[HN Gopher] Oakland bans the use of combustion engine-powered le...
___________________________________________________________________
Oakland bans the use of combustion engine-powered leaf blowers and
trimmers
Author : hindsightbias
Score : 301 points
Date : 2021-03-05 17:29 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.oaklandca.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.oaklandca.gov)
| jeffbee wrote:
| Neighboring Berkeley banned these years ago but there is no
| mechanism for enforcement so it hasn't made any difference.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I have been looking into the battery-powered lawncare ecosystem
| for a while but I have found the prospects a little daunting. As
| far as I can tell, there's one new entrant to the field, Ego. The
| others are either from companies that have dealt with batteries
| for a while (Dewalt, Ryobi) or are "house brands" found
| exclusively at the big box stores like Lowes, Home Depot,
| Menards, and so on.
|
| I am not afraid of spending money on items but I find it
| frustrating when the extra expenditure ends up being a dud, like
| my Toro (gas-powered) lawnmower which, despite the money spent
| and the numerous trips to the repair place, and the care lavished
| on it, has worked less than it has failed completely. My previous
| mower ran wonderfully without hardly any maintenance; this thing
| I have been changing oil, messing about with spark plugs, using
| special and such, all to no avail.
|
| Battery-powered sounds good but I don't know if the market
| shakeout has happened yet.
| matwood wrote:
| I use electric/battery where feasible. This means I have a 4
| cycle lawn mower and 2 cycle trimmer/weed eater. Sidewalk edger
| and blower are both plug in, and work fine since they are only
| used in the front yard. I have many other tools that are
| battery and just prefer plugin in less I need to be very
| mobile.
|
| The problem with battery is that even within a brand, it keeps
| changing format (though seems to be settling a bit) and they
| are not as strong. They also don't sit well, so if you have
| stored them you have plan way ahead to do the work you want to
| do.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| It sounds like you just don't like how hard it is to find
| quality items that last. That isn't really battery related.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| The battery powered options from the good tool brands like
| Makita and Ryobi are very good. I have a Makita and would
| definitely recommend.
|
| Best part? No small engine maintenance needed.
| ummonk wrote:
| And brands usually use one battery model across their tool
| lineup so you can swap batteries.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| One major reason why electric lawn equipment isn't more popular
| for commercial: Excessive battery costs.
|
| If you're a home-owner you can rotate a couple of batteries and
| likely only use the ones included with the equipment bundle(s).
| But commercial users don't have that luxury, they're definitely
| buying additional batteries. Manufacturers commonly charge an
| excessive premium for add-on batteries.
|
| Example:
|
| - Toro Brushless Leaf Blower (51820) + 2.5 Ah battery (88625) &
| charger (88602): $199
|
| - Toro 2.5 Ah battery (88625): $165
|
| So the battery add-on costs 82%~ of the tools total cost alone.
| As a homeowner after n years you'll likely respond by just
| outright replacing the tool for a new bundle, but in a commercial
| context this just kills the whole idea. According to the
| manufacturer at the lowest speed setting each battery lasts 90
| minutes, and nobody is using this at the lowest setting.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Laws like this have an undue hardship effect on lower-wage
| landscapers and gardeners. That's why I oppose them.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Conversely, they mitigate the undue hardship effects of noise
| and chemical pollution on involuntary recipients, as well as
| the long-term health burden on landscapers are gardeners who
| experience high levels of chronic exposure.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| That's bonkers!
|
| If you're somewhere you can't charge, you're talking $1500 to
| do 4 hours of heavy work.
|
| And that's assuming your small battery pack can even put out
| enough torque to match a 2-stroke for heavy uses.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Or you fit your pickup truck with an inverter (which you
| probably already have tbh) and charge batteries as you drive
| to the next job. And wait until you hear about some exciting
| products that require no battery at all, like Rake and Broom!
| Someone1234 wrote:
| It takes 3 hours to recharge the provided battery on the
| provided charger. That means a battery could be used, at
| most, twice in a day therefore still requiring add-on
| batteries for commercial applications (3x~ per tool, per
| day).
|
| As to the "rake and broom," point: there's an innate time
| value to consider for commercial applications. If each job
| takes longer, you'll do fewer jobs, and could lose money
| overall.
|
| I'm not really clear on what point you were trying to make?
| That add-ons aren't overpriced? That commercial lawn care
| companies should wait 3 hrs between jobs? That manual
| raking and gas/electric blowers offer the same
| productivity?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The point is that you're focusing on the worst-case
| scenario costs, rather than considering that there are
| workarounds (faster commercial chargers, vehicle as less-
| polluting power store for mains-power electrical tools,
| manual tools that work better and faster in some
| contexts).
|
| I think you understand this quite well.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > The point is that you're focusing on the worst-case
| scenario costs
|
| It is quite literally today's current prices at major
| retailers. It isn't the worst case, Toro's battery
| overcharging is pretty in-line with other manufacturers,
| and I picked Toro because it is popular/mainstream for
| commercial work _already_.
|
| > faster commercial chargers
|
| You're saying that for a commercial lawn care company to
| switch to electric right now they have to buy chargers
| that don't exist for sale?
|
| > vehicle as less-polluting power store for mains-power
| electrical tool,
|
| And the cost of batteries? You're just completely
| ignoring the comment chain's topic entirely.
|
| > manual tools that work better and faster in some
| contexts
|
| Commercial lawn care and leaf blowers/trimmers is the
| context. It is literally what the thread and comment
| chain is about. In the context we're talking about: No,
| absolutely not. In other irrelevant contexts? Sure, I
| guess?
| mnouquet wrote:
| Or ICE powered gas tools.
| danans wrote:
| Not all electric lawn equipment uses batteries. A lot just plug
| in. Oakland isn't a place with huge yards, so corded equipment
| works fine.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| ...and now Marin County, too -- please, God!
| lostphilosopher wrote:
| FWIW
|
| I've been very happy with the Ego line of electric (rechargeable
| batteries) lawn tools. I have, and use regularly, their leaf
| blower, weed whacker, and snow blower. 3 seasons of use so far.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Los Angeles adopted such a law years ago. Net effect on the
| ground: every gardener still uses the gas-powered model. Because
| two reasons IMO a)lack of publicity and b) the gardener and the
| homeowner are liable for the fine, and who wants to rat on their
| neighbors (especially if "neighbor" = landlord as in my case)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > who wants to rat on their neighbors
|
| You'd imagine there would be more busybodies or easily-
| disturbed people who would be phoning anonymous tips over noise
| complaints. Maybe they would be doing that more if knowledge of
| the law was more widespread.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Density of busybodies increases as you go up the economic
| ladder (and then falls off a cliff at the top).
|
| You're gonna have a harder time getting people to narc on
| their neighbors in LA than in SF.
|
| Even then most people who would narc will just ask their
| neighbors to adjust the times which they do loud things and
| most neighbors will do so.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| LA is like five times the population of SF. There's
| probably more wealthy people there just based on the sheer
| size of the population alone.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Just give a private right of action. If the $500 fine is
| payable to the complainant (or split between the city and the
| complainant) then the problem will go away in short order.
| sparkling wrote:
| The entry level blowers don't even have swap-able batteries. With
| these things standing in a cold, dusty, maybe humid garage 99% of
| the time, the battery will rapidly degrade and be dead after just
| a few years of usage. Then you have 15lbs of e-waste for the junk
| yard. Honestly not a ideal situation either.
| bernardv wrote:
| Great move. The mostly North American leaf-blower addiction is so
| annoying. A good old rake will do the trick. Never understood the
| need to blow leaves around in a windstorm, as I've seen it
| practiced in the northeastern US.
| bernardv wrote:
| Why was my comment voted down? Are the admins of this site so
| sensitive? Did I hurt anyone's feelings or use foul language?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| There's a lot of 'you can't tell me what to do!' types on HN.
| frEdmbx wrote:
| Adam Carolla will be happy to hear this.
| dba7dba wrote:
| Abut 10 years ago, City of Los Angeles tried to ban engine-
| powered leaf blowers (driven by people tired of the noise
| pollution) but was reversed when local gardeners made a big stink
| about it.
| underseacables wrote:
| I'm ambivalent about this. On the one hand they are LOUD as hell,
| but the electrics just don't blow as good. The gas powered
| blowers just work better, especially for large jobs.
| rektide wrote:
| None of the reviews I've read have had any complaints. If crews
| do find these electrics aren't as good, hopefully the market
| can respond & build better ones.
|
| I have no reservation about saying that the societal good far
| outweighs the bad.
|
| This corrects this imbalanced market where 99% of stakeholders
| are held captive by old, polluting, loud, ultra-obnoxious, all-
| downsides-heavily-externalized persistent disturbances.
| Mandating electric options was evidently what it's going to
| take to get any change, to start to do the right thing.
|
| The market, now that it was to do the right thing, can begin to
| adjust it's approach as to how it wants to do the right thing.
| It can improve it's designs, &c.
| [deleted]
| root_axis wrote:
| Why do you say they don't blow as well? I replaced my gas
| blower with an electric one a couple years back and it blows
| even better than my gas did. I also can't think of a technical
| reason why this would be the case so I'm curious what you mean
| by this.
| ddingus wrote:
| Do you live somewhere with respectable residential power?
|
| 120 volts at 10 amps is kind of tepid, when compared against
| a combustion engine, and typical for the US
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Depends on the style. An plug-in electric leafblower is
| constrained to around 2HP max (746W/HP) while drawing 12A
| from a 15A circuit. A handheld gas one will have a 25cc
| engine and can probably do 2HP max. But the backpack style
| gas leafblower that landscaping crews often use will have a
| 50 or 60cc engine that would put out 3 or 4HP, so will be
| able to blow more strongly.
| ilamont wrote:
| We are one of the few families in our neighborhood who still
| use rakes. Nearly everyone else hires landscaping crews who use
| the gas powered models. A few homeowners have electrics, which
| are quieter but take far longer to finish the job - sometimes
| hours.
| bernardv wrote:
| Rakes are so much more efficient, I find. And an opportunity
| to just chill. I don't understand the leaf-blowers. In the
| US, I've seen so many so many lawn service guys just blowing
| leaves around in the wind - just because they're paid to do
| it once a week. Nuts.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Compare like for like. Commercial grade blowers blow roughly
| the same (600+cfm).
|
| If you're comparing a commercial backpack to a consumer-grade
| handheld, sure, big difference. But, that's apples and
| oranges.
| ahupp wrote:
| In addition to the noise, those two-stroke engines produce a
| huge amount of pollution.
|
| "A single two-stroke engine produces pollution equivalent to
| that of 30 to 50 four-stroke automobiles. "
|
| https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/two-strokes-and...
| mc32 wrote:
| Then they should ban two-stroke gasoline scooters (both stand
| on and sit on types).
| jascii wrote:
| For what it's worth, the 2008 article OP references
| specifically mentions technology to significantly reduce
| the pollution from 2 stroke engines. This technology has
| since been widely adopted in the scooter industry. Modern
| scooters pollute less per mile than the average single
| occupant car. https://www.motorscooterguide.net/do-
| scooters-pollute-more-t...
| linksnapzz wrote:
| When I lived in Cambridge, there was a guy in my neighborhood
| with a 1970s 2-stroke Saab. I figured every time he started
| it up, he undid all the non-polluting that every Prius ever
| sold in MA was responsible for.
| tclancy wrote:
| Was it a Sonnet? Those were pretty enough to justify it.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| Nah, it was a 60s-70s 96.
| hangonhn wrote:
| I feel really bad for the people who have to use the gas ones
| because they're breathing in exhaust the whole time. Small gas
| engines, especially the 2 stroke cycle ones, don't burn nearly
| as cleanly as the ones we find on most cars. And the people who
| operate those things are doing it professionally so they're
| likely to be expose to the exhausts all the time. The noise
| bothers me but I only hear them once in a while. I just feel
| bad for the people who have to deal with them all the time.
| mrwh wrote:
| Yes, this. The people most harmed by these leaf blowers are
| the people using them. Arguments that "electric ones don't
| work as well" rather miss this point.
| alistairSH wrote:
| That isn't true any more.
|
| Comparing the commercial EGO systems to the commercial
| Husqvarna systems, both produce ~600cfm of air movement in a
| backpack system. The battery life on the EGO systems is
| sufficient (60 min+ runtime peer battery, in my experience,
| more than enough for several large yards during mowing season).
|
| Yes, a landscape crew would need to carry several spare
| batteries per electric device, likely with some sort of
| charging station on the truck. Expensive up front costs, no
| question. But, probably worth it in the long run for emissions
| and nuisance gains.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Why do you need to blow leaves in the first place? Use a broom
| or rake.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| I live in the forest and we routinely need to blow off the
| roof. You aren't supposed to sweep it because it degrades the
| shingles (according to our roofer).
|
| So, we have an electric one for that, and for various other
| tasks, like clearing our steep driveway of debris that makes
| it difficult to receive deliveries or get our cars up.
| Blowing takes 30 seconds, where sweeping would take 5
| minutes.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| If it's been a couple years since you tried electric, I would
| try again. The state of the art in cordless electric landscape
| tools really has improved a lot over a fairly recent period. If
| you stay within one brand the batteries are all interchangeable
| too, so if you just have two and keep one on the charger you
| can pretty much eliminate battery charging headache. Some
| vendors offer a backpack-type electric blower that uses
| multiple batteries for better runtime.
|
| I used to begrudgingly use expensive four-stroke tools because
| they were less irritating than two-stroke and electrics weren't
| up to snuff, but more recently I've replaced everything but a
| leaf mulcher with cordless electric and I'm really happy with
| them. I'll probably replace the mulcher eventually as well, I
| don't doubt that the cordless equipment can deliver, it's just
| that it still works and where I use it trailing an extension
| cord is fine.
| lsllc wrote:
| The electric ones are pretty good (I have the Ego one), but
| it's the battery life that "blows".
|
| Since I also have the Ego mower & weedwhacker, I have 3
| batteries to swap through, but it is a pain during fall
| cleanup.
|
| Absolutely no good for commercial or big jobs though.
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| You really need to get the wired ones if you want decent
| performance, in my experience. Having that power extension
| cable is a pain, but the battery powered ones barely do
| anything by comparison
| klyrs wrote:
| Cynical, but... the great thing about the wired ones is
| that you can run them from a portable generator. Reading
| the text of the legislation, it seems that this will be an
| acceptable workaround.
| lsllc wrote:
| The generator will be 4-stroke and probably running at a
| mostly constant rpm so it should at least be less
| polluting than 2-stroke. Extra points for a propane
| generator!
| TwoBit wrote:
| We need to call on Home Depot etc. to stop selling these.
| enahs-sf wrote:
| This is all well and good, but i'd much prefer the city focus on
| things like cleaning up all the broken glass everywhere or
| addressing the unhoused issues before taking on such superfluous
| tasks.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| This is simply to make people _feel good_. Easier to tackle
| issues like this than to actually invest in solving real
| problems.
| munk-a wrote:
| There are some good examples elsewhere in the article
| responses but this legislation may significantly improve
| health outcomes for landscapers and provide a non-negligible
| effect on the environment. Two-stroke leafblower engines
| pollute a lot.
|
| It's not just about making people feel good or allowing
| audiophiles to listen to records undisturbed.
| munk-a wrote:
| Why can't we do good? I'd prefer it if we solved global warming
| before putting in energy toward next-gen video cards but I do
| understand that some problems aren't simple (i.e. the unhoused
| issues in particular) and I don't think the easy problems
| should wait politely to be solved behind the hard and complex
| ones.
| rektide wrote:
| Legislating that property owners not use anti-human systems
| doesn't take much effort, is easy to knock out. Using a zero-
| sum mentality, that good legislation in one place is
| incompatible with doing work elsewhere, is harmful. Especially
| when the work you talk about requires not just legislation, but
| significant resources invested. Here, we only mandate that
| companies do the right thing, at their own cost. This seems
| like an easy win, something worth knocking out early. Blocking
| easy at-hand work on all the backlog of big important hard to
| do work seems illogical.
| vvillena wrote:
| How is it superflous? It improves air quality a lot, and it's
| free to implement. Also, it's not an exclusive policy, it can
| be done in addition to the things you propose.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's free to implement_
|
| It's free to the city's coffers. It is a multi-million dollar
| capital expense to the city's businesses and residents.
|
| I support the measure. But it's far from free.
| triceratops wrote:
| It might inspire some residents to give up their lawns.
| Which would also be a plus. So far they've externalized the
| true cost of their lawn maintenance on everyone else.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Neither was the multi-million dollar subsidy to polluters
| paid by the people who didn't want or need the gasoline-
| powered leaf-blower service, and who have been picking up
| the cost of the free riders for a long time.
| jandrese wrote:
| At the end of the day lawn service gets more expensive, but
| assuming the city can strongly enforce the law it should
| become more expensive more or less equally across the board
| so there shouldn't be any direct winner or loser from the
| policy. The companies would theoretically lose a few
| customers that could only barely afford the service in the
| first place, but I don't think it would cost many customers
| in the end.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _lawn service gets more expensive_
|
| Assuming the lawn services can pass the cost along to
| customers. Given the low barriers to entry, I would not
| make this assumption.
|
| In reality, a mix of total wage decreases ( _i.e._
| reduction in hours, benefits and /or hourly wage),
| supplier payment decreases, profit decreases and price
| increases will incorporate the change. Also, if an outfit
| cannot afford the capital cost of upgrading their
| equipment, they will fold.
| jandrese wrote:
| If it costs some services more to upgrade than others
| then they will be in trouble. If enforcement is
| nonuniform than it will also be an issue. But if both of
| these can be controlled then it's really just those
| consumers that could only barely afford a lawn service in
| the first place that get left in the cold.
|
| Enforcement shouldn't be excessively difficult. Cops can
| write citations for illegal equipment, and if a company
| routinely ignores the citations they could get in real
| trouble. Give the companies plenty of time (a year or
| two) to phase in the new equipment as well. Make sure the
| change is well publicized, especially in Hispanic media.
| If the city was really proactive they could task an
| intern with calling every lawn service company in the
| city 6 months before the law goes into effect and make
| sure each one has a plan to transition in time.
|
| The enforcement is key however. These sorts of
| regulations will be ignored 100% if they aren't enforced.
| Escalating fines are necessary, they have to make it more
| expensive to break the law than comply, or the companies
| that cheat will win.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Most local government is parallel rather than serial.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| It's amazing that the city of Oakland has time for this but no
| time to enforce the law or hold arrested criminals accountable
| with actual charges. They've made no real progress on the streak
| of crimes against Asians committed by what seems like mostly
| African American suspects, and have been hesitant to use the
| 'hate crime' label which they use generously in other situations.
| Meanwhile, police chief LeRonne Armstrong arrested an Asian
| shopowner who legally used his firearm in defense
| (https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-cops-reluctant-to-
| arrest-s...). Even though the shopowner was later released with
| no charges (https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/03/02/no-charges-
| for-oakla...), it gives away the lopsided politics and priorities
| of Oakland. And now here we are, with the city leadership
| spending time on minutia instead of the real problems that plague
| the bay.
|
| Regarding this ban - I can understand upholding noise codes, but
| the reality is that electric leaf blowers and trimmers are
| nowhere near as good and have limited run times. They are simply
| not a good substitute. Rather than banning them, I would rather
| see the cost of the externalities priced in or maybe a tighter
| number of hours when such equipment can be used. In general, the
| government should not get into the habit of controlling
| individual actions via widely-scoped hard bans.
| plandis wrote:
| I have an electric weed trimmer, lawn mower and leaf blower. They
| are quite a bit less noise than gas equivalents I used growing
| up. The one huge downside is that these devices are pretty big
| energy consumers and battery life is horrible.
|
| My yard is tiny and I'll routinely go through 2 240WHr batteries
| each time I cleanup my yard. I couldn't imagine how annoying that
| would be with an actual big yard. Also good luck if you go on
| vacation and come back to tall grass, my electric mower (I have
| one from Ryobi) that struggles to increase the torque well enough
| to handle it.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I bought a reel mower for my smaller yard. No charging, minor
| effort to keep it clean, stays sharp for a long time (at some
| point I'll have to deal with that, but it's been good so far),
| no gas, essentially no noise. It takes me just as long to mow
| my yard as with an electric or gas mower, though I do have to
| mow it twice a week during the peak growing season (it does not
| handle tall grass very well). But 20-30 minutes of walking &
| pushing exercise is not terrible twice a week, I run, row, and
| cycle a lot more than that. Last year I treated it as a warmup
| and followed it up with a 30+ minute run.
| plandis wrote:
| Yeah I actually initially started out with a reel mower when
| my wife and I first bought our house, they are definitely
| pretty good, assuming you can work around the caveats you
| mentioned.
|
| I should try doing it before a run that's a good idea
| sib wrote:
| > these devices are pretty big energy consumers > go through 2
| 240WHr batteries
|
| Is that a big energy consumption? It's about 0.5 kWH, or about
| $0.10, depending on where you are. How much would you spend on
| gas & oil for a 2-stroke ICE system?
|
| (I can understand that it's a bit of a hassle from a charging
| process point of view.)
| ascales wrote:
| I think he means more like you need a few batteries or you
| have to break up your work across a couple days
| plandis wrote:
| It's not the cost that's the issue but rather that you either
| need higher energy density batteries which will typically be
| heavier or you need many batteries or you need to take breaks
| to charge the batteries you have.
|
| Now, this isn't so bad for my yard but if I was mowing my
| grandparents yard like I did as a kid that would be a really
| annoying limitation since they had like an 0.75 acre lot.
|
| I hope that battery technology continues to improve but today
| it is for sure a limitation.
| xmprt wrote:
| A good result of this is that the technology is going to get a
| lot better now that there's a larger market for the electric
| alternatives.
| egeozcan wrote:
| Why can't leaf blowers have just long cables and no battery?
| Would be completely fine for small gardens. Professional ones
| could have quickly interchangeable batteries.
|
| On lawn movers, you could put giant batteries as you don't
| carry them, it's just a matter of cost.
| bluGill wrote:
| A cord cannot deliver enough power. They exist, but only
| smaller models and you quickly need more power.
| mnouquet wrote:
| Because your standard 1.5HP 110V circuit has as much torque
| an as sloth, which is only slightly better than battery
| operated tools' having as much torque as an anemic sloth.
| phkahler wrote:
| There goes my plan for a leaf powered leaf vacuum.
| danaliv wrote:
| Good riddance. When I lived in Oakland the noise from these
| things was constant in my neighborhood. They were running every
| single day. It was intolerable.
| jlmorton wrote:
| Agreed, good riddance, but the noise is not going to go away,
| it's going to become a high-pitched scream, rather than a
| lower-pitched buzz.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| The higher the sound frequency, the easier it is to muffle
| it.
| finnh wrote:
| That high-frequency sound doesn't carry as far, at least
| acdha wrote:
| That doesn't fit any electric blower I've ever heard. The
| overall volume is notably lower and the frequency isn't too
| different - slightly higher but even a hair drier with a
| smaller diameter isn't a "high-pitched scream".
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's notably quieter, because it's notably less powerful.
| In the best case, you hear the noise for a multiple of the
| time because the work is done more slowly and/or by more
| people using blowers together to move debris.
| acdha wrote:
| The commercial grade stuff is similar power and I have
| zero evidence supporting the claim that it's less
| effective since I see the same crews taking roughly the
| same time in my neighborhood.
| bluGill wrote:
| Battery powered blowers exist and are just as powerful. A
| cord (as others have noted) can't deliver enough power
| for the job and so they have to run it longer. However a
| battery can deliver just as much power as an engine, for
| only a little more weight.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I looked for a 2500+W battery blower before buying my
| Echo gas blower. (I'd tried two different corded ones
| that were underpowered and went looking for something
| that would actually work.)
|
| I couldn't find one (at the time, probably 4 years ago).
| Most everything I could find was 1/4 of the equivalent
| power.
| bluGill wrote:
| Look again. Battery powered equipment is advancing very
| quick right now. The market of 2 years ago was different
| from 4 years ago, which is different from today.
|
| Though I will admit to not being sure exactly what you
| will find.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I will look out of an engineer's curiosity, but as a
| customer, I already have one; I have no need nor want for
| a second one.
|
| In 5 minutes of googling for "commercial battery leaf
| blower" and "backpack battery leaf blower", it looks like
| they're mostly still in the 500-600W (2/3 HP) range with
| a couple hitting around 1000W, even for the backpack
| units.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Most 80v battery powered leaf blowers are in the 5-600
| CFM range, same as a 3hp gas blower.
| sokoloff wrote:
| My gas blower is 1100 cfm @ 220mph. I can't readily find
| the HP rating, but it's the 5-6 years ago equivalent of
| the current 79.9cc Echo. Mine is on the mid-range of the
| commercial blower range.
| kube-system wrote:
| I just went to Stihl's site out of curiousity (and
| because most backpack blowers I see out in the world are
| orange) -- their biggest professional 4.4hp gasoline
| backpack blower is 912cfm @ 199mph avg.
|
| Most of the ones in the middle of the product lineup are
| 500-600cfm
| zdragnar wrote:
| Yeah, I wouldn't use my battery powered one for
| commercial purposes, but that is due to runtime and 120v
| charger. Unless you have a thick mat of wet leaves,
| 600cfm is more than enough for a homeowner.
|
| The number I got for a 3hp model was based on a husqvarna
| I saw from a quick google search, I think... almost
| certainly a residential model.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Unless you have a thick mat of wet leaves
|
| Pacific Northwest resident chiming in.
|
| I absolutely have a thick mat of wet leaves. But IMO, the
| solution isn't a more powerful leave blower; it's a rake.
| oasisbob wrote:
| Why would that be the case?
|
| With battery powered chainsaws, the noise signature is much
| better and quieter.
|
| 2 stroke engines just have a way of screaming in their power
| band.
| binarymax wrote:
| The noise from a blower only partially comes from the
| engine. The rush of air through the nozzle produces lots of
| noise as well.
| [deleted]
| ehutch79 wrote:
| My apt complex has 'landscapers' that use these. Landscapers in
| quotes because there's about 10 sq meters of lawn and a few
| plants. Every weekend they're out there blowing dirt around. It's
| not like it does anything besides making the pool unusable.
| rektide wrote:
| DC passed a combustion leaf blower ban in December 2018[1], but
| it's only coming into effect January 2022, another 10 months.
|
| I saw my first electric leaf blower ~3 months ago & chatted with
| the crew some; they'd only picked their new gear up the day
| before! They were happy with it. The wearable one was much
| quieter, but there was also a ground-based unit that was still
| loud as all get out, alas.
|
| I've also asked other property management crews (probably 7 at
| this point) if they knew about the ban, & so far, no one even
| knows about it, other than the one crew I'd met who'd just gotten
| their electric gear.
|
| I am very curious to see, long term, how powering these systems
| works out. Will a work crew simply buy a bunch of 40V or 80V
| batteries? How many will be enough? How many crews will turn
| right around & buy a generator they'll leave running a good part
| of the day? Longer term, perhaps hybrid work vehicles like the
| F150 & their built in 2.4 & 7.2kW inverter could become a crucial
| capability. Alas, it seems probable one way or another that
| combustion based energy, albeit less dirty & radically less
| obnoxious than these gas tools, will be used.
|
| Anyhow. This ban can't come soon enough. Another year of these
| noise devices is going to be obnoxious. Unlikely to ever happen,
| but I wish cities would have designated noise hours, say 3 hours
| a day, 5 days a week (whatever) where noise was allowed (without
| special circumstances permit). It seems like such an obvious
| civic good to coordinate, to try to steer us away from all
| causing loud riotous noise all day long.
|
| [1] https://dcist.com/story/18/12/04/d-c-council-strikes-
| death-b...
| alistairSH wrote:
| WRT the ground-based blower - at some point, moving air makes
| as much noise as the engine, so this isn't surprising.
|
| For charing, many newer trucks come with robust power systems
| for running electrics. Obv not an expense to be taken lightly,
| but we're getting there. Ford has the most compelling options
| right now - right up to 7.3kw system (I believe that's with the
| engine idling). I believe that with the hybrid drivetrain, you
| can use a not-insignificant amount of electricity with he truck
| engine off.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I would like to recommend an alternative to the leaf blower
| called a 'rake'. It takes no time at all to rake a lawn, the
| exercise is good for you, emissions are low and the noise levels
| are safe. How many times have you seen someone blow leaves away,
| only for the wind to blow them straight back.
|
| A rake is no use for starting pulse jet engines, however.
|
| https://youtu.be/zsXWspo5hrc
| ummonk wrote:
| And a sharp hand-forged sickle is surprisingly effective at
| trimming.
| binarymax wrote:
| The past autumn my neighbors landscaper was using a leaf blower
| for 2 hours just trying to blow a whole wet pile into the wind
| to the curb - about 10 feet away. He was failing miserably, but
| didn't care and kept at it.
|
| Infuriated, I stormed out during my lunch break with a rake and
| just did it in under five minutes. He didn't know how to react,
| so he just stood there STILL USING THE BLOWER TRYING TO HELP.
|
| Strangest experience I'd had in awhile.
|
| Edit - this is getting popular, so here's my baby:
| https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lawn-and-garden/gard...
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Nice, now for everyone else. And for all lawncare tools.
| leephillips wrote:
| I experience a kind of existential horror when observing someone
| standing for a full minute with the nozzle of one of these
| idiotic machines directed toward a single recalcitrant leaf that
| could be dislodged with a subsecond flick from a rake or a broom,
| while piles of birds fall dead from their nests behind him. It
| resembles the sensation that overcomes me when surrounded, at a
| fireworks display, by a throng of my fellow citizens all
| attempting to memorialize the spectacle with flash photography.
| kaczordon wrote:
| They're already banned in LA but landscapers still use it all the
| time anyway and just ignore the law. Really annoying to have a
| loud engine right beside your window, doesn't seem to really help
| with the work anyway just blows the leaves around in circles and
| they rake it anyway.
| mcshicks wrote:
| Yep. My town (Encinitas, ca) also did it a while back. It went
| into full effect the beginning of last year. I would say at
| best there is 50% compliance i.e. half the gardeners are using
| electric, the other half gas. On the other hand I do think I'm
| seeing more electric blowers now which are quieter.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| Does California allow civil lawsuits for this kind of thing?
|
| It sounds like that might be the most practical way to force
| compliance.
| [deleted]
| clairity wrote:
| according to a neighbor who looked into it, you can just
| report them, but the inspector has to see it happening to
| issue a citation, so you'd have to get them to come at the
| right time.
|
| i'm personally not sympathetic to the noise argument, since
| we accept the constant noise of much more plentiful and
| sometimes-quieter-but-sometimes-louder 2-ton vehicles all
| over the place. blowers/trimmers are also usually used during
| business hours where it has to be acceptable to make some
| noise for work purposes.
|
| in contrast, the pollution argument is quite salient, as
| @porb121 details[0], and reason enough for the ban. the
| exhaust pollutants can be smelled surprisingly far away
| (dozens of feet) and can enter homes through windows and
| linger. and with blowers at least, raking and sweeping are
| likely as efficient in most cases and doesn't really save
| labor/exertion.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26360215
| triceratops wrote:
| Leaf blowers also blow a ton of dust into houses. I always
| had a thick layer of dust on my windowsill if I left the
| windows open on a landscaping day.
| clairity wrote:
| for sure, i get some of that too. but moreso for me is
| getting black soot dust inside, largely from vehicle
| exhaust and tires (along with other particulates from
| cooking and pets).
| fossuser wrote:
| Blower noise is way louder than cars if that's what you
| were referring to.
|
| The reason I've been hesitant to complain is it feels wrong
| to go after the (mostly working immigrant) landscape
| companies the Palo Alto NIMBYs have all hired to do their
| landscaping.
|
| I assume a lot of them are probably commuting from far
| away.
| clairity wrote:
| > "Blower noise is way louder than cars..."
|
| depends on the vehicle. in my neighborhood, we have
| plenty of (intentionally) loud cars, motorcycles, and
| trucks. but the point is that work machines that come
| with unavoidable noise should be allowed to make that
| noise during working hours (unlike most vehicles, except
| perhaps delivery trucks, but they should be using primary
| thoroughfares, not neighborhood streets).
|
| i also don't report landscaping companies for that
| reason.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It also doesn't stop.
|
| A jackass on a straight-pipe harley is obnoxious, but
| they are around for like 30 seconds. But a jackass on an
| industrial zero-clearance lawn mower is going at it for
| at least 30mins.
|
| These things don't _need_ to be so loud that operators
| need to wear hearing protection.
| briankelly wrote:
| Blowers and weed wackers shift from throttled to idle all
| over the place and are a lot harder to tune out than mowers
| at least for me. Road noise likewise is pretty background
| and largely from tires, not engines, anyway, unless you
| have a lot of commercial trucks, bikes, or tuners around.
| clairity wrote:
| unfortunately it's a lot of the latter in my case.
|
| however, i'd point out that lifting the noise floor, as
| road noise does, contributes to lifetime hearing loss, as
| we make everything else louder (it also negatively
| affects attention, concentration, stress and anxiety in
| subtle but meaningful ways). it's the kind of long, low
| externalized cost that our short-term-oriented brains
| tend to evaluate and address poorly.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| I dislike both forms of noise. Getting rid of one doesn't
| necessitate getting rid of both. Noise is known to be
| hazardous to mental health and we definitely make more than
| we need to. This is especially so with yard equipment.
| clairity wrote:
| i also dislike the noise, but it's sometimes required to
| get stuff done (like repairing the pavement or mowing a
| lawn), and we should, as residents, accept that necessary
| tradeoff at appropriate times. noisy vehicles, however,
| aren't really so necessary (anymore), with the growing
| move toward hybrids/electrics.
| mint2 wrote:
| Most front lawns are unused space that people pay to
| maintain because "that's how it's supposed to be".
|
| And heavens forbid leaves build up around plants, we must
| remove all compost like that because it will contaminated
| the soil, it's so unnatural.
|
| In a front lawn or landscaping that no one uses, it
| should be low maintenance native plants that are adapted
| to the weather so they barely need water and will benefit
| by letting the leaves decay. Send the leaves through a
| shredder if one really hates the sight of leaves.
| clairity wrote:
| no argument there. i love desertscape yards, and like
| trees more than lawns (though trees are more water-
| thirsty). what i don't like are fake plastic lawns as
| used in a few places around me.
| mint2 wrote:
| Yes don't even get me started on plastic lawns.
| sparkling wrote:
| Well, thats a fast way to end up with the whole neighbourhood
| hating you.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| This was in the context of downtown businesses not
| complying.
|
| And if a neighbor refuses to comply with noise ordinances
| because they want faster/cheaper lawn care, they already
| kind of hate you. They're just being subtle in how they
| show it.
| sgt wrote:
| I have a gardener and I'm pretty sure he uses that trimmer like a
| swiss army knife to trim or cut pretty much anything. This means
| he'll be busy with it for hours each time. He also never fails to
| fill too much two stroke oil. Perhaps it's time I replaced it
| with an electric one.
| williesleg wrote:
| They need to outlaw trimming, that's killing photosynthesis
| providing life that takes carbon out of the air.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Used to live across the street from a neighbor who got his yard
| cleaned up by a crew with a gas blower twice weekly. They were
| already banned in that town, but it was never enforced. The noise
| would wake me up and the fumes--like standing next to a 1960s
| Mustang with a cold engine--would drift into our apartment and
| linger for 15-20 minutes. Gas blowers are gross and their time
| passed a while ago.
| MereInterest wrote:
| My apartment is across the street from a shopping center, and
| they have all maintenance work done at night. This includes
| using leaf blowers to clear off walkways. The noise is
| absolutely ridiculous to have at 3 in the morning.
| mike_d wrote:
| Almost every city has a noise ordnance that prevents this.
| Just call the PD and file a noise complaint every time it
| happens.
| subsaharancoder wrote:
| Oakland is grappling with rising crime, drug use, unemployment,
| businesses closing, schools not reopening etc and the city
| council dedicated their time and money to address this inane
| issue
| jschveibinz wrote:
| Gas mowers and garden tools are just bad in general. But they are
| the backbone of a lot of immigrant small businesses. Banning
| without providing a path or incentive to electric seems very
| radical to me. Relevant facts on gas-powered tools:
| https://www.peoplepoweredmachines.com/faq-environment.htm
| stefan_ wrote:
| Right, which is exactly why we should have banned them 20 years
| ago already. Just look at what happened with combustion engine
| scooters: we have been grandfathering these shitty, loud things
| for 30 years straight now. Now there are hundreds of electric
| scooter manufacturers in China and basically none serious in
| the western world.
|
| It's just a bandaid that needs to be ripped off. Like RoHS
| getting rid of lead solder; that was never gonna happen without
| regulatory intervention.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| If we only catered to the little guy to protect their jobs,
| we'd still have horse drawn carriages as the main form of
| transport...
| minikites wrote:
| We could just give them money, but that idea is too taboo for
| the vast majority of Americans who believe the only purpose of
| government is to make the individual suffer.
| Zak wrote:
| More generally, lawns seem to me to be a net negative
| environmentally relative to any of many other landscaping
| options. I'm not quite for _banning_ them, but maybe we could
| stop _mandating_ them.
| namibj wrote:
| Well, I'd go further, and propose to void all rules that
| mandate landscaping choices, which have non-trivial
| maintenance cost (rule of thumb: if you need to do gardening
| more than once a year, it's not negligible).
|
| Or just have the rules convert to "must not look abandoned",
| as long as that doesn't conflict with other existing rules.
| In case of conflict, the "must be lawn" rule would just
| disappear with no replacement.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Electric equipment already exists, no "path" is needed.
|
| And this isn't going to harm immigrant small businesses,
| because everyone's in the same boat. It's not like non-
| immigrant businesses get to continue using gas blowers.
|
| Price will go up a little bit for consumers as everybody
| switches over to electric.
|
| But we're not even talking a massive capital investment here.
| Weed whackers don't cost $50,000.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Electric garden tools are great as long as you work quickly. I
| have a walk-behind mower and it has a TON of torque even in
| super-tall grass. I cannot imagine someone running a
| landscaping business with them, though. You'd have to double or
| triple your hauling load just to carry all the batteries you'd
| need to power them in a workday.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The operator needs to charge them in the truck, and many
| trucks come with power points. My neighbour is a builder and
| he laughs at the guys with big batteries as they lug them
| about. He carries two or three small ones and switches them
| out regularly.
|
| Ruined wrists don't have to be a thing.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| If they charge quickly, maybe just have two sets of
| batteries, and require customers to let you charge the unused
| ones while you work?
| imoverclocked wrote:
| I have a Stihl electric polesaw/weed eater/brush/... combo
| with a backpack battery. That battery outlasts my ability
| to use it in a day. Multiple small batteries is an
| extremely doable solution for a professional.
|
| Also, what you add in battery charging, you easily make up
| with reduced maintenance of the tool.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| They don't charge all that quickly and I don't think
| customers want people plugging in battery chargers at their
| homes, at least I wouldn't. All it takes is one bootleg
| charger from amazon, or one bootleg battery from amazon (of
| which there are plenty of examples) and boom nasty battery
| fire. I would place money on that being a magnitude more
| likely than a spontaneous _fire_ from combustables in the
| back of a truck.
|
| EDIT: Let's downvote instead of actually having a proper
| response. I can't wait until the bubble some of you live in
| pops and all of this nonsense goes away.
| [deleted]
| r00fus wrote:
| Electrics don't have a plugin while working option do they?
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Most dont, sans a third party adapter that replaces the
| battery. It's also implying that a power outlet is readily
| available, which I imagine with a lot of landscaping it
| isn't.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Most vehicles produce power and many work trucks can be
| easily modified to produce more. Simply making a bank of
| batteries that recharges as you drive should suffice for
| anyone serious enough to need it.
| henearkr wrote:
| But in urban or suburban context a power outlet is never
| far away.
|
| We're speaking of people doing their lawns after all...
| jascii wrote:
| A friend of mine ran a small landscaping business through
| college. You'd be surprised how many property owners
| would not let landscapers in the house to plug in
| extension cords, use the restroom, etc.
| NDizzle wrote:
| You've never seen landscape crews making their rounds?
|
| New theft target when each one has to carry $8k worth of
| batteries in the truck/trailer to have enough juice to
| perform their normal task, which could have been
| performed by two 10 gallon jugs of gasoline.
| henearkr wrote:
| Most of the time electric lawn-mowers are just using the
| mains and are powered through a cable.
|
| These kind of models exist since a very long time, and I
| was not thinking of any battery model when I wrote my
| comment.
| NDizzle wrote:
| So the dozens/hundreds of crews are just going to plug in
| anywhere/everywhere they can? That's not feasible.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Not necessarily, we're talking about lawn care / outdoor
| maintenance. A lot of the maintenance I see invovles
| medians, communal areas etc. None of them are powered and
| would require substantial distances to outlets. When
| there is an outlet you then have to deal with Whom owns
| the outlet and pays the bill.
|
| For a single family home, this is fine. For townhomes,
| larger lot, commercial properties, this isn't as clear.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Corded string trimmers and lawn mowers last forever but
| they never took off because wrangling cords sucks.
| bluGill wrote:
| They also never took off because the power you can get
| from the wall just isn't quite enough. They work, but if
| you compare to an engine or battery they obviously are
| lacking. I pull out my cordless drill for the biggest
| holes I need to make because it has more power (for a
| minute until the battery goes dead...), though there
| isn't much room between not enough power from the wall
| and needing a drill press on a more powerful circuit
| anyway.
| r00fus wrote:
| For houses, most usually do have access to an electric
| outlet. I have like 5 around my house on the exterior.
| lostlogin wrote:
| This is the way. Having one installed outside changed so
| much for the better. The noise and dust that I tend to
| create is much better dealt with by having doors and
| windows closed.
| tshaddox wrote:
| That seems odd. In the early 1990s where I grew up in the
| Midwestern United States corded electric weed eaters
| (that's what I grew up calling them) and lawn mowers were
| quite common.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| They are out there but a lot of them have moved to
| batteries due to market demands and more so, building an
| ecosystem. All the major power tool vendors sell yard
| tools with their battery compatibility.
|
| I imagine you can get some things corded still. I use
| battery and corded all the time, but I have gas powered
| as well.
|
| In a small home (less than 1 acre) I can work around it,
| on the farm. It's almost all gas. Things like the blower,
| lawn mower, chainsaws, etc. had bad electric
| alternatives. We also don't and can't run, 1000 foot
| electrical cords all over the property.
|
| Corded will always be the better option though. With the
| drills on the farm, corded offer way more torque! Just
| make sure you've got isolated circuits for exterior and
| aren't loading them down or you're popping breakers with
| a couple of the electric tools plugged in.
| mikestew wrote:
| The charger for the Kobalt mower and grass trimmer from Lowes
| charges the batteries faster than I can use them. However,
| the batteries are only good for 30 minutes or so, and the
| equipment is hardly commercial-grade. The batteries can also
| be palmed with one hand, so there's room for an upgrade for
| commercial use.
| ldbooth wrote:
| There's always a drop cord and non-battery options for almost
| every tool, which I prefer to the inevitable battery
| degradation (so that makes my leafblower coal and hydro
| powered). I have an electric leafblower and 2 dropcords. When
| trucks are electric, problem solved, this can run off the
| accessory power.
| core-questions wrote:
| Yep. That new Ford with the big inverter and battery will
| be a good model to follow; and of course no doubt companies
| like Milwaukee who have been pushing all sorts of electric
| stuff lately will come out with good options to add on.
|
| Hell, even just running a 4-stroke generator will be far
| less polluting.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The businesses will just pass the cost on and be fine.
|
| The guy who uses the $100 Home Depot weed whacker to do his own
| lawn is the one who gets screwed because he now either has to
| wrangle a cord everywhere or spend much more for equivalent
| performance from an electric.
|
| (on second thought string trimmers are low enough power that a
| cheap battery one should work for a homeowner but for blowers,
| chainsaws and most other landscaping power equipment my point
| still stands, you gotta spend big bucks on the 36-48v stuff
| that performs about the same as the ICE powered $99.99 special)
| Jtsummers wrote:
| My electric trimmer was not much more expensive than the gas
| one, and it's much quieter and the battery can be used in any
| of my other Ryobi products (chosen deliberately for this
| purpose). The battery easily lasts for my entire yard, but if
| I had a bigger lot (like my parents, around 1 acre), I
| _might_ need a second battery.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| For everything under ~4hp electric is definitely "nicer" in
| every way but only if you pony up for "nice". The 18v
| trimmers and chainsaws that are comparable in cost to the
| low end 2-stroke stuff aren't nearly as good (yet).
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of Stihl and their range of battery tools.
| One weird little idiosyncrasy is that while their battery
| range are interchangeable, they don't work as you'd
| imagine. The bigger batteries have more charge, but the
| biggest one also gives more power/torque (when used on a
| chainsaw). It's something to do with the cells being wired
| in parallel or something like that. The difference is very
| noticeable.
| Zak wrote:
| Batteries experience a drop in voltage when a load is
| applied. The magnitude of this drop varies based on the
| design and chemistry of the battery, and the load per
| cell is obviously lower if there are more cells.
| core-questions wrote:
| I wrangle a cord. It's honestly not that bad at all. A couple
| techniques like tying cords together help a lot. It's
| honestly not a big hassle; and if the law mandates it, then
| all of these businesses will adapt.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Sounds like a clear market opportunity for a startup to step
| in, invent a better electric weed whacker, get into YC, and
| then be acquired by Tesla. Why question the system?
| bluGill wrote:
| The big weed trimmer companies already make battery powered
| trimmers. Some of them even have batteries that can be worn
| as a backpack and can run all day, compared to stopping
| every 15 minutes to put more fuel in. (as a user this is a
| mis-feature - (I need that rest, but I supposed the boss
| likes it, and the people who use these should be in better
| shape than me)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This is the least persuasive argument against regulation I
| hear. Businesses eat the cost of replacing equipment on a
| regular basis and know it's not in their own interest to
| punish their customers. If a business owner is so indifferent
| to externalities or so tight fisted that they can't or won't
| move to a cleaner options, they will be replaced, and good
| riddance.
| hangonhn wrote:
| It would be great if larger cities setup some kind of trade-in
| program where one can give up their gas powered tools for
| vouchers, etc. that they can use to buy replacement electric
| ones.
| maxcan wrote:
| Making life miserable for small business to win some virtue
| points is one of the bedrock principles for SFBA municipal
| governments.
|
| Its right up there with "rules for thee and not for me".
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Your comment is way off the mark. You completely ignore the
| very real environmental and quality-of-life issues with small
| two-stroke engines and call it virtue points.
| Proziam wrote:
| Is the threat of overnight destruction for many small
| businesses a reasonable way to approach this problem? I can
| easily imagine that not a single person passing this change
| ever thought about that.
|
| Whether it is virtue points or an important issue is
| irrelevant, the way it was handled was appalling and
| harmful.
|
| EDIT - If you're downvoting consider this: If you and your
| family were running a small landscaping business and need
| to replace thousands of dollars of equipment, you might
| feel differently. Be empathetic towards those people and
| consider other ways to accomplish the goal. We could just
| as easily have banned the _sale_ of these after a future
| date. There are always options to mitigate the pressure on
| the affected persons.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| You've changed your argument. Now you're saying "forget
| half of what I said".
|
| I agree that second-order effects need to be considered,
| certainly. That is the point of phase-in periods, which
| this measure had.
|
| Is it long enough, or substantial enough? Should small
| businesses be able to apply for exemptions, or interest
| free loans for new equipment, for example? Perhaps.
|
| It should be uncontroversial given the facts and
| experiences with these engines that they are awful
| pollutants, terribly aggravating to communities, and that
| the world would be better without them.
| Proziam wrote:
| > You've changed your argument. Now you're saying "forget
| half of what I said"
|
| My only point is that the way you implement change
| matters and that this implementation will adversely
| affect the worst-off population.
|
| > It should be uncontroversial given the facts and
| experiences with these engines that they are awful
| pollutants, terribly aggravating to communities, and that
| the world would be better without them.
|
| No controversy there at all.
| acdha wrote:
| Your point is undercut by lying about "overnight
| destruction". If you read up on this issue, the effect in
| the real world is that businesses buy electric blowers. A
| bunch of them started calling it "organic landscaping"
| and charging more along with dropping chemical fertilizer
| / pesticide use.
| Proziam wrote:
| > If you read up on this issue, the effect in the real
| world is that businesses buy electric blowers.
|
| I wonder, between the two of us, who has spent more time
| actually making money by doing landscaping.
|
| A large portion of these 'businesses' are 1-2 people who
| scraped together whatever they could to get the equipment
| to make a living. Many are low income. Many sacrifice
| heavily in their personal lives to be able to make ends
| meet.
|
| The lie here is the notion that the bunch that go the
| route of 'organic landscaping' are representative of the
| entire group.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The market finds a way.
| acdha wrote:
| A business doesn't fail overnight when they say "to
| comply with local ordnance, we're charging 5% more to
| replace our equipment".
|
| This complaint is brought up for every single
| environmental improvement, and it misses the concept that
| the risk is an imbalance, not a change which affects
| everyone. For example, you used to not be able to see
| across the street in LA on bad smog days - and I remember
| plenty of people insisting that doing anything about that
| would devastate the economy, and yet California seems to
| be not exactly an impoverished wasteland.
| diydsp wrote:
| I doubt it's overnight destruction of the business. It
| likely means selling some of their amortized equipment to
| buy different equipment. They've likely had notice for a
| long time. Especially if they participate in their
| government.
| Proziam wrote:
| > It likely means selling some of their amortized
| equipment to buy different equipment.
|
| Many run their business with the tools they can afford.
| Upon inspection, you would find that many such businesses
| have little to no resale value to lean on to make such an
| upgrade.
|
| > They've likely had notice for a long time. Especially
| if they participate in their government.
|
| What percentage of people laborers have the time to
| actively participate in government? I don't know the
| answer to this but I suspect it's shockingly small.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > Many run their business with the tools they can afford.
|
| Are electric equivalents of the banned gas tools really
| that much more expensive?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The higher end electric stuff isn't priced exorbitantly
| compared to the higher end ICE stuff that businesses tend
| to use.
|
| The problem preventing commercial adoption is that if you
| want commercial user amounts of uninterrupted run time
| you wind up spending a fortune on batteries.
| bluGill wrote:
| That equipment only lasts so long anyway. If you drove
| your care as much as the pros drive their lawn mowers you
| would be putting around 75,000 miles a year on the car!
| If the law doesn't take effect for 3 years then all
| equipment will have been replaced by the normal cycle.
|
| Of course if you are a homeowner that equipment will last
| a lot longer. (home owners buy a cheaper grade of quality
| in general, so you can't compare lifetimes with pro grade
| equipment)
| Proziam wrote:
| > If the law doesn't take effect for 3 years then all
| equipment will have been replaced by the normal cycle.
|
| I have personally seen such equipment remain in use for
| 15-20 years. When I was young the lawnmower we used was a
| monstrous Craftsman that was originally built 20 years
| prior. It was used year-round for that period for
| everything from snow removal, lawn mowing, and hauling
| landscaping supplies (retaining wall blocks and the
| like).
|
| You would likely be surprised at the level of care and
| maintenance some small business owners put in.
| bluGill wrote:
| Bigger equipment lasts longer. When weight is an
| advantage you don't feel bad about putting in bracing to
| make things last longer.
|
| We are talking about hand held stuff here though. While
| pros need equipment to last longer than home owners,
| there is a limit to how much mass they can deal with for
| something that is hand held.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _I can easily imagine that not a single person passing
| this change ever thought about that_
|
| I can easily imagine they did. Who's right? People have
| been raising this issue for years, the idea did not just
| fall out of the sky. I'm unclear why the people who have
| been putting up with the problem for a long time need to
| coddle the people creating the problem any longer.
| triceratops wrote:
| Why does it make things miserable for businesses? They'll
| just increase their rates to pay for the new equipment.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This is pure flamebait, attributing malice for its own sake
| to administrators and dismissing the externalities as 'virtue
| points' - equivalent to saying you don't care about people
| who are bothered by noise or heavy gasoline fumes.
|
| I'm happy to see changes like this as it's something I've
| complained about for years; multiple properties in my area
| used these sort of services, and I'd frequently have to deal
| with the dust and dirt from their property being blown onto
| mine, along with noise and bad smells. I also felt bad for
| the operators who were exposed to that every day. So I am one
| of those people who has spent years nudging for a regulatory
| change.
|
| Why, exactly, should anyone support a business model that can
| only be profitable by dumping its weaknesses on to other
| people? I mean, if you want to use a potentially dangerous
| product and the risks fall only on you, you have an absolute
| right to do that. But you have no right to accrue benefits
| while dumping the risk onto someone else.
| eznzt wrote:
| Making the lives of poor people miserable in the name of
| virtue points is one of the bedrock principles of left-wing
| governments around the world. For example, European cities
| banning diesel vehicles.
| snakeboy wrote:
| > For example, European cities banning diesel vehicles.
|
| At least in Paris, poor people are not often the ones
| driving into Paris for work, they're mostly taking the
| metro in from the suburbs.
|
| Paris has some moderate air pollution problems, often among
| the worst European or American cities (of course, globally
| there's much worse), and that effects everyone's quality of
| life and long-term health in a myriad of ways that we don't
| fully understand yet, as well as in some obvious ways that
| we _already_ understand.
|
| Of course there's always a bit of political show-boating
| with these things, and so the French left-wing do this with
| their pet issues, namely environmental issues. But that
| show-boating doesn't diminish the tangible positive effects
| of the policy...
| ginja wrote:
| It's funny how everything is a matter of perspective. I'd
| say that European governments are pretty "center" on
| average, given that they mostly range from social democracy
| to liberal conservatism.
|
| But anyway, in most medium to large European cities there
| is little reason to drive. The restrictions on vehicles are
| overwhelmingly positive for residents' quality of life and
| the environment.
| octonion wrote:
| "virtue points" is a meaningless propaganda term.
| michelpp wrote:
| Guess who is physically harmed the most by using two stroke
| powered lawn equipment? Those same "poor" operators who run
| it all day every day. What is the upgrade cost vs asthma,
| cancer, neuropathy, and permanent hearing damage? Even from
| a completely selfish perspective electric is a no-brainer.
| sib wrote:
| Well, assuming that those businesses are paying taxes (hmm?)
| then purchases of this amount would typically be fully
| deductible in the same purchase year as opposed to required
| some sort of complex depreciation schedule, so that would
| reduce the burden significantly.
|
| And since pretty much every vendor would have the same cost
| increase, it wouldn't be a competitive disadvantage from a
| pricing point of view. Likely the cost increase would mostly be
| passed on to the customer.
| mnouquet wrote:
| Electric mowers and garden tools are limited to small jobs.
| Being unable to get more that 1.5HP of mechanical work reserve
| electric tools to small casual jobs. At 5HP to 10HP, now we're
| talking, but power cords for 240V, as it's translates to 20A to
| 40A...
| porb121 wrote:
| Huge fan of this. Gas-powered blowers are responsible for a
| disturbingly large portion of US air pollutants. Something like
| 10% of all CO, 5% of VOCs come from gas-powered lawn equipment,
| and they produce >30%* of the non-car pollutants.
|
| Traditional American lawn maintenance is a horribly unsustainable
| (and in my opinion, ugly) practice. We should encourage
| alternatives.
|
| See: Banks, "National Emissions from Lawn and Garden Equipment"
| mauvehaus wrote:
| I hear you and agree with your intended outcome, but we should
| be legislating outcomes, not the path to reaching them.
|
| In this example, reasonable legislation would limit the noise
| and pollution from blowers, without specifically banning any
| particular technology.
|
| The US had sealed beam headlamps for years after better
| lighting technologies were invented because US law required
| them instead of mandating some technology-agnostic standard
| [0].
|
| Or more recently, we've banned the use of phones while driving.
| I ask: is it legal to play harmonica while driving? If we agree
| that it shouldn't be, the law should be written to ban both
| using a phone or playing harmonica while driving without
| specifically mentioning either, except perhaps as examples.
|
| [0] https://www.carid.com/articles/brief-history-of-sealed-
| beam-...
| klingon79 wrote:
| > the law should be written to ban both using a phone or
| playing harmonica while driving without specifically
| mentioning either, except perhaps as examples.
|
| Slippery slope arguments shouldn't apply to specific
| provisions in the law that target likely scenarios.
|
| Let's say you said that the driver shouldn't drive
| distracted. You have now outlawed listening to radio, music,
| or others talking in a way not conducive to giving full
| attention to the car, perhaps even while the car is being
| driven automatically, if there is any chance of the driver
| needing to drive manually such that they must be ready to
| drive.
|
| That said, I agree that the method of generating the outcome
| need not always be defined. For example, in some legislation,
| companies/vendors are named specifically, which may lead to
| de facto support by the government of some private
| institutions, which seems anticompetitive.
| spollo wrote:
| Unlike the sealed beam headlamps however, this law isn't
| requiring any particular technology. It's just outlawing a
| known harmful one.
|
| In some ways this is nicer because a company doesn't need to
| do specific emission and noise testing certifications to
| comply with a single municipalities regulations. So people in
| Oakland can have potentially more choices while achieving a
| reduction of combustion emissions.
| oliwarner wrote:
| This makes enforcement simple.
|
| Setting emission thresholds means needing to get out there
| and perform spot checks in the field. It's specialised,
| expensive and in practise means many people just flouting the
| law and getting away with it. Pointless law.
|
| Simply banning ICE strimmers and blowers means any
| enforcement officer can easily cite rule breakers, confiscate
| equipment, etc.
|
| And per sibling, not the same as mandating one technology, at
| all.
| ravenstine wrote:
| As much as the environmental impact is significant, I'm mainly
| enthused because I really dislike the impact of the noise
| pollution. Having worked from home for a few years now, the
| worst part to me is the frequent landscaping noise throughout
| the day. Even if the gardeners all come by your block at the
| same day every week, they may show up to nearby blocks on other
| days of the week and create noise that's audible from far away.
| An hour of hearing overly loud landscaping equipment ruins my
| day, and I'm otherwise not a very neurotic person. I don't even
| get why gas powered lawn equipment has to be that loud; I
| attached a 2-stroke motor to a bike once with a cheap muffler
| and even that didn't sound as loud as most lawnmowers.
| djmips wrote:
| This is epitomized for me by the one guy in Santa Clara who I
| saw blow a single leaf an entire block rather than pick it
| up. I was already annoyed by their incredibly loud and
| inefficient landscaping and that just took the cake.
| TwoBit wrote:
| Was somebody following him filming it for TikTok?
| dazc wrote:
| Sadly, this is quite normal behaviour. As a species we have
| a long way to go...
| TwoBit wrote:
| If you live in a suburban area like I do, practically every
| day one of the neighbors has these running. And half the time
| it's just blowing it to the street to later land on someone
| else's property.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Yeah, it's gotten a little better recently(dunno if it's
| just because of weather), but there was a long stretch
| where every day I would go out to my backyard and, on any
| given day of the week, there was someone mowing or weed
| whacking nearby. Weed whacking is almost worse because
| people love to "rev" the weed whacker constantly instead of
| just holding down the button. But yeah, it almost entirely
| ruins the suburban experience for me because there are so
| few moments when you can just sit outside during the day
| without having some obnoxious motor running somewhere.
|
| Then again, I'm also averse to the lengths people go
| through to maintain landscaping. Landscaping is necessary,
| but so many homeowners care so much about property values
| that they want everything to constantly appear uniform.
| Some neighbors even rat on each other to their HOA if one
| person went an extra week without mowing.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah, I just recently moved to SF and it's a lot quieter
| _in_ the city than it was in the suburbs.
| twiddling wrote:
| The irony.
| anaerobicover wrote:
| I hardly ever see a user of a blower actually blow stuff
| into a pile and pick it up. This is the part that makes me
| crazy. The wind is just going to blow it right back to
| where it was!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Ahhh.... I remember when we used rakes.
| dazc wrote:
| Happy days. Then some guy decided all tools should be
| 'powered' and here we are.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Yes, absolutely. So irritating.
|
| Noise pollution is one of those places where I am seriously
| conflicted. It's one of those cases where you feel like it's
| regulating common curtesy.
|
| See also: Harley Davidson mentality.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| As far as noise goes, a lot of the noise is from the fan. The
| electric blowers are still pretty noisy.
| jolux wrote:
| They're much quieter though. I have an Ego backpack blower
| and I can use it without ear protection for short periods.
| overcast wrote:
| No way, there is a SIGNIFICANT difference in noise between
| a gas powered weed whacker and an electric one. The only
| thing you hear in the latter is the bzzzzzzz which is a lot
| easier to deal with than a screaming 2 stroke.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| GP mentioned leaf blowers, not weed whippers. Of course
| electric weed whippers are quieter.
| esturk wrote:
| A quick google shows that electric blowers are 75% quieter
| than gas ones by decibel. In fact, they're comparable to
| using a hair dryer (around 70 dB):
|
| Source:
| http://leafblowernoise.com/Electric%20blower%20sound.htm
|
| So I would refute your claim.
| fatnoah wrote:
| The electric ones also move significantly less air. I say
| this as the owner of a top of the line electric blower
| that will never in a million years own a gas one. The gas
| ones are far superior for actually blowing large amounts
| of leaves or large areas, but I'm totally content to pick
| up most leaves on the lawn when I mow and use the blower
| just for hard-to rake areas. That works very well.
| bradlys wrote:
| I'll refute yours. I own an electric. It's insanely loud.
| I don't need hearing protection for my blow dryer but I
| certainly do for my electric leaf blower.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| Anyone who sincerely believes electric leaf blowers are -
| on average - even close to as loud as gas-powered blowers
| has to be arguing on the smallest of small sample sizes
| or bad faith. They're not comparable, there's a reason
| community-driven pushes to ban leaf blowers focus on
| those with combustion engines.
|
| Can an electric leaf blower be as loud as a gas-powered
| one? Sure. I'm sure under the right circumstances a Prius
| can make noise comparable to Corolla too. Electric leaf
| blowers aren't silent and are often loud, but not
| aggravatingly loud. They won't make your next-door
| neighbors lose their mind, much less your neighbors two
| doors down.
| jader201 wrote:
| I own a battery operated trimmer and blower, and
| unfortunately, they're not much quieter (I hear my neighbors,
| too). In fact, they almost seem more annoying as they seem to
| emit a different frequency.
|
| Agree with things to reduce noise pollution, but don't feel
| like this will help much in that regard.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I attached a 2-stroke motor to a bike once with a cheap
| muffler and even that didn't sound as loud as most
| lawnmowers.
|
| I'd guess a combination of inexpensive underpowered engines
| and a spinning blade. I have an old mower with a big engine
| that doesn't really seem to work too hard, and it's only a
| little bit louder than my electric mower.
| S_A_P wrote:
| The worst offenders are 2 stroke engines which are smaller
| per hp than 4 strokes that would live on your lawn mower
| where size matters less. 2 stroke engines burn oil as a
| feature and are irritatingly loud. Ive a mix of
| battery/electric and gasoline lawn tools and a relatively
| large plot of land.(5ish acres) I cant use electric without
| a fleet of batteries charged and ready.
| noahjk wrote:
| I'm pretty protective of my batteries, but one time my
| wife accidentally ran one to empty and now it's a $120
| paperweight. Battery prices are a big sticking point for
| me as my budget is just a little too small to be ok
| spending so much on one, and this incident made me
| reconsider staying electric in the future.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Makita puts the protection/charge control circuitry in
| the battery pack, instead of in the tool or the charger.
| That makes their batteries more expensive, but you can't
| kill them by running them dry or through overheating in
| use. The pack itself will cut power to the tool. Makes
| them much more robust than the other common
| consumer/prosumer brands (not sure about pro brands like
| Hilti and Fein).
| elindbe3 wrote:
| Not to mention they're just fucking annoying to listen to all
| day in the summer.
| anm89 wrote:
| Wow, those figures are mind blowing but honestly also don't
| even seem possible. 10% of all CO emmitted from what?
|
| Even 10% nationally? Including every semi truck, car and
| airplane? And then all of our national power generation system?
|
| It doesn't seem like blowers could be 10% of that no matter how
| you slice it.
| bluGill wrote:
| Emissions controls for cars, and semi-trucks started becoming
| a thing in the mid 1970s, and standards have got stronger
| over the years. There are a few collector cars around, but
| for the most part anything in actually use is pretty clean,
| emitting CO2 and H2O. (Of course CO2 has issues, but short
| term nothing nearly as harmful as what small engines produce)
|
| Small airplanes have not kept up (they still use lead fuel!),
| and so are overall worse than lawn equipment. However there
| is a lot more lawn equipment. (I don't know anything about
| modern jet engine emissions)
| [deleted]
| CPLX wrote:
| CO and CO2 are different things, it's worth noting.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Most gas-powered leaf blowers and trimmers have 2-cycle
| engines where you mix the oil and fuel together and pretty
| much directly exhaust the combustion. Can't be good to burn
| that stuff...
| e2e8 wrote:
| From the above cited paper:
|
| In 2011, approximately 26.7 million tons of pollutants were
| emitted by GLGE (VOC=461,800; CO=5,793,200; NOx=68,500,
| PM10=20,700; CO2=20,382,400), accounting for 24%-45% of all
| nonroad gasoline emissions. Gasoline-powered landscape
| maintenance equipment (GLME; leaf blowers/vacuums, and
| trimmers, edgers, brush cutters) accounted for 43% of VOCs
| and around 50% of fine PM. Two-stroke engines were
| responsible for the vast majority of fine PM from GLME.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Yeah it seems nonsensical. My 2-stroke lawnmower burns maybe
| a pint of fuel three or four times a month or so. My car
| burns gallons a day. Granted the car exhaust is cleaner, but
| it's so much more total hydrocarbon burned.
| snarfy wrote:
| I recall reading somewhere a gas powered leaf blower emits as
| much CO pollution in 15 minutes as a full sized SUV does over
| a 1000 mile cross country trip. They are insanely dirty in
| comparison.
| LeegleechN wrote:
| The IC engines used for lawn tools have significant weight
| and cost constraints and less regulation compared to the IC
| engines used in transportation which makes them much more
| polluting. Similarly, motorcycle engines are more polluting
| than car engines by an order of magnitude.
| sdljfjafsd wrote:
| Practically this incorrect. When a car is in single or
| double occupancy (which is majority of cases) it will
| pollute more than a motorcycle one. Yes, a filled bus or
| car might be more efficient, but the average utilization on
| an auto is very low since most people drive them alone.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| You might be talking CO2 emissions where a car emits more
| than a bike.
|
| Pollution is a different matter though. Even the big
| 4-stroke tourers have worse emission control than cars;
| the 2-stroke motorbikes are exponentially worse in
| SOx/NOx/CO/particulate emissions (which hurt your lungs
| rather than the climate).
| mmckeen wrote:
| Can you provide data on motorcycle engines? I do believe
| this to be true for 2-strokes and older motorcycles, but
| for modern Euro-4/5 regulated street motorcycles I very
| much doubt it.
| jascii wrote:
| Carbon emission has an almost direct relationship to the
| amount of fuel burned, so assuming single occupancy, even
| older motorcycles do fair better than most cars in that
| respect. Particulate and NOX emission, not so much.
| bradlys wrote:
| It's mostly for bikes before Euro4/5. Obviously, new
| bikes are one thing but most bikes in the USA are
| offenders of pollution.
|
| A statistic for CA was motorcycles make up 1% of my miles
| driven but 10% of smog pollutants.
| kube-system wrote:
| Bikes didn't require catalysts for a long time. And they
| often used less-precise fueling systems, like
| carburetors. But that has changed or is changing in a lot
| of places more recently.
| clusterfish wrote:
| The two stroke engines they use are terrible. I mean you mix
| oil into the fuel so it just burns off. No surprise that it's
| polluting disproportionately.
| kube-system wrote:
| Note that the above is _not_ talking about CO2. Pollutants
| other than CO2 are typically heavily regulated for on-road
| vehicles and power generation, and they have expensive
| systems that prevent a very significant amount of those
| pollutants from being emitted.
|
| For example, your cars catalyst prevents a lot of pollutants
| from being emitted -- but your lawnmower doesn't have this
| device at all.
|
| CO2 is a different story all together -- because it's the
| _primary_ byproduct.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Lawn equipment tends to have proportionally huge non-CO2
| pollutant emissions because they are meant to be portable and
| thus have been exempted from emission standards. From what
| I've read, it seems like lawn equipment manufacturers do not
| consider pollution as a parameter when designing their
| equipment.
|
| Electric lawn equipment has only become viable in the market
| in the past decade or so due to improved batteries. Now that
| electrification is feasible (and often nicer to use than gas-
| powered), seems great to ban or at least disincentivize
| combustion engine equipment.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I don't know about the 10% figure, but regardless of whether
| you pick numbers from the high or low end of the range of
| estimates, the impact of lawn equipment is still staggering.
| 4 cycle engines make a huge difference, as do things like
| catalytic converters and scrubbers. 2-stroke engines, on the
| other hand, are both a horribly inefficient design to begin
| with, and also typically come fitted with absolutely no
| pollution controls.
|
| Also, it's not just leaf blowers. It's also lawn mowers and
| other gas powered lawn equipment.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| As others have pointed out, not CO2 but other pollutants,
| mainly. Because of 2 stroke engines. They literally throw oil
| particles into the air, and burn oil mixed in with the gas.
| Lightweight, mechanically simple, and variable torque, but
| absolutely environmentally awful. And noisy.
| jandrese wrote:
| Cars and Trucks have catalytic converters for a reason. If we
| were serious about this we would have mandated the same for
| lawn equipment (at serious expense mind you).
|
| Now I think everybody is quietly waiting for the revolution
| of battery powered lawn equipment to make this moot.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I have a battery powered leaf blower that I wouldn't dare
| give up for a gas one. The ease of use and volume
| difference is amazing.
|
| It wouldn't be great for large commercial estates, but the
| runtime is more than enough for most homeowners.
|
| I have a second battery to swap and fast charge, but I also
| have an abnormal number of messy trees on 5 acres.
| bluGill wrote:
| The revolution is obviously coming. The big manufactures
| probably support this as it will force their customers to
| replace working equipment with their new battery lines.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Oh yeah, it's already here. The money to be made is huge.
| Used to be you'd go buy a Honda mower and it would run
| with practically zero maintenance for 20 years or more.
| Now you go get a cordless mower and replace batteries
| every two or three years, and the whole thing becomes
| obsolete pretty quickly. It's a lucrative market.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Gas mowers are definitely not zero maintenance, at least
| not past 10 years. I've replaced my fair share of gaskets
| & spark plugs, cleaned out intakes, and spent 20m
| screwing with the choke to get the damn things started.
|
| I went pure electric 5 years ago with no problems. Starts
| up every time with the push of a button and since I
| bought a set, it came with multiple batteries so I can
| swap them out before fully depleting one for extended
| life.
| jandrese wrote:
| Ethanol in gas has had a seriously deleterious effect on
| lawn equipment. So many carbs full of gooey nasty rubber
| residue. My local Home Depot has started carrying cans of
| ethanol free gasoline because there are literally no gas
| stations in the county that carry it anymore.
|
| It's bad when you're looking at some piece of equipment
| and are relieved to discover that it has been sitting
| with gas in it since the 90s. At least there is a hope
| the rubber bits are intact.
|
| On the other hand, this is so common now that the
| aftermarket carb business has become a mass market. You
| can buy chinese knockoffs carbs with all of the hoses and
| plastic bits for like $10 on Amazon now.
| bluGill wrote:
| That isn't ethanol. That is the cheaper grade of gas they
| use with ethanol rotting faster. (Ethanol is high octane,
| you cannot use the same molecules in non-ethanol gas as
| you can in ethanol) So yes, ethanol free gas lasts
| longer, but it isn't because it is ethanol free, it is
| because the gas is better quality.
|
| Aftermarket carbs are cheap because carbs are cheap. You
| can buy a lawn mower at WalMart for $100, and everyone
| has to make a profit. That means the engine can't cost
| more than $20, and the carb must be less than that. The
| Chinese make a nice profit selling new carbs for $10,
| even though most carbs still go to the engine
| manufactures who pay a lot less in quantity.
|
| Ethanol has been common enough in gas since the 90s.In
| the early years there were problems with it attacking
| rubber. That rubber hasn't been used in fuel systems for
| years though.
| jandrese wrote:
| Tell that to all of the carbs I find full of fossilized
| nasty black tar.
| mulmen wrote:
| There are gas stations that sell ethanol free gas.
| jandrese wrote:
| Closest one to me according to pure-gas.org is about an
| hour away, a couple of counties over. There are literally
| none in the county. I don't know if that's local law or
| market forces in action.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I guess everyone has a different experience, then. I made
| a sport out of trying to kill an old Briggs & Stratton
| lawn mower by doing no maintenance at all. Running old
| gas, never changing the oil or anything else, just didn't
| care. It wouldn't die. Well, except for the self-
| propelled part, that was always a nuisance. But the
| engine was indestructible [0]. I finally retired it after
| 20 years due to rust, but the engine was still going
| fine.
|
| I have my share of electric battery-powered lawn
| equipment, but I've already gone through one generation
| of batteries which rendered the old equipment obsolete.
| And the markup on batteries is on the order of 500%
| compared to what a generic battery of similar chemistry
| would cost. It's an excellent racket, very profitable.
|
| I wonder about the people here on HN buying Ryobi
| stuff... maybe they're onto something. Normally I
| wouldn't touch Ryobi with a ten foot pole, because it's
| trash. But OTOH, it's cheap, so maybe the quality of the
| tool will match up with the expected availability of
| batteries so the TCO isn't as offensive.
|
| [0] If you haven't seen those old videos where B&S
| demonstrates why the Slick 50 demos were BS, you should.
| Lawnmower engines are way overbuilt, mostly as an
| artifact of their small size. They're hard to kill.
| maxerickson wrote:
| They are already selling full product lines. For example:
|
| https://www.husqvarna.com/us/products/battery/
|
| (I don't remember how I ended up there but I was looking
| at their battery products a few months ago)
| Blackthorn wrote:
| It's already here. Try the battery powered options from
| the usual brands (I prefer Makita), they are fantastic.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| The revolution is already here. I had gas powered
| weedwackers as a kid. Nowadays I own an 18v brushless
| Makita. It's fantastic, almost as powerful as the gas one
| was...and they also make 36v and 80v versions that are
| beyond powerful enough for any job.
| kube-system wrote:
| Those higher voltage weedwackers are very impressive.
| I've used one that was somewhere north of 40v, and it was
| closer to a brush-cutter than a weedwacker. I had to turn
| it down to a lower setting to prevent damaging the things
| I was trimming around.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I own a mix. I absolutely love my electric leaf blower
| and electric chainsaw. But I own both an electric and a
| gas-powered string trimmer. The electric one is every bit
| as powerful as the gas one, and it's much nicer to use.
| But it doesn't have the runtime to do the large steep
| slope further away from the house. For the big jobs I
| tend to dual-wield, using a blade on one and a string on
| the other. If I hadn't inherited the gas-powered one, I'd
| probably just have more batteries for the electric one.
| Twirrim wrote:
| > It doesn't seem like blowers could be 10% of that no matter
| how you slice it.
|
| A couple of quotes from, comparing a two stroke leaf blower
| to a 2011 F-150 SVT Raptor:
|
| https://www.edmunds.com/about/press/leaf-blowers-
| emissions-d...
|
| "The hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with
| the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile
| drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor," said Jason Kavanagh,
| Engineering Editor at Edmunds.com. "As ridiculous as it may
| sound, it is more 'green' to ditch your yard equipment and
| find a way to blow leaves using a Raptor."
|
| "The tests found that a Ryobi 4-stroke leaf blower kicked out
| almost seven times more oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and 13.5
| times more carbon monoxide (CO) than the Raptor, which
| InsideLine.com once dubbed "the ultimate Michigan
| mudslinger." An Echo 2-stroke leaf blower performed even
| worse, generating 23 times CO and nearly 300 times more non-
| methane hydrocarbons (NMHC) than the Raptor. "
|
| 10% does seem mind bogglingly high, but then when you
| consider just how big the efficiency gap is, and start
| thinking about how many people have leaf blowers, weed
| whackers and the like... maybe it's possible?
| sdljfjafsd wrote:
| They are extremely wasteful. Auto manufacturers are always
| improving emissions on their engines but thats not the case
| in lawn equipment. Passenger flights and leaf blowers are two
| largely western luxuries that are absolutely horrible for our
| environment.
| tpmx wrote:
| (Edited)
|
| I assume you mean:
|
| https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-09/documents...
| (2015)
|
| "All Nonroad sources account for approximately 242 million tons
| of pollutants each year, accounting for 17% of all VOC
| missions, 12% of NOx emissions, 29% of CO emissions, 4% of CO2
| emissions, 2% of PM10 emissions, and 5% of PM2.5 emissions."
|
| What's "Nonroad" isn't clearly defined here, so I assume it's
| quite a lot more than "Gas-powered blowers".
| maxerickson wrote:
| It includes boat motors.
|
| I expect the non-particulate emissions are dominated by 2
| stroke motors (well, other than CO2).
| porb121 wrote:
| page 7 and figure 2, "GLGE represented nearly 4% of All
| Emissions of VOCs and 12% of All Emissions of CO"
| tpmx wrote:
| Carbon Monoxide (CO) does not cause climate change.
| (https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2291/fourteen-years-of-
| carbon-...)
|
| It's dangerous to humans in closed spaces, but that's not
| where leaf blowers are operated. (And yes, I also hate
| them, but that's not he point.)
| porb121 wrote:
| i did not say anything about climate change
| tpmx wrote:
| So then I can only assume you included the carbon
| monoxide number because it was ... large?
| porb121 wrote:
| it's a pollutant, and the primary pollutant of gas lawn
| equipment.
| vl wrote:
| Great! Let's hit the most protected group of all - small
| immigrant independent gardening contractors. They have piles of
| money lying around to buy new less effective equipment.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| That's definitely a relevant point to this discussion for
| sure, but I guess as much as I hate technocratic solutions, I
| would still prefer some dumbass Neo-liberal subsidies ("cash
| for clunkers?") for upgrading than allowing continued use.
|
| You're especially right to be wary as these policies tend to
| ultimately penalize lower income workers, and I would prefer
| a larger discussion about solving housing access & other
| necessities that could make these structural changes way more
| equitable.
|
| This trap we're in is pretty depressing
| pureliquidhw wrote:
| If their customers can afford them now, they certainly can
| afford the $1/hr increase it would take to offset new
| equipment. This impacts home owners more.
|
| Also, just because it's inconvenient, doesn't mean it's not
| worth doing.
| KorematsuFred wrote:
| Just to put these claims in perspective using the paper you
| have quoted.
|
| > In 2011, approximately 26.7 million tons of pollutants were
| emitted by GLGE (VOC=461,800; CO=5,793,200; NOx=68,500,
| PM10=20,700; CO2=20,382,400)
|
| To quote other sources:
|
| CO emission in the United States in 2001 was 120.8 million
| short tons, of which 74.8 million came from on-road vehicles.
|
| Fair to say around 3% of total CO in USA today is being
| generated by GLGE (Gasoline powered lawn and garden equipment).
| akeck wrote:
| We still have a gas mower. Climate change has reduced our
| grass-cutting climate impact. In the past few years, our grass
| is dried out and almost dead by July. If we cut it after that,
| it becomes really dead. If we don't, it hibernates until the
| fall rains. So lately we don't cut our grass for two months out
| of the summer.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Having just moved to the suburbs during the pandemic I feel
| like I am taking crazy pills. So we all have lawns that we dump
| thousands of gallons of clean water on, then everyday from
| 9am-11am gardeners trucks pour into the suburban neighborhoods,
| make a huge racket mowing and blowing, and then an hour or two
| later they all flow back out. And the end result is all these
| neat squares of grass in front of everyones homes that serve no
| purpose. It is really baffling.
| noahjk wrote:
| Like a lot of things in life, it does serve a purpose, but
| only a social one (the social pressure of having a well
| manicured lawn), whether it's because of a HOA or a need to
| suck up to neighbors. Which makes it even more obnoxious than
| serving no purpose at all to me! Just another chore.
| GordonS wrote:
| I've always hated lawns too - house after house with the same
| kind of pointless, perfectly manicured square of green. The
| waste of all the water and energy, all the chemicals used to
| keep out anything but grass. I mean, it may as well be
| astroturf given it's always kept looking like it!
|
| I fully agree that some vegetation looks nice, and is good
| for insects and birds. But I'd _much_ prefer some variety at
| least - different grasses, wildflowers, moss, clover, local
| plants, and not kept permanently trimmed 3mm off the earth. I
| mentioned this to my wife a few years back, and she looked at
| me like I 'd gone crazy, and I've had the same aghast looks
| from others too.
|
| Actually, I'd like to see some proposals for regulation
| around this. Homogeneous lawns are just such a colossal
| waste.
| nineplay wrote:
| Plants, grass, and trees are pretty. People tend to feel good
| looking at them rather than just concrete, asphalt, and
| plastic. Lawns attract birds and bees and butterflies and
| bugs. I don't think there's any real mystery about why people
| like lawns.
| anaerobicover wrote:
| Well, small proviso: _yards with (flowering) plants_
| attract birds, bugs, etc. Wide expanses of constantly-mowed
| grass lawn do not so much.
| tzs wrote:
| Unless you've got an HOA or a city or county law that
| requires you to water your lawn, or are in a place with very
| low rainfall, it should be safe to skip watering the lawn
| most of the time.
|
| A lawn should be able to go 4 weeks with no water in the
| summer and not die. It will go dormant, and once the water
| starts again it will green up quickly. A dormant lawn will be
| brown and you shouldn't walk on it much, but if you don't
| need to do things on it and aren't bothered aesthetically by
| it, it's fine.
|
| Once it goes brown, water it maybe every 3 weeks just to make
| sure it doesn't go from dormant to dead if you don't get
| enough rain.
| dheera wrote:
| Not only that, but the dudes with gas leaf blowers outside my
| apartment seem to always make 3 or 4 passes by my apartment if
| I'm in the middle of a conference call.
|
| They seem to only make a single pass if I'm not having a call.
| roter wrote:
| And particulate matter. The lawn maintenance workers come to
| neighbouring houses and just blow the stuff onto the street and
| towards the other houses. Then another crew comes in and blows
| it back. It eventually all ends up at my house. Clogging up my
| cpu fans...
| toxik wrote:
| Consider putting your computer indoors!
| xeromal wrote:
| They're banned in LA but people still use them
| elevenoh wrote:
| Could not agree more.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Please consider cribbing off of Oakland's ordinance and
| championing it where you live. The more locales where banned,
| the faster manufacturing of gas powered lawn implements dies
| off.
| core-questions wrote:
| Yes. I am a big fan of corded electric lawn gear. Maybe it
| doesn't work if you have to mow an acerage, but for a normal
| suburban environment corded blowers, trimmers, and mowers are
| all totally reasonable to use. No batteries to worry about,
| powerful enough, never have to fill up gas, often lighter
| than other options.
|
| There's still plenty of use cases for gas units but if we
| could get them banned from everywhere but rural areas it
| would be a good step in the right direction.
|
| Some folks go too far and say "nobody should have a lawn!!!"
| but they clearly don't understand the zenlike experience of
| avoiding one's family, drinking cheap lager, listening to a
| podcast, and working the lawn in the sunshine for a couple
| hours on a Saturday morning. Kept me sane last year more than
| anything else did.
| [deleted]
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If you have a couple unobstructed squares to mow it's
| great. If you have stuff to go around the cord becomes more
| of a pain than the ICE equivalent.
| nitrogen wrote:
| There are high-performing battery electric mowers and
| trimmers now, that use the standard battery packs from
| power tool manufacturers, so they are really easy to find
| and easy to charge. No need to risk running over an
| extension cord.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Corded electrics are not powerful enough. A 15A, 120VAC
| circuit at 80% load can supply 1440 Watts of power or just
| under 2 HP, assuming all the power went to mechanical
| energy and none was lost to heat.
|
| Commercial leaf blowers are over 3 HP. 1-2 horsepower
| doesn't seem like a big difference, but it's literally
| 50-100% more power.
|
| My (small) push mower is 5.1 HP, over 250% of the max power
| I could get from a corded unit. It can still bog down in
| heavy, damp grass, especially while mulching. Take away 60%
| of its power and it's not going to get better.
|
| Battery trimmers are awesome; I'll give you that one.
| sib wrote:
| Corded can be kind of a pain if your yard is at all odd-
| shaped. They also really aren't that powerful.
|
| This battery-operated one works well and is also much
| quieter than the gas-powered ones.
|
| https://www.homedepot.com/p/RYOBI-125-MPH-550-CFM-40-Volt
| -Li...
| Symbiote wrote:
| A sample of leaf blowers sold in the UK [1] shows power
| ratings of 2500-3000W. They will use the standard 240V
| power supply.
|
| Don't most American houses have at least one 240V socket
| in the garage, for use with garden/garage equipment?
| (Otherwise, where do you plug in an electric car if
| you're visiting relatives, for example?)
|
| [1] https://www.argos.co.uk/browse/garden-and-
| diy/lawnmowers-and...
| Baeocystin wrote:
| No. Most US houses have, at most, a single 240V outlet in
| the laundry room for an electric dryer. Literally
| everything else is 120V. There is almost no household
| equipment other than drying machines that is sold taking
| a 240V plug.
|
| Electric cars may change this. They haven't yet, at least
| not much.
| tssva wrote:
| You forgot the outlet for the electric range, so 2
| outlets for most US homes.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Ah, you're right. Doubled! :D
|
| (The important thing to note for non-US-dwelling folks is
| that your average American simply never deals with plugs
| other than 120V except for rare circumstance, like
| appliance replacement or adding a car charging portal.)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Don't most American houses have at least one 240V socket
| in the garage, for use with garden/garage equipment?
|
| Newer ones, depending on location.
|
| >(Otherwise, where do you plug in an electric car if
| you're visiting relatives, for example?)
|
| You charge on 120v or you don't charge.
| folkrav wrote:
| I don't know how much grass you have to deal with, but
| before renting, I had a small-to-medium sized lawn to
| mow, and I just didn't mow in heavy, damp grass. The
| electric I had supplied way more than enough power to mow
| everything I had to cover without a hitch.
|
| I can definitely see it becoming in issue on larger
| areas, with larger weeds or, in less dry weather, if you
| really _have_ to, like landscaper services, maybe. But
| for the average suburban lawn maintenance?
| sokoloff wrote:
| My lawn is on the small side (I can mow it all in 40
| minutes, even if bagging). But it's a thick Kentucky
| Bluegrass and needs to be mowed 2-3x a week during the
| cool, wet spring and mid-fall. If we go away for a week-
| long vacation somewhere in the spring, that's a thick,
| high mess of grass that I need to mow when we get back.
| folkrav wrote:
| Ah, fast growing and thick, yeah. I had to mow every week
| and could push it to 2-3 in very dry weather.
| core-questions wrote:
| You're not wrong, but a mower can fit a 4-stroke engine;
| the law would make more sense to ban 2-strokes first.
|
| The real solution here is to mow more often, and on dryer
| days. Never had any issue with my corded units as long as
| I keep the lawn short. When it's long, you have to move
| in a few passes to get a nice cut without clogging things
| up. Mulching long grass is gross anyway, you'll get way
| too much grass detritus out of it; I know it's good for
| the lawn, but again, it makes more sense with a weekly
| mow and fairly short grass, rather than letting it grow
| into a field and mowing it once a month or something like
| that. You get out what you put in.
|
| Obviously that makes more sense for homeowners who do
| their own work as opposed to lawn companies; I'd be okay
| with exceptions for businesses, with 4-stroke only.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| This is probably the best outcome. Home users limited to
| electric, commercials pushed to 4 stroke where possible,
| and then set hours of lawn care noise during the day.
| Though you'd need carve outs for the size of property for
| homes, which starts getting into confusion territory.
| SMAAART wrote:
| Lawn maintenance is extremely expensive, and toxic, and
| polluting. Used to live in suburbia proper, and I used to have
| the worst lawn, my neighbors hated me, but I DGAF.
|
| There's nothing green about green lawns.
| some-guy wrote:
| When I rented a single family dwelling in the Central Valley
| in CA, I simply let the weeds / grass mixture take over while
| using a push-reel mower to keep it as a lawn, then let the
| lawn die during the summer and fall.
|
| Virtually no noise, no pollution, and even a brown lawn after
| being well kept didn't look terrible.
| notacoward wrote:
| The really crazy thing is that in many places you are
| _required_ to maintain your lawn in something like the
| traditional manner. Not just in crazy Southern states,
| either. In my own town in Massachusetts, I remember a
| controversy about someone letting their lawn revert to a
| proper meadow, neighbors complaining that it harbored pests
| which destroyed their lawns, etc. It was crazy and
| hypocritical, but also exemplary of a common reality across
| the US.
| etrautmann wrote:
| Amazing. Working from home in Menlo Park was infuriating for this
| reason
| wcarron wrote:
| All for it. Hoping it becomes a statewide ban in the next few
| years.
|
| I'm really sick of Tues-Thurs having 30-40 2-stroke engines
| idling/running for basically 3 straight hours. It's noisy, and I
| can definitely smell it, and it definitely interrupts my work
| jmugan wrote:
| I think we need a bigger appreciation of noise pollution in
| general. People fly private planes and helicopters over while we
| are trying to enjoy nature, or trucks go beep beep beep when we
| are trying to think, or unnecessarily loud vehicles rumble when
| we are trying to relax.
| xt00 wrote:
| I think a reasonable option for people that do this for a living
| would be a back-park worn battery pack that has an inverter to
| drive leaf blowers that typically use a 110VAC input, since the
| backpack could house the equivalent of maybe 10 of the normal
| small batteries that are used in the battery powered leaf
| blowers.. only problem is that they are pretty spendy.. likely
| the cost will come down once these are more mainstream.. but yea
| the noise of these things is horrible.. for example, lets say you
| live in a neighborhood where 8 of your neighbors all have lawn
| services that use them.. easily that means you could have one or
| two per day.. bwahhh bwahhhhh everyday.. super obnoxious.. Here
| is one backpack electric leaf blower: EGO BAX1501 56V 28Ah, $1300
| tclancy wrote:
| I have an EGO backpack blower that works well on our two acres
| and it only cost $250.
| aritmo wrote:
| There are some sweet battery-based blowers and trimmers. Less
| noisy as well.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I have a 80cc 2-stroke gas leaf blower, two plug-in electric
| leaf blowers, and I've tried a buddy's battery leaf blower.
|
| All of the electric ones are basically toys compared to the gas
| powered one. Gas unit's 1100 cfm and 220 mph rating is
| substantially higher than the electrics and it shows in
| performance. The electrics can barely move a small pile of dry
| leaves. The gas one can lift sheets of wet, mucky leaves and
| move them around effortlessly.
|
| On the other hand, I love my battery string trimmer. That's a
| device that seems perfect for electric as the power requirement
| is quite low and there's no carb to get all gummed up. The
| electric works every time and a battery pack easily does my
| entire yard trimming twice over, so there's no fiddling or
| stopping required.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > All of the electric ones are basically toys compared to the
| gas powered one.
|
| That's what they used to say about cars, too. Innovation and
| technological advances will find a way, especially with the
| economic incentives created by this legislation for an
| enterprising startup to build a better battery blower.
| mnouquet wrote:
| > That's what they used to say about cars, too. Innovation
|
| Yet I can still drive 500 miles hauling 2500lb (8000lb
| gross weight), or haul 40,0000lb (80,000lb gross) over
| 2,000 miles without refueling / recharging.
|
| No electric vehicle can do that, still today.
|
| Let me know when an electric vehicle will be able to haul
| 100,000lb of grain all day long by -20C, then we'll talk.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Given all of the energy and funding being put in that
| space, we'll see it on HN within the next decade or two.
| mnouquet wrote:
| You can put all the money you want to increase the speed
| of light, and you will certainly see a lot of snake-oil
| startup promising an increased speed of light, and their
| share of Kool-aid drinker here on HN, but the speed of
| light will never increase...
| jeffrallen wrote:
| My 16 tine rake has 45 spm (strokes per minute) with a 300 gr
| flying capacity, or a 25 kg capacity when rolling a pile. I
| decided to upgrade this year to the nylon fibre collection
| bag, which has sweet dual handles.
|
| I use animal skin gloves for that authentic feel, though I've
| tried synthetic and bareback, and that's fine too.
|
| I've found my emissions are lower with this setup, unless I
| ate lentils for lunch.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I gave you a +1 for that. Thanks for the levity.
|
| There's pluses and minuses to everything. As a lot of
| commenters pointed out, there have been many local
| ordinances that already do this, and many landscapers
| ignore them; as do the folks that hire the landscapers.
|
| Where I live, I don't think that we have ordinances like
| that.
|
| As I work from home, it sucks. Those two-strokes are
| _loud_.
|
| https://www.wshu.org/post/david-bouchier-spring-
| chorus#strea...
| mint2 wrote:
| Actually, you are technically wrong, to be pedantic about it
| with an anecdote. Borrowed a plug in leaf bower that is from
| maybe the 90s or 2000s. That thing easily blows around 1 to
| 1.5in crushed granite. Leaves smeaves, real blowers do
| granite and I'm not talking pea gravel. Oh but it sounds like
| a jet engine and is as loud as or maybe louder than a gas
| one.
|
| Anyway you're right about the average *current* battery
| powered ones.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Have you used one? I have a 20v and 60v dewalt blower. The
| 20volt blows, but it's not very strong. It works blowing out
| the garage and with minor clippings on the sidewalk / driveway
| that's about it. The 60v works better, substantially more power
| and it moves leaves. Both have horrible battery life when all
| is said and done. We're talking 20 minutes or so with 9AH
| batteries, and in the case of the 60v I get about 30 minutes on
| a 12ah FlexVolt.
|
| Then theres the whole buying batteries, longevity of batteries,
| the power to charge etc. I would bet that the _damage_ to the
| ecosystem from using gas blowers / trimmers isn't that big a
| difference and if equated in measurement of power and life, the
| gas far outperforms it.
|
| Also, the Electrics are just as loud in most instances. Are
| they going to ban gas pressure washers next?
| jlmorton wrote:
| Note that while it's annoying, it's certainly an option to
| plug-in the leaf blowers.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Neither of mine plug in, the only adapters available are
| third party on amazon and a few have less than stellar
| reviews. Namely, they short out and cause fires. I'd also
| be required to have a substantial amount of electrical cord
| length at our farm, like 1000 feet cables, which simply
| isn't feasible. I suppose I could throw the generator in
| the truck when doing stuff out there but I feel like that
| defeats the purpose.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Plug in to a generator? :)
| sparkling wrote:
| The electric ones are not just weaker in performance, but have
| other significant problems.
|
| These batteries really will not age well in both common
| scenarios. The professional landscaper that uses this thing
| every day, possibly for a extended period of time will kill the
| battery very fast. The casual home owner that may use this
| thing once a weak or so will kill the battery with inactivity
| as it sits around in the garage 99% of the time.
|
| The entry-level models don't even have exchangeable batteries.
| Basically throwing a perfectly good device away because battery
| is dead, producing huge amounts of e-waste.
| chrisBob wrote:
| I have been following electric garden tools for a little while.
| The biggest issue I have is the up front cost, mostly related to
| batteries. Stihl and Husqvarna recently released options where I
| could replace my $400 chainsaw with a battery option, but it
| would be $600 to run for 30 minutes, and another $150/battery to
| add another 30 minutes of run time.
|
| I don't often run it for a long time, but when I get the chance I
| don't want to have to cut my work time short or spend an extra
| $300 to cut down trees and not have to worry about the running
| time.
|
| There is also a company that offers a stand on mower comparable
| to what I use at home, but it would be about $18k to replace my
| $4k mower with an electric option.
|
| I am interested in the responsible, environmentally friendly,
| option, but it is hard to swallow.
| sivex wrote:
| Landscaping companies will be running gas powered generators to
| charge their batteries...
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Exactly. If it's a noise ordinance, set time limits during the
| day. If it's a pollution issue, look at the problem from a
| wider lens and then slowly introduce standards as we have with
| improving emissions in cars. This is simply a knee jerk feel
| good law that won't solve the problem. The 60v blowers are just
| as loud, the generators just as loud.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think it's not unlikely that they might be charging their
| equipment off of a truck mounted generator (or the truck
| itself) which is good news - since most generators and all cars
| are far more efficient and generally better muffled than leaf
| blowers.
|
| Leaf blowers churn out a bunch of monoxide due to the generally
| poor motor design.
| danans wrote:
| Or you know, plug in to their clients' outdoor power outlets.
| If it works for contractors, don't see why it wouldn't work for
| landscapers.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Could be. Until better battery alternatives come up. I don't
| think a battery can be charged very quickly. Even with an on-
| site generator. So they will have multiple batteries. At which
| point it might be better off charging them overnight.
|
| It will reduce noise across yards. It will increase efficiency.
| It will cause more ewaste. And it will definitely raise prices.
|
| Yeah it's ridiculous.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Landscaping companies will be running gas powered generators
| to charge their batteries...
|
| Which, even accounting for charging losses, will be less
| polluting than backpackable two-strokes, and less close to
| where workers breathe, so, mission accomplished, whether the
| pollution concern is environmental or worker health or both.
| stickfigure wrote:
| That might not actually be as bad. Generators are four-stroke.
| mikestew wrote:
| Fantastic, as I'd rather listen to the even the cheapest Harbor
| Freight open-frame generator over a two-stroke leaf blower any
| time you care to ask me. That set up will pollute less, too.
| ska wrote:
| More likely they'll have beefed up alternators and battery
| packs on the trucks and charge between/during jobs.
|
| Which from a pollution point of view is way better than
| 2-stroke backpacks.
| screye wrote:
| _Controversial opinion_ : Privately owned lawns (not gardens) are
| an abomination. It is the only other 'weed' that's made it. Grass
| consumes a lot of water + manpower, while providing almost
| nothing in return.
|
| Lawns in public places makes sense. They get enough use to be
| justifiable. But, private lawns are so underused that even
| stepping on some is considered impolite.
|
| Most privately owned lawns are too little to do anything useful
| with, besides being a summer hangout for a backyard grill. We
| could grow trees & plants in the same area, get shade, better
| soil retention, a cooling effect and have a real ecosystem going.
| IMO, it looks prettier too. Lawns are not Greenery. They are
| merely green, but they are the locusts of the plant world.
|
| Historians will look back at the American Dream as THE cultural
| idea that kick started an era of gross unsustainability.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| I recognize that this is a somewhat controversial opinion,
| especially given the downvotes you had when I stumbled across
| the comment, but I want to say that I agree and think our
| current views towards lawns, grass, and weeds are a point of
| cultural insanity.
|
| I grew up in northern MN, and routinely people would spray
| disgusting pesticides in their lawns that would drift across
| the neighborhood, all to get rid of dandelions. Why? Dandelions
| are flowers, and not just regular flowers, but ones that kids
| like me enjoyed kicking or blowing on when they went to seed.
| These people created dead zones for plants and animals all for
| some bizarre aesthetic that doesn't even look good. I'm hoping
| newer generations will find big lawns as ugly and gag-inducing
| as I do.
|
| Get rid of your lawn. Fill the space with gardens, mini-farms,
| and native pollen-producing plants.
| mc32 wrote:
| I'm not opposed to this. They are noisy. They often come early on
| weekends!
|
| But that said, I hope they compensate current owners with
| vouchers or grant some trade in value and not outright ban them
| without compensation. That would be wholly unfair to current
| owners.
| nostromo wrote:
| Has anyone else noticed the trend of ever-increasing laws and
| ever-decreasing enforcement?
|
| It's not a good mix. We end up with a system that punishes people
| following the rules and doesn't do anything about the many people
| breaking the rules. It also creates the sense of unfairness and
| general lawlessness -- that laws are recommendations that can
| mostly be ignored.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Every new law should come with an expiration date, at which
| time a vote should occur to either extend or can it.
|
| Alternatively, there should be a "fixed budget" for laws, as
| in: if you want to pass that new law, you're going to pick one
| of the existing laws on the books an can it to make space for
| the new one.
| kepler1 wrote:
| I echo this sentiment. It's either getting too expensive
| (people) to police laws with sufficient numbers, or we are not
| interested in offending people or doing the dirty work of
| putting teeth behind laws in the name of "equity" (for some
| things).
|
| I hate half-measures that inconvenience those that follow the
| rules, and do nothing to punish those who break them.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| The phenomenon has a nickname - Anarcho-Tyranny, or the
| "Managerial State". 1994 Essay:
| https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/anarcho-tyranny-u-s-a-5/
| sib wrote:
| It generally ensures that there is always something to charge
| someone with if they come to the attention of the authorities
| and if the "offender" is not politically or socially advantaged
| in some way.
| mike_d wrote:
| This is just peak NIMBY Karen at work: laws passed to address
| personal grievances.
| proc0 wrote:
| Yeah, it's just not an effective means to change small behavior
| like this. They could have instead banned loud noise making
| machines and/or machines with high pollution, and this would
| reduce the supply, and shift the demand to the alternatives,
| which by definition should now optimize for the proper features
| (silent and green). The way things happening now, especially in
| CA, is laws for everything such that it specifies behavior, not
| incentives. This then makes enforcement target individuals
| instead of market suppliers.
| [deleted]
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > They could have instead banned loud noise making machines
| and/or machines with high pollution
|
| Isn't that what they did?
|
| Oh, are you saying they should ban the sale or posession, not
| just the use?
|
| Or you're saying they should ban _more_ kinds of noise-making
| or polluting machines, not just leaf-blowers?
|
| Are you arguing for more expansive ban?
|
| Or I may be missing it.
| proc0 wrote:
| I'm saying ban something that targets the supply, in a way
| that is both general but at the same time addresses the
| specific immediate need. It's hard to expand here, but IMHO
| the system/process of Law is not meant to target things at
| such "level of detail". If the system was extremely fast at
| revising existing laws, I would have a different opinion,
| but with how much power it has plus how slow it is, why are
| lawmakers designing laws that punish such specific
| activities? As a crude analogy it's like a bunch of
| programmers are adding a ton of bloat to the code just for
| a tiny feature, that maybe should have been part of a
| bigger feature to begin with.
|
| To summarize, every law needs to be extremely well thought
| out, but results have shown otherwise (although that's a
| different thread).
| [deleted]
| mywacaday wrote:
| Seems like a disproportionate impact on landscaping companies,
| thinks are hard enough with COVID without adding the cost of
| retooling and buying a days worth of batteries for each piece of
| equipment
| jandrese wrote:
| It would be ironic if this forced landscaping companies to all
| buy noisy diesel generators to run constantly so they can
| charge a bank of batteries while running on another set.
|
| On the other hand, a single big diesel generator is less
| harmful to the environment than a bunch of 2 stroke engines. It
| could theoretically even get some pollution controls that would
| be too heavy and expensive for the power equipment.
|
| Or maybe they'll buy those F150s with the built in power bank
| and have the truck idle to charge the batteries. That would be
| even better for noise level and the environment, as the truck
| comes with modern pollution controls.
| KDJohnBrown wrote:
| LA did this like 20 years ago I believe. I'm surprised this took
| so long.
| kogir wrote:
| Will this play out like it did in Palo Alto? There, the
| landscaping services switched to small generators on little
| carts, pulled behind the new, electric leaf blowers.
|
| Still gas, still loud, still polluting - just one layer of
| indirection.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| I think most likely they just end up ignoring the law.
| carabiner wrote:
| The ideal device for turning dinosaurs into noise. Thank god.
| blobbers wrote:
| YES! If they're giving Tesla incentives give battery operated
| leaf blowers incentives as well. Super happy cities are starting
| to do this, hope my neighborhood could as well.
|
| State should step up subsidies to encourage this.
| eatbitseveryday wrote:
| I wonder if landscaping companies will buy a fuel-powered
| generator to run their electrical equipment, seeing as they'd
| otherwise have to use the property's outlets to power their
| equipment (or risk not having access to electricity on some
| properties).
| hellisothers wrote:
| I have seen this happen when I lived near Palo Alto :(
| reportingsjr wrote:
| It's possible, but even if this happens it's still a pretty big
| win over the two stroke engines that are prevalent in lawn
| equipment. You'd be surprised at how efficient a modern
| generator is compared to two stroke engines.
| henearkr wrote:
| Nice!!! I really hope Tokyo is next in line. And all the other
| cities in the world.
|
| After all, the mains are never really far away in urban or
| suburban context, so ICE-powered tooling is meaningless.
| mrwh wrote:
| This is the thing, doesn't even need to be battery powered,
| houses usually have external accessible power points (at least
| in the US and certainly in Oakland).
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Houses are a small part of landscaping maintenance around a
| city. I bet there aren't as many _outlets_ available as you
| think. You also have to deal with consumption and ownership
| of the outlet, how do you re-imburse someone with external
| outlets in a townhouse situation?
| henearkr wrote:
| In most cities there are electrical outlets for municipal
| workers too (in urban context they are often protected by a
| lock).
|
| In many cases there is also a way to plug to the grid using
| traps on the side of streetlights.
| Bud wrote:
| Next step: ban the electric leaf blowers, too. Get a rake. Or,
| just stop being a lawn fetishist--also a good option.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Robotic lawnmowers that slowly work on the yard all night long
| are the future.
| KorematsuFred wrote:
| While the intentions behind this could be noble, these sort of
| heavy handed moves are anti-minority and hurt some of the poorest
| people.
|
| Lawn and Gardening jobs are mostly done by immigrants and other
| minorities in and around Oakland. For these cash strapped
| individuals it is going to be a major burden to replace all their
| equipment with battery operated devices, not to mention, it is
| going to be a problem to charge the batteries as these people
| often work around the clock and can't afford to keep the
| equipment idle. Some of these people will go out of business, or
| will have to seek loans from loan sharks or pay expensive fines
| to the city.
|
| Not sure Oakland can even make a dent it CO pollution in the
| world with this law but surely will destroy few more lives of
| city's minorities and vulnerable people.
| fossuser wrote:
| I think this has been banned in Palo Alto for years, but is never
| enforced and there are a lot of them running all of the time.
|
| The suburbs are surprisingly loud because of this, louder than
| the cities I've lived in.
| [deleted]
| hedora wrote:
| They should ban leaf blowers outright. Even without the engine
| exhaust, they kick up particulates (allergens, car exhaust/tire
| dust, etc), and put them back in the atmosphere.
|
| Also, most people that use them don't actually put the result in
| a pile, and haul it away. They just push crap back and forth
| across property lines. Get a rake and a tarp already.
|
| Back in my bike commuting days, it was obvious that one leaf
| blower was putting out more (non CO2) pollution than a long line
| of idling cars.
|
| Still, this is a step in the right direction.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| > _they kick up particulates (allergens, car exhaust /tire
| dust, etc), and put them back in the atmosphere._
|
| You know what really needs to be banned? Wind. Fucking wind
| blows literally a million times more shit everywhere. Something
| must be done.
| aye01 wrote:
| whole heartedly agree that this is a plus, but no way in hell are
| gardeners in oakland going to stop using them. i see most
| gardening truck around the city with their entire beds with just
| gas blowers. no way are companies with already low margins going
| to swap their equipment over this. its going to take years before
| we see the effects of this.
| rmah wrote:
| I hope this ban spreads, not because of the air pollution, but
| because of the noise pollution. I hate when those things wake me
| up or keep me from enjoying my terrace.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| They're just going to use Electrics and Generators. It doesn't
| really solve that side of the problem. A different approach
| would be needed to reduce noise pollution, such as Operating
| hours etc.
| sib wrote:
| It's a lot easier to put an effective muffler on a generator
| than on a leaf blower that is person-portable.
|
| I just looked at the stats for some Honda generators and they
| have a 7000-W unit with 120v and 240v outputs that runs at
| 52-58dB.
|
| A new mid-range California (CARB)-compliant Echo gas leaf
| blower comes in at 74dB.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Electric blowers are quieter than gas ones, and one generator
| is quieter than 3-4 individual gas engine lawn tools.
| retrac wrote:
| While people usually complain about the noise, the far bigger
| concern is pollution. Almost all of the power-weight advantage in
| the lightweight two-stroke engines used in these machines is
| gained with partial combustion of lubricant-enriched fuel and no
| emissions control. With some pollutants it is something like two
| to three magnitudes of order worse per unit of energy produced,
| compared to a low-emissions car engine.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| On top of air pollutants, they are also obnoxiously loud for what
| often amounts to a vanity product. I know this isn't why they
| were banned, but a little peace and quiet is a nice side effect.
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