You must log in or register to comment.
I hate those fucking things so much. To anybody who uses one: I hate you!
Fully agree! I’ve read that devices that run on electricity are not so loud.It’s the mobile ones running on fossil fuel that are so loud.Even with ear-plugs in it is distracting me to be productive or to relax.I’ve talked with people I know, and told them about the unbearable noise.Their response : “Yeah, but think about elderly people that could slip because of all the leaves”.Well, how did people cope with this decades ago when these loud devices were not super popular ?
I have an electric leaf blower. It is indeed significantly quieter than a two stroke gasoline powered one, albeit not exactly what you’d call “silent.”
I primarily use it to dry off my bikes after washing, and to blow dust off my shop floor and outside. Sweeping is for chumps. I also use it to remove the grass clippings from my sidewalks (I just blow them back into the grass) because the very same Karens who bitch about leaf blower noise are also the very same Karens who bitch about the sidewalks being “untidy” and getting grass clippings on their shoes.
Unfortunately, my leaf blower is not powerful enough to blow them away.
Lol I will never for a moment care about people complaining about grass clippings on my sidewalk. The wind will always take care of it in the end. You do you, I have nothing against it, that just made me laugh.
and to blow dust off my shop floor and outside.
Shop vac wouldn’t work?
It would work, and it does work better for specific applications like metal chips around the drill press and grinders. But doing the entire floor with it would take all day. The nozzle is only 9" wide.
9” wide?
9" wide!
That’d take 10x the effort and time.
Do you mean use the vac as a blower? Less effective compared to a proper blower, and just as loud (maybe louder?) as an electric blower.
I had meant just to vacuum up all the dust.
Oh, then the blower is still better but for different reasons. Shop vac is just as loud as an electric blower, and will take significantly more time and energy.
My electric blower and lawnmower are pretty quiet.
If you use an electric one, I hate you only a little bit.
have we thought about all the elderly people that might get run over by vehicles they can’t fucking hear?
I mean, deaf people are handling themselves just fine while hearing no cars.
deaf people are generally very perceptive of the fact that they cannot hear, not like people constantly exposed to the noise of lawn equipment, who in turn, block it out mentally, because it means nothing. Only to find out, that actually it means something.
So we can’t use technology to make life easier and faster?
Sure you can be out there for 10 hours fighting the wind with a broom doing a 60% job or you could be done in 10 minute with a leaf blower and be 99% done. It does it better in a fraction of the time.
Fuck people for getting chores done and enjoying life eh?
Better use a scythe to cut your grass, no mowers for you….
Alternatively, let the leaves lie - which is beneficial to insects as well. And lets your neighbours enjoy life :)
But a suggestion from the post you’re replying to is using an electric one.
Let the leaves lie on the grass sure (and mulch them assuming it’s not too many) but you still need a blower for all the other areas; concrete, landscaped rock, etc. They’re also used for snow all the time where I live. Nothing wrong with an electric blower.
i’m still trying to figure out why a blower is going to do anything for snow? You know that snow blowers exist right? I can’t imagine anything other than a snowblower/shovel is going to work effectively on anything that isn’t a very small layer of fluffy snow, god forbid you get any heavy snowfall, or it thaws and refreezes. Just seems like a complete nightmare to me.
Actually, you know what? With that bullshit attitude, yeah, maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to use technology to get your “chores” done faster. If you’re picking destructive and disturbing over leaves-on-the-ground, then you’ve proven yourself incapable of making good decisions at this time.
You understand blowers aren’t just used for leaves right? They’re great for all sorts of debris in all the difficult or impossible to get places (imagine rocky landscaping for example). Isn’t the issue 2-stroke blowers but not blowers in general? What’s wrong with electric?
They’re less annoying and polluting but still a fucking nuisance. And most of the time they’re just used to achieve some idiotic standard of cleanliness, without any practical usefulness.
This is likely region dependant I suppose.
I’ll push back a little on the “most of the time it’s just for idiotic cleanliness standards” part there as I’ll assume it’s referring to homeowner use which I’d argue is likely not the ones using blowers the most often. Keeping walkways and ramps etc clear of slippery leaves, snow, or other debris is super important in all our public spaces and nothing does that job as quickly or as well as a blower.
Goes against their narrative and they don’t like being called out.
I’ve got an electric powered one, it’s just as loud as a gas one, but still within municipal sound limits.
Sorry, find something else to complain about.
Electric just as loud… WHAT? ARE YOU EVEN A HUMAN?
They produce the same DB the percussive sound of the engine travels further. At the point of sound they can be just as loud.
yeah, me and my homies mow and blow within ten meters of each other so that way we all share equal hearing damage.
you’re very wrong btw.
This is a well known fact about how sound travels through the environment. Lower pitch noises (gas engines) tend to travel very far and very aggressively. They’re so much more potent.
High pitched whining sounds (electric motors) don’t travel nearly as well as lower pitch sounds, and they tend to be much much quieter at distance.
Combine that with the sound profiles of the ICEs compared to the constant whine of an electric motor in a certain part of the spectrum of audible sound. Now you have modulation on the ICE which is going to be much more potent to begin with, since it’s an entirely different sound profile. As well as being much harder to tune out, given the fact that it’s not just a persistent whine.
This is why the abrams powered by a gas turbine are known for being incredibly quiet, even though when up close, you can still hear them loud as shit. The sound just can’t travel through the environment as effectively, and like i said, even if it does. It’s not exactly the incredibly distinct sound of an ICE.
I addressed that in another comment, at the point source the DB is the same, but the percussive sound of the engine travels further.
yeah, and that’s a good thing?
I mean sure you might have to wear hearing pro still. But that’s not my problem, what is my problem is having unavoidable hearing damage from my neighbors who are currently mowing.
What job exactly? What are you trying to achieve that would outweigh the noise and pollution, you’re creating?
Clearing leaves in ten minutes with a minor annoyance to others while saving themselves what little time our corporate overlords allow us to have?
People do still use reel mowers and such.
Golf courses, definitely. I managed a hardware store for a while and our primary customer for reel mowers, as well as sharpening services for the same, were golf courses.
That makes sense. In town I still see enough of them that they stand out, but these aren’t huge yards or anything either.
but to make them, and ship them to you is more destructive than a scythe.
That’s how stupid these arguments are. Forgetting the big picture while looking at a blade of grass.
So we can’t use technology to make life easier and faster?
I can rake a yard in half the time it takes you to blow your leaves into a pile. People here in California spend hours - HOURS - blowing around leaves. It’s NOT efficient.
Your aren’t getting as good of job done, that’s just reality, and maybe they should use a vacuum option instead? Same noise, more efficient.
When I wrote my comment I was thinking of the municipality workers with these gadgets in my area, sometimes using no ear protection! Hardly anyone at home, where there’s mostly just small gardens, uses these super noisy things.The city council probably thinks that they are saving a lot of money and time and giving their workers a much easier time. And like I wrote : I’ve read that devices running on electricity are quite silent. If there can be electricity poles for E.V. why not for this ?
My electric battery one is just as noisy as most gas ones. They just aren’t feasible for city work since they would need a genset to charge them anyways, or they would be having to need 60 batteries for one crew for a day.
So we can’t use technology to make life easier and faster?
Not when it makes the lives of others shorter and worse.
I mean, you CAN, just not without being a dick 🤷
Hard physical labor like raking and shoveling snow is directly linked to increased heart attacks, so that’s kinda disingenuous.
mmmmm leaded gas, make my engine go brr more harderer, but make my brain go bonk, totally worth it.
I really hope noise pollution in general becomes a bigger topic of conversations. Yes, I hate gas leaf blowers and they ruin so many spring and fall days. But what about my annoying neighbor who insists on revving his Corvette at 5:30am? I hear that damn car for a good five minutes as they are driving away from the neighborhood.
Mowing lawns is killing pollinators.
People put so much energy into growing grass. Seeding, liming, fertilising, watering… so they can create endless, mindless busywork and destroy biodiversity.
Lawns were originally a status symbol. A “hey lol look at me I have enough land I don’t have to grow food.” Shameful that it took off as a defacto standard.
Mowing lawns is killing pollinators.
People put so much energy into growing grass. Seeding, liming, fertilising, watering… so they can create endless, mindless busywork and destroy biodiversity.
Lawns were originally a status symbol. A “hey lol look at me I have enough land I don’t have to grow food.” Shameful that it took off as a defacto standard.
Good point. As a matter of fact a friend of mine living in another country in Europe told me that in his country it is forbidden for people to have a garden and put only stones and tiles (sp?) in it so it cannot breath. In my country there has been a trend for many years that people turned from a garden with plants and flowers to a garden with just stones and zero green. This week I saw in an on-line newspaper that lots of people in my country are now getting rid of the stones and buying plants. The “help-the-bees” cry of help which some people have been talking about seems to finally take off with larger numbers! Fingers crossed.
I hate seeing gravelled gardens, it’s so ugly. There’s loads of low maintenence plants you can choose from.
Exactly. Soulless. Graveyards look far more inviting and fun than a tiled garden.
I take advantage of not having an HOA and have curtailed lawn mowing to 3-4 “harvests” a year in order to comply with county ordinances. Clearly this is helping the local ecology as we have a robust population of lighting bugs every summer, unlike the neighbor’s yards.
That’s actually amazing. For real, thanks for sharing that. I love hearing about these decisions can have such a positive impact in our small corners of the world.
Yep. The years of hoarding greenspace as a private citizen is coming to an end.
Leaf blowers strike me as a very American thing. People do use them here in the UK, but rarely
The US specializes in technologies that enable laziness
Ah yes, tools. The crutch of the lazy everywhere.
It’s warm enough here that we can open the windows and turn off the heating. Not hot enough to need AC yet. So what do I hear all day today?
Lawnmowers.
I mean, we have a lawnmower too, but ours is 100% electric. So we basically mow the lawn in stealth mode. I don’t think anyone realises we’re doing it unless they physically see us out there with it. We’re good neighbors. As for our neighbors… Ehhh, not so much.
One of my neighbors has a small electric one and I was floored by how quiet it was. I might actually get one this year if my finances add up right…
My electric mower has some noise generating nonsense grafted to it; my ears would love a stealth mower. It would be infuriating, if not for all the advantages. Eight years and I have yet to drop everything to run to the gas station, gap a spark plug, or change oil.
Me: opens windows
Saws, ATVs and motorcycles: Doom Blood Swamps noises
I like the German approach of having silent Sundays.
not just fucking leaf blowers, but mowers, weed wackers, and edgers as well, they’re all so fucking loud.
I can’t believe the house i currently live in is considered to be worth more than 150-200 thousand dollars. It’s 1.5-2x the price of that btw.
In my case it’s the AC units that ruin it for me. We have nice weather that would cool the apartment if we open the windows but if some of the closest neighbors has their unit on it makes it unbearable for the rest
it’d help if AC units weren’t so shittily constructed, and the motors maintained properly. We recently had ours replaced, it was quieter, it’s gotten louder over the years. Presumably due to bearing wear.
When I was younger I spent an afternoon hanging out with my grandfather. We sat on the porch of my fathers house smoking cigarettes. My mom came outside and asked me to clear the fallen leaves off the porch. Well, young me went to the garage and pulled out the awesome backpack leaf blower my Dad had. Proceeded to spend a few very noisy minutes trying to get some leaves out of a corner, when my grandfather laughed and said, “you know, sometimes the harder way is easier.” and handed me a broom. Took all of a 5 minutes to sweep everything off nicely, whereas I was getting nowhere blowing leaves every which way.
I don’t even own a leaf blower now, don’t need one.
If you need to move leaves to a place a leaf blower is no good. They are only good for moving leaves away from a place
The timing of this post could not be more perfect. I’m sitting at my desk at home, with the windows open for the first time this year, sipping coffee and browsing Lemmy… and the duet of leafblower and weedwhacker begins next door. The most infuriating part: the property in question is a NEVER-used artist’s studio/gallery that nonetheless gets multiple visits per week from landscapers/caretakers/contractors/etc. I’ve lived next to the property longer than the studio has even existed, and I’ve seen the owner once.
Funny, I was reading the post while my gardener was outside. At least they don’t stay long.
Well at least it’s not overgrown and trashy?
i would prefer it be overgrown and trashy to be honest, if i’m selling the house i’ll just mow it myself lmao.
2 stroke bees
Related: AC. I live in an apartment complex in which each unit has a shitty, absurdly loud AC unit. Come 17 °C and one jackass ruins it for everyone else who might to sit outside or have their windows open. Between that and landscaping…
I feel like the biggest crime is apartment and condo buildings putting individual ACs for every single unit instead of a more efficient full building system. There’s fancy systems that pump the heat from the air into the waterheaters and between units to run at more efficient ratios, or radiant systems that basically run a “cold” utility through the building to be tapped into by units and has the benefit of economies of scale, etc.
I used to have a neighbour who would use a leaf blower purely to blow away litter from his driveway, which would then blow back onto his driveway shortly after.
I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just use a brush like a normal person.
I get the sentiment of being anti 2-stroke leaf blower (at least for personal use. Electric isn’t feasible for industry/city use quite yet). I don’t get why this comic is anti all leaf blowers though?
Because they’re fucking annoying?
Even my electric one is pretty loud. But it has the advantage of not making noise while idling
even if it is just as loud, it’s likely a much higher pitch noise, so as a result travels a lot less than a 2 stroke engine does. I swear i’m getting hearing damage from even being inside my home with the windows open from those 2 stroke blowers, it’s insane
Why do we need to blow leaves In the spring?
? I know they’re called leaf blowers, but they’re just blowers. They let you use them for stuff other than leaves.
Specifically springtime? Here they’re used to blow all the little rocks and debris off of landscaped areas that accumulated over the winter so they can be swept up.
That said, they get used all year round… They’re a must have for any municipal/contactor snow removal. Shovels are not only way more work/slower for a light bit of snow, the blowers can take the snow off clean meaning no ice melt required (and you want to use that stuff sparingly for the sake of your concrete and the environment).
industry use i suppose, but what the fuck are you using leaf blowers for in industry? Yall have had squirrel cage blowers since forever. Dude even F2? I think? Uses electric leaf blowers lmao.
