happy for the leaves.
i think you’re overestimating how long it’d take to sweep.
Grass turns brown in the fall, for you? That usually only happens in the summer here, when we get heat waves. The grass is green every other time, covered or not covered.
Yeah, it’s really crazy how much quieter the electric lawn tools are. It’s very noticeable.
I have an electric leaf blower, it’s pretty loud and you can definitely hear it >5m away, in fact you could probably hear it several hundred metres away. I do agree they are less disturbing overall though.
Where is the sound coming from to make it that noisy? Is it more the engine or the woosh?
It’s basically a big hair dryer, there’s a big fan in it
Da whoosh
Obligatory “leave the leaves” if you can. Insects and small animals use the leaf litter and they’re good for soil creation (thanks, worms and fungi). Wondering why you don’t see as many lightning bugs/fireflies nowadays? Leave your leaves and they’ll have places to lay their eggs. Avoid becoming a member of the cult of the lawn!
I’m so angry. I had leaves for two years and the city made me remove them like right during the nesting period. So it’s gonna be another two years before I see an increase in fireflies.
Ewwww, there are bugs in my lawn‽ Kill them kill them kill them!
Depends on the climate and the number of trees. I understand wanting to leave all the leaves, but it’ll just create a muddy mess in my yard. I mulch them, it spreads through the yard. I circle around the trees and garden beds to get more leaves in those areas. Leftovers go on the composting pile.
I leave all the leaves in my yard, and mine is the only one with a lot of fireflies. It’s amazing at night
People who unironically think this should go clean some leaves themselves and see how long they stick with the rake.
It’s always so much easier to tell other people how to do their job.
But I hate climate change and like bees
‘Cleaning’ leaves is stupid as hell anyway.
Depends if you’re going for most or all of the leaves. If you’re just going for most and you’re not incompetent, rake is easy and quick.
is a blower more fun, yes, do i drive a tank instead of a bike because of that? no
Our park ranger is a nice guy and I help him out from time to time, and we got talking about how leafblowers suck.
He said that yes they’re loud, but they are remarkably efficient at moving leaves into a nice pile, missing nothing
we got talking about how leafblowers suck.
In my experience, they tend to blow, even the good ones.
The “missing nothing” part is problematic. Many creatures rely on leaves to survive or reproduce. Fireflies are a common example. Their population has been decimated by the complete removal of leaves as standard practice
I cannot understand why people are so intent on removing every leaf from their yard
Yep, not even all the ecosystems that were nearly settling their lives there. Rakes are more gentle
TIL wind kills bugs
The problem is also with the fact that when there’s no leaves, bugs and other small animals have nowhere to stay over the winter or lay their eggs.
Sure, but a rake is as bad.
Using the same principle as noise cancelling headphones, you could just blast an equally loud counter sound to negate the blower’s noise.
But where’s the fun in that?
Won’t work sadly, the “counter sound” can’t be in phase in multiple locations because of delay and reflections. Headphones can do ANC because the ear is basically a single point so the mic can pick up exactly what you’re about to hear and then compensate.
Using a speaker like that would just create double the leafblower noise.
For the lazy: song
That’s amazingly good and annoying at the same time.
