And the other underlying problem implied there is that electric leaf blowers are only viable for household use. They are just so completely impractical for commercial use that no one will ever use them.
So use a rake and broom, it's what I do when I clear my yard and driveway.
Edit: and for that matter we probably need to stop clearing so much yard waste. My village has crazy expensive yard waste tags (with free pickup on select weeks of the year, usually fall) and everyone agrees it's not worth it to bag grass and leaves for the better part of the year. Unsurprisingly we have tons of pollinators, healthy firefly populations, and plenty of critters that feed on all the bugs. Not to mention during spring, every one who's too lazy to manicure their lawn sees blooms with dandelion, clover, ground ivy, and columbine. My block looks like a meadow for April and May with zero effort.
It seems that the value of clearing yard waste depends on the local conditions.
Some climates produce layers of thatch from simple lawn clippings, for instance, which can be problematic. And for some people, fallen tree leaves can be a real concern.
My lawns (all of which have been in Ohio) have never had these issues. I just mow the grass. Stuff (leaves, grass, whatever other stuff is growing or present) gets chopped up, either with a "mulching" mower or a side-discharge mower (and it'd probably work about the same with a reel mower). It degrades quickly-enough in-situ that neither lawn clippings nor tree leaves are ever things that are a concern. (The biggest lawn-oriented issue I ever had was that of having a large number of black walnut trees; the walnuts themselves were unseen ankle-killing traps and/or projectiles in the fall, and the abundance of food lead to an abundance of squirrels and thus fleas.)
But as I understand it, some others are not so lucky. I'm not familiar enough with the problems because I've never had any problems, but I understand that they do exist in some areas.
(Heavily-manicured deliberately-monoculture lawns are a different thing that I'm not even attempting to address here.)
Uh, what? You realize the problem with electric blowers is that they don't have enough power for commercial use compared to gas blowers, so your suggestion is to use a rake?
The problem that blowers solve is moving light yard waste. Most people can do that with a rake and broom. And most of it doesn't need to be moved in the first place.
The problem that blowers solve is moving a huge amount of light yard waste that would not be practical with a rake. Naturally, most people cannot do that with a rake and broom, without dedicating multiple days to the job.
Are these companies operating at scale? We have a couple in my city as well. But it's one guy maintaining their own fleet of equipment. Does the cost rival gas powered companies? The companies I'm aware of that offer this service specifically market it as a premium and appeal to eco friendly consumers that want the less noise and pollution, and are willing to pay more than double what it costs to have a gas powered company do it.
Unfortunately, until the technology improves I think we have a tragedy of the commons scenario here, because gen pop is probably willing to trade the noise and air pollution for the cheaper service
Sydney City Council, a large council, uses electric blowers. They have a small backpack so the blowers are kept light even though they have a much larger battery for much longer operation. They look quite good to use. Certainly better than my heavy dual battery one.
Why? I'm sure they're less practical than the gas powered ones, but every tool system with their own battery standard seems to have one. Even if you had to have a few batteries charged in reserve, that seems more like slightly more expensive and annoying than utterly impractical. Am I missing something?
You basically can run through a high capacity battery in less than 10 minutes, completing a light cleanup of a standard 1/4ac lawn. The battery itself will take 3-4 hours.
Running through an entire block would deplete numerous batteries, meaning you’ve got to purchase 2 dozen if your crew is going to do the average 20ish homes a day. The purchase cost is one thing sure, but batteries are a consumable and the logistics of charging are no joke for the average crew.
This is all just to blow some light leaves and clippings. This doesn’t account for running trimmers or god help you the lawnmower itself.
The tech just isn’t there yet and given the extremely high energy density and ease of use of gasoline, it may never match it.
I understand that they are less convenient and probably significantly more expensive for commercial use. That's why legislation is necessary, so landscapers who choose them aren't at a cost disadvantage. Externalities like air pollution are the textbook reason for regulations like this.
I mean we are talking an order of magnitude more effort and cost in exchange for noise pollution. I suspice if you told voters lawn care would quadruple in price in exchange for less (note, not eliminated) noise and air pollution that voters would not be terribly keen to approve such a solution.
From a little looking, the Greenworks 82BA26-52DP[1] seems like it might work well. It has a fairly long run time on battery on high (40 minutes), very long on low (2 hours), and has a dual port charging solution that seems to be able to charge batteries in 40-60 minutes depending on battery size. About a hour per tank of gas for a gas powered leaf blower seems to be about average, so I don't think stopping that often is really a problem.
It is more expensive up front, from even the electric blower's own numbers, but they say it's much cheaper over a year if you have a 4 hour daily usage cycle.[2] I don't know enough to know whether the claims make sense or not. Maybe you know more about this, but maybe it's not as clearly one sided as you think?
I'm on the (admittedly expensive) EGO system of lawn tools, and I can mow, trim, and blow my entire yard (front and back) in a relatively normal lot (8000 sq ft) on one 10.0Ah battery. It recharges in 2 hours. So I think electric is a touch more practical than your numbers might represent.
But for commercial use I agree, the upfront capex cost is prohibitive. And the need for charging infrastructure (in truck or other) presents an issue.
The truck, yes. A few extra batteries and a charger are somewhat expensive, but within expectation of the job I think. I doubt most locations are entirely without power that they can use. Even public parks often have outlets at specific locations.
In the end the extra battery cost might be cheaper than the gas and maintenance requirements for gas blowers over time.
Those minorities get the worst of the air pollution and dangerous noise levels themselves. And you have to add the externality of everyone else being affected by the pollution before you weigh the costs and benefits. Of course landscapers shouldn't be expected to switch voluntarily when it puts them at a competitive disadvantage, it's a textbook case of externality needing regulations.
> My 80v electric blower with a heavy battery runs for 21 minutes. A gas blower with 1.5 gallons of fuel will last 10 hours.
I found backbpack models (and if we're comparing professional services that's what seems we should compare) that claim 60 minuntes on high at 800cfm+ and 20 hours on low, with dual charger systems you can buy to supplement.
I saw numbers quoting that most professional leaf blowers go through about 0.43 gallons of fuel an hour. The top backpack blowers I looked up didn't even have a 1.5 gallon tank. The Echo PB-9010T has a 83.8 fl. oz. tank. The Stihl BR 800 C-E Magnum has a 67.6 oz. tank. The SCHRÖDER SR-9900X 80cc has a tank size of 75 oz.
If you have to stop to refuel every hour or so anyway, swapping out a battery that's been charging doesn't seem like a big inconvenience.
> A ban on gas blowers - or blowing in general - will only harm minorities already underpaid, often under the table.
I'm not sure we should be avoiding legislation meant to protect the public in general (air and noise pollution) because of possible affects to some specific subcategory (leaf blowing) of an industry (landscaping) which happens to employ minorities in a higher percentage than other industries. If we were to always do that, then we'd rarely ever have any useful public protections, would we?
How many professional leaf blowers per capita do you think we have, anyway, and if it costs more for everyone since it's regulated, why would the impact really be that great, since it should just mean they charge more?
Maybe they sound loud when you're using them but the difference is night and day when you're a bit farther away. I haven't heard a single electric blower that's louder than the quietest gas blower. And honestly the air pollution is my bigger complaint.
I'm not talking about CO2 for global warming here, it's negligible. This is local air pollution, polluting the air I breathe in my house and on my street. The other big offender in this category is wood smoke from fireplaces, which I would also be in favor of banning, though I understand this would be extremely unpopular (I know, I love a good fire too).
People don't realize that wood smoke is every bit as harmful as cigarette smoke and much worse than modern car exhaust. Many (most?) days in winter around here fireplace smoke is by far the biggest contributor to general poor air quality, and then there are the days when my neighbor's chimney smoke blows directly into my yard where my children want to play, for hours...
The city I'm in banned fireplaces in new houses a few decades ago. Of course, Phoenix is too hot far more than it resembles cold, and most will stay inside as much as possible for at least half the year.
Also, crucially: dB is a measure of sound pressure level at a point in space. It is not at all a measure of total sound output. And it tends to fall off at a rate of 6dB per doubling of distance.
So by halving the measurement distance and changing nothing else, a thing reads as being about 6dB louder. And by doubling the measurement distance and changing nothing else, a thing reads as being about 6dB quieter.
So stating that a jackhammer is 100dB and a television is 60dB is rather meaningless by itself.
If the jackhammer is measured at 0.5 meters (the distance of the operator's ears, say) and the television is measured at 2 meters (the distance of the viewer's ears, say), then there is a measurement delta of 12dB, which is a difference more than an order of magnitude in energy intensity.
And all we did to produce that massive delta was vary the distance where we've placed the meter.
(And, no, there is no standard measurement distance. Loudspeakers are often [but not always!] measured at a distance of 1 meter, and generators are often [but not always!] measured at a distance of 20 feet. It needs to be explicitly stated.
In all cases, if the only parameter relayed is "dB" then it doesn't really mean very much.
And this isn't even getting into other important factors, like if the measurement is performed in a half-space or anechoic or whatever environment.)
...yet where I live all the parks, public landscaping, etc., that are owned by the municipality are maintained with electric leaf blowers except for areas where they have it contracted out and then it's a mix. It's totally possible, but I think the larger problem is the sunk money on equipment that doesn't need to be replaced any time soon.
I've seen a couple businesses in my city that use electric. It's their main selling point. But in both the cases I'm aware of it's literally just one guy maintaining his own tiny fleet of equipment. And it's more than double what it would cost to get a bigger landscaping company to do it. I would really like to see an example of a landscaping company do this at scale, because I haven't seen it.
The equipment itself is not even really that big of an investment to my understanding. A good electric leaf blower and battery is probably equivalent or cheaper than its gas powered equivalent. It's the logistics and maintenance burden of having to constantly charge, swap, replace, and maintain the batteries. Kind of why electric cars only became viable in the last 20 years. The technology has been around a long time, it's just only now viable enough due to capacity restrictions.
Due to the form factor and energy requirements, it may be a long time before that happens to replace two and four stroke motors for commercial use cases.
DC seems to be doing pretty great with our ban. Theres some loud-ish electrics but it's still 1/8th the horror that it used to be; it used to be that someone two blocks away was still creating a living hell, but now it's really just someone across the street with a particularly poor model.
Next up on my list, construction sites! We've had a small condo going up nearby, wood framed, and the generator is loud as fuck all the time. They use so little power though. A hybrid setup with 1kwh battery would let that thing rest 95% of the time. Ditto for their air compressor; a even modest sized 300 PSI air receiver tank would radically improve the neighborhood for nearly no cost.
Another thing that sucks about construction: the dust. Workers have to wear respiratory devices on some of these jobs and yet no issues if the jackhammer is venting particulate into a schoolyard across the street.
Also sidewalks are routinely trashed by construction companies, destroyed to rubble even by their trucks and not repaired until the project is just about finished. Never mind the years where disabled people could not walk around the project.
I am so tired of noise and air pollution having 0 enforcement in cities, but if a car is parked for 15m too long in a metered spot they are ready like hawks to swoop down and dispense a $60 ticket.
I was eating lunch at a restaurant few weeks ago and a parking enforcer was ticketing a car right next to us. A few feet past the car three dudes on motorcycles were revving their engines and blasting music at the stop light. No one could talk and the air smelled for a couple minutes after they left. It just seemed so wrong who was getting punished and what cities prioritize in that instance.
Usually the ban is something like you cant use it in 500ft of a residence, which obviates that issue if cops bothered to patrol for this or if there was a reporting hotline that was well advertised.
