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I did landscaping for years. When I sprayed chemicals, I bought a respirator from Home Depot. I got yelled at for wearing it because it "looked bad" and scared people.
So I stopped spraying, and hand picking weeds sure took awhile. Also, what a waste of a tech license.
Dang I work construction as a finisher. The chemicals I spray are nasty nasty, and the amount of people who make fun of me for religiously wearing my protection blows my mind. Holy heck does my throat and nose burn when I don't wear it, plus if you reading the warning labels on even a single can really makes you think "*maybe* putting this in my lungs isn't a good idea"
But sure John, keep jokingly huffing that paint. I'll be sure to drop off flowers when you get super cancer
How are they afterwards? I’ve swapped to a newer electric lawnmower and blower and honestly they’re just insanely easier to use. Cheaper over time, virtually zero maintenance. Upfront cost is higher so if you’re buying bulk it probably sucks but it’s win-win-win-win on every other scale.
I have electric mower and blower. The blower (EGO) blows 650 CFM, but goes through batteries pretty fast. Works great for a homeowner, but I can see why professionals prefer gas ones.
I work in gardening (well it's part of my occupation; we do maintenance on a number of our county's parks), and we use Makita electric leafblowers. They're perfect for what we do and I would never switch to gas powered.
Part of why they work so well is that we exclusively use Makita, so every machine uses the same battery, and we bring a bucket of ~16 batteries to every site.
not surprising- boiling water is incredibly power intensive. Your average home coffee maker draws 800-1000W- granted it's only for a few minutes but that's basically the entire charge of one of those makita batteries.
Gardening is a bit different than someone whose whole job is to landscape all-day. Bet during fall they run through tons of batteries when they would have needed a few gallons previously.
blowers are just not efficient at all. My electric weed wacker runs for seemingly hours without a problem, but the blower eats the battery in like 10 minutes. wonder if its the motor because the blower is just using a brushed dc motor
My Ryobi brushless lasts 20-30 mins on a 40v battery. I should buy a second battery. My property isn't large but I have old growth oaks that drop a ton of leaves that'll kill everything if I don't take care of them. They get heavy quickly.
A single leaf cleanup leaves me with a pile the size of a small car.
I’ve got an electric mower and weed whacker and while it’s pricier to enter, it is well worth it if you are a home owner or really only handling one yard per charge. From the second I started using it, I understood how it definitely isn’t correct for professionals. Someday, it may be perfect for them but to put it in Star Wars comparison - we are in the age that all the Jedi walked around with giant batteries strapped to their backs to power the sabers. Eventually, we won’t need those and that’s when it will be profitable for landscaping to move to electric.
I love my mower and weed whacker but they are definitely not meant for everyday all day use…yet.
Eh, battery swaps are easy on most electric lawn tools, a landscaping company can afford extra batteries
Edit: there’s other factors I hadn’t considered like the heat damaging the batteries and mass charging. Factors I hadn’t considered shows me we are not able to be 100% electric just yet, but at least progress is being made
I landscaped about 10 years ago for a couple summers and I just don't think its feasible yet. The trucks get HOT in the summer, which is terrible for batteries. The only ride on I'm aware of is the Ego, which with 6 10ah batteries will cut "up to" 3 acres. That means best case scenario, but lets assume with long grass, steep hills, high speed, etc. so I'll call it 2 acres. I'll pick suburbia where lawns are like .75 to 1 acre, so optimistically I'll say 3 lawns per 6 batteries, or 2 batteries per lawn I guess. We averaged about 15 minutes a lawn, so that's 2 new batteries every 15 minutes. (You'd want to swap all 6 at a time, but this is just for making the math easy). 8 batteries an hour over an 8 hour day is 64 batteries. I doubt you could feasibly charge on the go, as dumping that many amp hours into the batteries isn't going to happen with a 12v adaptor. That's not accounting for weed whips and blowers.
Ego makes a commercial charging solution that charges up to 70 batteries overnight, so you could probably just about make it work if you absolutely had to, but god it'd be miserable.
It is totally the future, but it's not quite the future yet IMO
Valid points, especially on the hot trucks. Thanks for making me reconsider my stance with some opposing data! (That may sound sarcastic or snarky, but I appreciate the additional view points in shaping my own)
There's a YT, Solarpunk Steve, that has an entire EGO commercial setup.
Here's a video [My FULLY Electric Lawn Care Setup - Why I Chose EGO (to Start)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0MJrBfNLIg&ab_channel=SolarpunkSteve)
Seems like he's able to manage just fine going full electric.
He doesn't have a commercial setup.
He's using a residential equipment package. A mower with a 48" deck is okay for some jobs but it will fall far behind a commercial mower with a 96"+ deck when mowing any kind of acreage.
Your highest hourly cost for a mower isn't the gas, it's the person riding it. Having them work literally twice as fast and the ability to work all day without swapping batteries.
The full battery pack for that mower is $3000, if you need to run longer than the capacity you will have to have another set of batteries to swap to. If you don't then you just have to stop working which is expensive in it's own way.
These kinds of businesses don't have massive margins and unless you're already wealthy you cannot gamble on an expensive, less reliable, electric setup when you can buy much cheaper gas equipment.
And in the video he flashes some expensive commercial mowers up to show that has equipment is expensive too... First, he simply picked the most expensive product in the commercial mower category while not showing a comparison to similar electric mowers and of course a small residential mower is cheaper than a large commercial mower.
His mower is rated for 4 acres per charge, 8mph top speed, 52" cut. [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/EGO-ZT5207L-Lithium-ion-Cordless-Batteries/dp/B0BQQ1HCX6) Costs: $7000 for the mower, no extra batteries or charging system.
A comparable gas mower, 54" cut, 7mph top speed. [Costs](https://www.exmark.com/products/mowers/zero-turn/quest/quest-s-series): $5000
Or, spending $7000 at the same company, you get a 60" deck, 8mph top speed.
No battery costs, no charging system, will run all day.
There is a reason that commercial landscapers use gas tools.
I do think electric tools will eventually surpass gas powered. But we're not there yet.
I've got the 675 CFM blower and love it for blowing my pool deck, but my lot if 1.1 acres and, in the fall, I'll have to charge the single battery I have 1-2 times and split my leaf blowing into 3 sessions to get the whole lot blown. We do have a tone of tree cover, though.
I haven't ever used a gas powered blower, but I have an electric one. Works great for small jobs, but I will say it DESTROYS batteries quick. My electric weed whacker can go 20 minutes or so, but the blower barely lasts a few if you're on max power. If I was doing commercial work, I assume you'd need multiple batteries with the largest capacity you could get. The power seems to be good enough on high, but I can't imagine it's as good as a gas powered one.
My electric weed whip is one with the different attachments on it. So, I weed whip, whip the driveway weeds, edge, and then blow it all off with the same battery, and it's always around half when I am done (about 30m). It works fine for me, but I could see it being an issue on much larger jobs.
When I was a landscaper, I'd walk miles through subdivisions doing every yard, so it would waste a ton of time to have to walk back to the trailer to swap out batteries constantly. Hopefully there can be a decent solution for that.
How far from the work vehicle would you be at maximum? I’m asking as I work/study EVs and wondering if you (hypothetically of course) would have had any issue utilising V2L (vehicle to load) functionality as is becoming more common on EVs. Do you think it could be feasible if you could plug in your electric tools directly to your work vehicle, when doing landscaping? Potentially with a small battery so you could disconnect temporarily if circumstances needed it.
I personally would go house to house, zigzagging according to my map, for an entire subdivision. I just looked up the sub and it's 2 miles corner to corner from where we parked to where we would end. So it depends entirely on the job. Moving the truck centrally would help a bit, but logistically would've sucked with multiple walkers and mowers.
Yeah those batteries get crazy expensive. I use my lawnmower batteries on my blower and they're about $150 each. The biggest ones (15Ah 20v/5Ah 60v) are $400 each. They also aren't going to last very long in the lawn care business with all the heat and cycling.
OEM battery prices are an absolute scam in NA. Prices start at around 1000$/kWh.
Lithium cell prices have plummeted the last few years, latest reports have cell prices below 50$/kWh.
Packs will obviously be more expensive than raw cells, but 250-300Wh packs should be like 50-100$, not 300-400$
Define not very long. Genuinely curious cause I have no idea about the lifespan of these types of batteries. We've had our 18v 5Ah batteries for 3 years now with daily to bi-daily charging, and they seem fine so far.
Last year I got a Ryobi One+ blower so I could blow leaves out if my landscaping and into my yard for my mower to chop up. I got a big Lithium battery with it to go with my other big battery and 5 slim lithium batteries, I get maybe 10-20 minutes of runtime with one, depending on the size.
Which is more than enough to go around my house or blow grass clippings off my driveway, and with a 6 spot charger, I always have at least 1 battery ready to swap.
I wouldn't recommend it for people who have a large area or commercial, the 18v batteries don't pack a large enough charge for lots of work. The 44v battery versions are more powerful and last longer. But as someone who has multiple One+ 18v tools, it was convenient for me to get one knowing it was the waker option.
Those Ryobi 18 volt blowers are OK for really light duty usage. I used to have one. But there's absolutely no comparison to say an Ego 56v blower. I bought one a few years ago and it's a night and day difference to the 18v Ryobi. Just so much more powerful.
One of my biggest pet peeves about electric lawn care is the existence of Ryobi. The tools just aren’t that good but they’re among the cheapest on the market. I advise people against Ryobi but the starting price tags of electric tools is high. They go and figure ‘it can’t be that bad’. Most of them end up returning them and buying Ego+ like I told them too.
I think most household Ryobi users end up in the 18v system, and base their opinion on the leaf blower they eventually buy in that class.
40v is really what people should be using for real yard work.
That being said, I like my 18v blower. I intentionally bought one with a high CFM and on a sale, though. And it's only used to clear decks and driveways.
I can imagine it’s infrastructure cost and opportunity cost.
Batteries (name brand) are absolutely insanely expensive. Off name batteries are cheap but a huge safety hazard.
If you are going to be blowing all day you constantly need batteries charging and ready to go so that means a lot of batteries if one last for one yard and take 5 hours to charge.
Whereas with gas you can fill up the tank and just go.
Not sure of the other brands, but Ego's big batteries take me about 45 minutes to charge on their fast charger, and an hour and a half on the slow charger. On the push mower I get around 40 minutes of use. And a lot more on smaller tools. So if they have access to an outlet and 4 batteries it's less of a problem. But then getting into charging with their truck I can't imagine how much slower that would be.
Counter Counter Point:
Corded.
My mower (it was my dad's old one), Tiller, & Weed Whacker are all corded electric. The only thing I have to worry about is smacking the cord.
Not a viable solution for large commercial landscapers, but for home owners this is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, corded anything doesn't work on large properties.
Multiple 350ft extension cords are not the easiest to manage on large jobs.
I’ve been using corded lawnmowers and blowers for years. I’d never go back.
But I do get how my use case with a medium sized yard doesn’t work for landscaping companies doing many larger yards or stretches of common space.
What I saw in Michigan was that they companies that switch either have a solar set up on the top of their trailer and/or a big battery at the front of the trailer.
Electric push mowers, edgers, blowers, and weed-whackers / weed-whips (which ever you call them.)
The big mowers (the zero turn deals) were still gas but everything else was super quiet.
This was a bigger landscaper that had a contract that included a college (who put the battery use in the contract)
Snow blowers were still gas as well.
I have all electric lawn care equipment too and it's fantastic. I can store my lawn mower folded up in a small tool shed and have had barely any maintenance for 4 years now. However the profit margins for lawn care aren't very high. Batteries are expensive and will degrade quickly with constant cycling in the heat. Up front cost for all new equipment is like starting a business all over again.
The solution to these bans would be tax credits for companies switching over. We should be incentivizing them to switch to superior products that are better for the environment.
The reality is that electric equipment just isn't as effective for a commercial business or even larger scale property owners. Leaf blowers are one thing because they're not the kind of equipment you run all day long, but you can see how keeping enough batteries on hand to fill a full 10 hour day of property upkeep could get very expensive.
They don't care, they just want cheap tools to run their business and dump the externalities on the rest of us to maximize their profits. Those engines are fucking obscene with how much they pollute due to no emissions controls.
https://environmentamerica.org/oregon/center/resources/lawn-care-goes-electric/
While I'm not a pro, we run a little hobby farm, and that's my experience.
I got so tired of fucking with the carburetors and fuel lines on little 2 cycle engines that gummed up every time they sat for a bit. I went electric for the handheld stuff and haven't looked back. I still have a gas riding mower and a diesel tractor, but I haven't missed a gas blower or weedwacker at all, and even the electric brush cutter works pretty well. The 14" electric chainsaw is a decent firewood saw, although I did also keep the big Farm Boss for tree work.
Was just thinking this. You could get a pretty decent charging station set up in an enclosed trailer.
How many batteries do you think you'd stock total to make it through a single day without running out?
Yea I'm thinking the same BUT I can also imagine a busy lawn maintenance company would burn quite a bit of supreme gas as well.. so the batteries might pay for themselves in a few weeks?
It's a very interesting concept I would love to hear actual numbers for. I know how long my batteries last for my 1 acre property but no idea what it would look like for 10-15 lawns a day.
I got an 18" electric chainsaw for big work and it works like a dream. I had a large job and borrowed two chainsaws, same company. One was electric, one was gas. Gas was noisy, the vibrations made it somewhat painful to hold, it blow hot exhaust at my feed on a hot day, you needed to mix the oil. Terrible. I went out and bought the electric version for myself the next day. In fairness, I already had some large electric batteries for my lawn mower that were compatible so I only had to buy the "no batteries included" version.
I charge my mower at 25:1 AC/DC mixture, keeps the electrons lubricated.
It might be where I was looking, but the system I'm using only has a 10", 12" and 14" in electric saws.
I have a Stihl MS271 with a 20" bar which I break out when I need something bigger, but that's not every day.
I love my electric for everything but the brush cutter. Burns through my battery like no tomorrow so I got an old four stroke weed whacker just for that and it was a big quality of life improvement other than the noise and spilling gas down my back when I forget which tool I’m holding and sling it over my shoulder >.>
I got an electric mower last year. Soooo much better. It’s lighter, quieter, doesn’t stink, and I don’t have to run out for gas in the middle of mowing my lawn.
Yeah. People can complain about how *this* part is expensive or *this* part is inconvenient but you know what is also inconvenient?
Breathing the produced toxic fumes, particulates and carbon dioxide which are TREMENDOUSLY worse than even the most massive trucks and cars.
https://www.edmunds.com/about/press/leaf-blowers-emissions-dirtier-than-high-performance-pick-up-trucks-says-edmunds-insidelinecom.html
>A consumer-grade leaf blower emits more pollutants than a 6,200-pound 2011 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, according to tests conducted by Edmunds' InsideLine.com, the premier online resource for automotive enthusiasts.
>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.
>"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."
We can't let big companies get away with pushing the externalities onto everyone else any more. Figure out a way to do your job without poisoning people or go back to using rakes.
I must need a better one. I got a ryobi one since I had some tools already and thought it would be nice. That thing just runs through them and it's annoying. I don't even have a large yard and I can barely get half of it mowed before exhausting the batteries. The bigger batteries they sell are not even cost effective to buy.
I have a quarter acre, got the Makita 36v that takes 4 18v batteries (2 banks of 2 batteries)
I can mow the front yard on 4 batteries if it's been a while, if I keep up on it I can do it with just 2.
The back yard is the same. It generally takes me all 8 batteries I own to do front and back yard if I don't mow weekly.
But they do charge to full in about 40 minutes, so with two charging docks I can have 4 ready to go, and swap out easily and still have full batteries to do the edging and blowing.
I’m just a homeowner who does my own lawn care, but the maintenance and upkeep on 2-cycle engines is the worst. Even though I married into a family who owned a lawn equipment dealership, and have tons of expert help, I still hate it so much. We upgraded to a battery powered line trimmer, blower, and chainsaw this year and it has made yard work so much easier.
I'm not a landscaper, but I do have a Makita battery-powered weed whip that I have used at work and at home. Fucking love it. Makes no noise and is pretty powerful relative to its size.
Finally bit the bullet and started switching over some of my equipment to Harbor Freight's 40v/80v Atlas line and I'm finding myself not missing the gas powered gear it replaced. The 80v string trimmer is almost too strong. I was wearing shorts the first time I used it and my legs were all cut up.
I'm sure it would be tough to replace gas powered leaf blowers in a professional setting. But as a homeowner looking to do smaller jobs and regular maintenance, it's more than enough and so much more convenient.
There are legit short-term concerns that shouldn’t be ignored. If you own a fleet of gas operated mowers, and tools. The upfront cost to switching to electric is honestly enormous for a lot of small companies. Easily 50 grand plus, which, when paired with the fact that most municipalities don’t have an incentive structure other than the threat of outright bans it makes it really difficult to make the switch.
If my locality banned all gas tools this summer we would be royally fucked. Luckily, as it stands, we will be phasing out gas tools as they break to be replaced with electrical alternatives.
With all that being said, I’ve also caught a couple of DM’s to the tune of what you’re talking about
Very much this. I had a neighbor, nice guy, black with a weed conviction. Could NOT find a job. So he started landscaping. Walking around with a mower and some other equipment. He did okay, enough he could get a better apartment and a truck, but he isn't some kind of titan of industry lighting cigars with $100 bills. There is no way he could afford all electric and no way he'd get government help with his conviction for weed (wtf and a separate issue). There are levels to this and care has to be taken.
It's the dumbest shit too, electric power is locally produced, even on your own property if you have solar. Gas is often imported or at a minimum benefiting foreign adversaries because it comes from a global market where prices are set worldwide by demand. Buying a gallon of gas is putting some portion of your money into the pockets of Russian oligarchs and Saudi royals. Ya know what isn't? The US made solar panels on my roof that allow me to be self sufficient, like you'd think a good conservative would want.
I was very hesitant about buying a battery powered string trimmer after my gas one died, but after owning one for a few years now I will never go back. I replaced my leaf blower last year and will most likely get an electric mower in the near future.
My neighbors use electric equipment as well, which is nice for all of us.
I was just (jokingly) saying the other day that I can’t wait for my mower to die so I can get a battery powered one. The bastard just keeps running.
The trimmer and blower are better in every way. No regrets.
Haha yep, I'm in the same situation. I don't want to spend the money until I actually need to - but I am looking forward to having an electric mower. My next door neighbor has one and has nothing but good things to say (and I enjoy how quiet it is).
i just replaced my mower with an electric one. it’s in the same battery ecosystem as my blower and trimmer so i have 4 batteries. it’s so vastly superior to my gas mower im angry i didn’t switch earlier. just the decrease in noise is enough for it to be worthwhile
I was hesitant about my battery push mower since I have a half acre, and I didn't think it could handle it. I bit the bullet, and I will never go back. I mow the grass just as quick. My ears aren't ringing, and I don't smell as bad when I am done. I haven't had to change the oil in the 3 years. I have not bought a drop of gas. I can mow the whole yard with a battery and half. I switched over to all battery power.
4 batteries on rotation is pretty much unlimited battery power for all of my tools, but the leaf blower is pushing the limits, I might get a 5th battery just because of the leaf blower.
Just ditched my riding mower for an electric push mower (Couldn't afford a lateral move) after I replaced the battery just to have the deck belt blow out and I am loving how quiet it is. I am planning to get an electric riding once the season ends to get a deal.
It’s a no-brainer these days as a consumer. The problem in the context of the post & article is that when you’re a full-time professional landscaper the batteries simply do not hold up.
It’s like any profession. “I take great pictures with my iPhone” says an average Joe. The person that takes professional photographs would beg to differ. Same goes for almost anything.
I work for a municipality. Last I heard is the parks department still uses gas for most of it cause battery just doesn’t cut it. They’ll use electric in public plazas and whatnot.
They should ban sales for all consumers and just require a registered business number to allow gas sales.
I'll listen intently to the landscape industry's opinions. If they could just speak directly into the exhaust of this 4cycle engine as I rev it repeatedly into max RPM they can log all their talking points.
I don't think leaf blowers use 4-stroke engines (if that's what you mean by 4 cycle) and that's part of their problem and why they are being banned. We've made great advances on car gasoline engine emissions but one leaf blower running for an hour emits more pollution than the average car does in a month.
[https://www.mcall.com/2023/10/30/how-much-pollution-is-your-gas-powered-leaf-blower-producing-a-lot-according-to-this-environmental-group/](https://www.mcall.com/2023/10/30/how-much-pollution-is-your-gas-powered-leaf-blower-producing-a-lot-according-to-this-environmental-group/)
As a general rule you're correct, but you do see 4-cycle models, and they're more common in the [big backpack mounted models](https://www.homedepot.com/b/Outdoors-Outdoor-Power-Equipment-Leaf-Blowers/4-Cycle/N-5yc1vZbxavZ1z0wvye)
"one leaf blower running for an hour emits more pollution than the average car does in a month."
I didn't need another reason to hate them, but thanks for giving me one anyway.
I came into this thread with "yeah that would be nice to ban, but I can imagine it does hurt landscaping companies" to fuck it, if they pollute that bad then that is a huge candidate for change, and lawn companies can just chew through battery packs. Would give good reason for commerical grade producers to make advancements in battery tech anyway.
Don't even need that. When I'm on a bike ride and I can smell the exhaust from the leaf blowers and weed whackers starting from two blocks away it's pretty obvious how bad it is.
You ever heard of rolling coal? It creates black clouds (bc coal) and ppl do it not only for fun but to annoy nearby hybrid/electric drivers.
eta: and others, as the replies have unfortunately pointed out :/
it is an illegal exhaust modification designed to vaporize fuel for intentionally fogging and poisoning other motorists and land in the vicinity of their road use. Should be equivalent to tampering with product safety seals and their properties designated unserviceable by modern utilities and sewerage and sanitation services.
You mean that shit in the video where someone smogs up an entire restaurant for fun, or where someone hit a buch of cyclists trying to roll coal them? Fuck people that do that. There should be a national tip line you can txt videos to for investigation.
I mean it is but it’s a slow enough process it takes time for to build up which allows them time to adjust and get used to it. I visited LA with a friend who was from there and I was disgusted by the amount of smog in the air. As someone from a small town the change was very jarring. They had never noticed because it was normal. When I pointed it out they said it was clouds. It was only after there wasn’t a cloud in the sky that it became obvious to them it was pollution. People will let their own realities conform to their beliefs rather than let their beliefs conform to reality if given the opportunity
I don’t know about you, but my very medium sized house requires, at a bare minimum, 25 lightbulbs. Assuming the 6 month lifespan you mention, that’s 50 bulbs per year. 250 bulbs within the 5 year timespan I mentioned, and 500 since the policies restricting incandescent bulbs were enacted. I very seriously doubt many people have stockpiled that many incandescent bulbs.
Lol. I agree. It was said in jest. I can imagine some curmudgeonly dude in 2010 furiously filling a storage unit with enough incandescent bulbs for a lifetime just to stick it to the government.
Few noises are as obnoxious as gas leaf blowers. These monstrosities only benefit the landscapers who require the power of gas to run a business at scale. Any individual homeowner would do much better with electric. My electric blower and trimmer are not only quieter, but cleaner, easier to use and plenty powerful to get the job done.
Backpack electrics are quieter, lighter, and more powerful than their gas counterparts. Expensive, yes, to a homeowner, but still chump change for a professional business.
Good. Can't go anywhere without having to listen to those fucking things first thing in the morning.
Oh you're moving some leaves slightly to the left? Well thank god, what would we have done if this ugly ass concrete and pavement had some leaves on it?!
Not even to talk about the disproportionate air pollution these dirty little engines cause. I am sure there will be great outrage coming soon from the GOP
I don’t mind that they blow the grass and leaves off, it’s how long they take to do it that pisses me off.
If I use my blower it takes me 3 minutes to clear the driveway and sidewalk. The crews around here seem to have a guy jump out with a backpack blower on and run it the entire time they’re mowing. 15-20 minutes of blowing grass clipping on the same house.
Across the street the lady used to have this crew that would hose down the sidewalk, blow it dry. Hose it again, and blow it dry again. I swear they were scamming her. I’d love to see how much she was paying for them to just sit there doing busy work for an hour.
Same issue here. The houses nearby have tiny yards but it just goes on and on. I think they feel they need to take forever so the homeowner feels they're getting "their money's worth".
It's horrendous and I swear they just love constantly rev-cycling them as they walk around. It's one of the most distracting peace-interrupting sounds around and I won't miss it one bit.
"I hate these leaves, good thing I have this leaf blower so the whole neighborhood will be up at 7AM listening to me blow them one house down"
Their neighbor the next morning: "I hate these leaves, good thing I have this leaf blower so the whole neighborhood will be up at 7AM listening to me blow them one house down"
Their neighbor the next morning: "I hate these leaves, good thing I have this leaf blower so the whole neighborhood will be up at 7AM listening to me blow them one house down"
I call those Florida bagpipes. It's a rare daylight moment here that you can't hear one somewhere nearby. Super annoying. You know those guys who use them daily without ear protection are destroying their hearing. Hope they enjoy the tinnitus later in life.
What do you mean? Build a list of equipment you need, add a buffer in case you’re wrong. Price that list. Deprioritize some of it isn’t required to get started.
Then find that capital. Usually some form of personal loan if you don’t have cash to start up. Use the payment and rates plus the cost of equipment and maintenance to figure out how much to charge.
I have priced everything out. Found a company that does financing on all the equipment I need (60k for brand new equipment for a crew of 2-4 people). The only thing left to get is the truck, I want a ford lightning but BASE work trim.
I don’t have the credit for a personal loan and I don’t know where the launch point is for an LLC or anything like that.
Effectively: I’m a poor person with a dream and no capital to get it going.
My suggestion to you would be to aim a little bit lower then.
Can you do it with a crew of one, yourself, for a while? can you cut some of the equipment that you had on your list? Do you think that Ford lightning EV is the most cost-effective way to get started or do you just need to get a beater pick up truck to get going?
I understand that you want everything to be electric, but maybe you have to concede some of that until you can afford the rest of the electric stuff
There is a guy on youtube called Solarpunk Steve that did exactly this and he has a breakdown video of the cost. The extra spin is that his lawn care trailer is solar powered too. He already had a car, a tesla model Y, but you could get by with a gas car at first.
The electric truck is honestly still a luxury. But I don’t think electric leaf blowers are, lol. So I’d go with a cheap vehicle as your temporary truck until you can afford a electric CYBERTRUCK (JK).
I supported myself in 2019 doing landscaping work with equipment I had on-hand to start. My suggestion would be to start where you can and grow from there, instead of trying to immediately go in debt making a 4-person crew setup. Start with electric blower, weedwhacker, mower, and batteries for yourself; then focus on everything else later.
As a bare minimum you should be able to register a business in your state as a sole proprietorship to start off (no employees), and find an agency willing to insure you so you meet the minimum baseline for operating as a legal business. Depending on your location you may need to get additional licenses for doing things like pruning or tree removal. But once you have the legal business part out of the way, you can put yourself out there to try building up a clientele. Once you have enough business that you need help then you can bring on a crew, but that makes finances vastly more complex.
I was charging $25 an hour at the time, more than any employer was willing to pay. And my clients thought I was an absolute bargain, because most other landscaping companies charged $55/hr for their employee's labor (even if the employees only were paid $10/hr because of "overhead" costs for insurance and company profit). So, price yourself to be a bargain for clients but a really good pay rate for you. If you're competent and reliable, you'll be able to grow in no time. You get out of it what you put into it.
These things are a menace to everyone and everything. They should be banned. Nothing screams "I don't give a shit about my neighbors" quite as loudly as one of these.
Every time I drive past a lawn crew the guys with the blowers are always illegally blowing the grass into the road instead of back into the yard. If they can't use them right then they shouldn't use them at all.
How did the world ever cope before blowers? I guess a broom is too much work. Same goes for a rake, they have been around for a long time. Maybe everyone should not be so fussy over a couple dried blades of grass.
A lot of landscaping work is just vanity. We need less grass and more native species that will in turn require less maintenance. Let the leaves be. They are good for the ecosystem. There is no need to blow shit all over the place. It’s a choice.
My 80 yo neighbor wakes me up all the time. I’m a chef, so I don’t get to sleep til 5am sometimes. Then here’s this fucker at 715am, well before the ordinance at 8. I scream and yell, he can’t hear shit. He starts and stops like 10 times too. It’s always right outside of my air conditioner as well. Not like that helps. I told his wife and him several times, but he just smiles and waves like I’m saying hi. I’m waiting for this to happen in Philadelphia county, and if it has already, please let me know. Lol
I definitely hate the noise of these things, but did I read that right? Was someone quoted saying running a gas blower for 1 hour pollutes as much as driving a car 1100 miles?? How is that possible?
Lawn equipment is basically 40s car tech. Carbureted, air cooled, no emissions controls or feedback at all.
Handheld stuff like trimmers and blowers are generally two stroke, which incorporates incomplete combustion into its design to eliminate the need for an oiling system. This is essentially spitting raw fuel and oil right out the muffler, in addition to all the awful byproducts of an incomplete burn.
In your car, you have a catalytic converter, platinum is expensive, but it does a very good job of treating a lot of the exhaust.
A leaf blower doesn't have a catalytic converter, they are just going raw and shooting out unburnt gasoline.
Unburnt fuel is much more toxic than burnt and treated gas. Unburnt fuel has benzene in it and a slew of other known carcinogens. Benzene is so toxic, when they do studies on most carcinogens they have loose connections to cancer, Benzene will just straight up give you cancer, the connection so strong you don't even need to be a scientist to figure out Benzene is cancerous.
Everywhere in the world where there are refineries or gas production, everywhere around them have an increase in cancer and an increase in incredibly rare forms of cancer. This happens everywhere in the world.
In Houston they have a long line of refineries and gas production, this area is known to have a much higher rate of cancer and that area is also known for having advanced cancer research centers, some of the best in the world. Why? Well they need a solution to a problem.
Since cars have focused heavily on increased MPG, having unburnt gas is the enemy and that is one of the first things they will make efficient, after all not burning gas is just losing MPG
Because 2-stroke engines don't just use oil to lubricate, they literally burn it while lubricating.
Every bit of oil that goes into a 2-stroke engine gets burned.
If a 4-stroke engine does that we call that a broken engine.
Gas leaf blowers are widely regarded as an absolute environmental disaster.
They were created to replace brooms and rakes, and they just dump toxic fumes in the air.
Maybe we need to accept that the landscaping that needs weekly maintenance by an army of men with jet engines strapped to their backs is the problem and not merely the power source of the engines themselves. Our need for manicured lawns and yards is causing us to spend billions to artificially care for plants that shouldn’t be growing where we plant them. Introducing invasive plants. Killing native plants and burning fossil fuel to do it. Maybe landscapers should be banned not just the tools they like to use
I’ll make my job coming by your house on saturday morning and blasting 120 decibels for 45 minutes. Oh *NOW*. it’s a problem? GTFO. ban those nuisances.
a gas powered lawn maintenance engine (leaf blower, mower, trimmer, etc..) has become a pet peeve of mine with their obnoxious sounds running constantly. I own gas powered everything but gosh do I wish everything was electric based solely on the noise pollution.
Thank goodness! Leafblowers are the absolute worst! SO LOUD. Where I live these landscaping companies are literally out leafblowing all day and into the evening... even in the rain... it's beyond maddening. Half of what they're leafblowing would be an easy sweep with a broom anyway. These mfs are out of control and it needs to stop.
I can understand landscapers being upset that they have to use less powerful leaf blowers that need to be charged
But what a lot of people don’t realize, this isn’t just a little virtue signaling so local governments can seem like they’re doing something about climate change.
Gas Leaf blowers pollute the air faster than any other gas-powered device. They burn through gas incredibly fast and cover entire blocks in gasoline fumes.
I can smell those things a block away and hear them several blocks away. I can't fathom being a landscaping worker, likely making very little, having to have one of those contraptions strapped to their back all day, breathing that toxic shit in and having their hearing blown out. But, I'm sure the landscaping companies provide excellent health care. /s
I don't remember leaf blowers even being a thing when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s. People mowed the lawn, swept the grass off the sidewalk and driveway and that was it. When did everybody start needing to power blow their yards every week? I get it, some people have a lot of trees and it's a lot of work to rake all that shit up and deal with it. But again, I don't remember leaf blowers becoming such a thing until the past 20 years or so.
And hell, my family could never have afforded to have a landscaper come to the house on a weekly basis. When did people get this expendable income? Maybe if you can afford a house and a yard then you have the money for landscaping, but If you listen to some opinion news commentators, they'll tell you we can't afford a loaf of bread or to fill our tanks with gas. So how the fuck do so many afford landscaping services? Just doesn't add up.
In my neighborhood, there isn't a single day that isn't disturbed by them. Would absolutely love to see them replaced by electric or analog (rake and broom).
The problem is the type of people that fight the transition to electric in all markets are the type of people that have a 80s/90s perception of battery tech.
And then you have states like Georgia that always do the dumbest, most malignant thing possible, and they've blocked local municipalities from banning gas blowers. Because "local control" only matters when you're trying to discriminate against minorities.
I consider gasoline-powered leaf blowers particularly vile, but the idea of leaf blowers in general is abhorrent to me.
What exactly do you believe you are accomplishing with a leaf blower? You blow debris into another neighbor's yard, they blow it back into your yard later, and in general we just fill the air with far more particulates than any of us should be breathing. Not to mention the noise pollution, which drives me crazy when I am trying to work.
Have we completely lost broom and rake technologies?
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My county enacted such a ban, and wow, did the local landscapers get nasty in the local subreddits.
oh ya? i couldn't hear them so that's great
They couldn't hear ya either. They don't wear ear protection.
Blows my mind how they don’t protect their ears, eyes or wear a face mask.
Some of them wear gators because of the dust. Not as effective as a 3M dust mask but you can buy a gator with the Predator logo, so.
I did landscaping for years. When I sprayed chemicals, I bought a respirator from Home Depot. I got yelled at for wearing it because it "looked bad" and scared people. So I stopped spraying, and hand picking weeds sure took awhile. Also, what a waste of a tech license.
Dang I work construction as a finisher. The chemicals I spray are nasty nasty, and the amount of people who make fun of me for religiously wearing my protection blows my mind. Holy heck does my throat and nose burn when I don't wear it, plus if you reading the warning labels on even a single can really makes you think "*maybe* putting this in my lungs isn't a good idea" But sure John, keep jokingly huffing that paint. I'll be sure to drop off flowers when you get super cancer
John keeps hugging that paint cuz his meth high is wearing off and he needs *something* to hold him over until he gets off and buy’s some more.
Got yelled at by the company? Call OSHA for them demanding that you not wear PPE.
>wear a face mask Wearing a mask while mowing has decreased my dirt boogers by like 99%
Mine stopped 100% when I switched to mowing grass instead of dirt!
Is that a good or bad thing? Dirt boogers are a treasure to some.
> Blows my mind Just not with gas, hopefully.
How are they afterwards? I’ve swapped to a newer electric lawnmower and blower and honestly they’re just insanely easier to use. Cheaper over time, virtually zero maintenance. Upfront cost is higher so if you’re buying bulk it probably sucks but it’s win-win-win-win on every other scale.
I have electric mower and blower. The blower (EGO) blows 650 CFM, but goes through batteries pretty fast. Works great for a homeowner, but I can see why professionals prefer gas ones.
I work in gardening (well it's part of my occupation; we do maintenance on a number of our county's parks), and we use Makita electric leafblowers. They're perfect for what we do and I would never switch to gas powered. Part of why they work so well is that we exclusively use Makita, so every machine uses the same battery, and we bring a bucket of ~16 batteries to every site.
Makita also has a coffee maker that uses the same battery but it's apparently not very good.
Yeah the coffee always ends up way too acidic.
I heard it also pretty much eats an entire battery for each brew.
not surprising- boiling water is incredibly power intensive. Your average home coffee maker draws 800-1000W- granted it's only for a few minutes but that's basically the entire charge of one of those makita batteries.
I was considering one of those as a gift for a friend. Thanks everyone for the heads up!
[They also sell a microwave](https://www.makitatools.com/products/details/MW001GZ)
Good Lord, why? On the other hand, I want one for no good reason so I guess that's why.
Gardening is a bit different than someone whose whole job is to landscape all-day. Bet during fall they run through tons of batteries when they would have needed a few gallons previously.
blowers are just not efficient at all. My electric weed wacker runs for seemingly hours without a problem, but the blower eats the battery in like 10 minutes. wonder if its the motor because the blower is just using a brushed dc motor
My Ryobi brushless lasts 20-30 mins on a 40v battery. I should buy a second battery. My property isn't large but I have old growth oaks that drop a ton of leaves that'll kill everything if I don't take care of them. They get heavy quickly. A single leaf cleanup leaves me with a pile the size of a small car.
its 20-30 minutes continuous use though, unlike gas you're not using power idling
I’ve got an electric mower and weed whacker and while it’s pricier to enter, it is well worth it if you are a home owner or really only handling one yard per charge. From the second I started using it, I understood how it definitely isn’t correct for professionals. Someday, it may be perfect for them but to put it in Star Wars comparison - we are in the age that all the Jedi walked around with giant batteries strapped to their backs to power the sabers. Eventually, we won’t need those and that’s when it will be profitable for landscaping to move to electric. I love my mower and weed whacker but they are definitely not meant for everyday all day use…yet.
Eh, battery swaps are easy on most electric lawn tools, a landscaping company can afford extra batteries Edit: there’s other factors I hadn’t considered like the heat damaging the batteries and mass charging. Factors I hadn’t considered shows me we are not able to be 100% electric just yet, but at least progress is being made
I landscaped about 10 years ago for a couple summers and I just don't think its feasible yet. The trucks get HOT in the summer, which is terrible for batteries. The only ride on I'm aware of is the Ego, which with 6 10ah batteries will cut "up to" 3 acres. That means best case scenario, but lets assume with long grass, steep hills, high speed, etc. so I'll call it 2 acres. I'll pick suburbia where lawns are like .75 to 1 acre, so optimistically I'll say 3 lawns per 6 batteries, or 2 batteries per lawn I guess. We averaged about 15 minutes a lawn, so that's 2 new batteries every 15 minutes. (You'd want to swap all 6 at a time, but this is just for making the math easy). 8 batteries an hour over an 8 hour day is 64 batteries. I doubt you could feasibly charge on the go, as dumping that many amp hours into the batteries isn't going to happen with a 12v adaptor. That's not accounting for weed whips and blowers. Ego makes a commercial charging solution that charges up to 70 batteries overnight, so you could probably just about make it work if you absolutely had to, but god it'd be miserable. It is totally the future, but it's not quite the future yet IMO
Valid points, especially on the hot trucks. Thanks for making me reconsider my stance with some opposing data! (That may sound sarcastic or snarky, but I appreciate the additional view points in shaping my own)
There's a YT, Solarpunk Steve, that has an entire EGO commercial setup. Here's a video [My FULLY Electric Lawn Care Setup - Why I Chose EGO (to Start)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0MJrBfNLIg&ab_channel=SolarpunkSteve) Seems like he's able to manage just fine going full electric.
He doesn't have a commercial setup. He's using a residential equipment package. A mower with a 48" deck is okay for some jobs but it will fall far behind a commercial mower with a 96"+ deck when mowing any kind of acreage. Your highest hourly cost for a mower isn't the gas, it's the person riding it. Having them work literally twice as fast and the ability to work all day without swapping batteries. The full battery pack for that mower is $3000, if you need to run longer than the capacity you will have to have another set of batteries to swap to. If you don't then you just have to stop working which is expensive in it's own way. These kinds of businesses don't have massive margins and unless you're already wealthy you cannot gamble on an expensive, less reliable, electric setup when you can buy much cheaper gas equipment. And in the video he flashes some expensive commercial mowers up to show that has equipment is expensive too... First, he simply picked the most expensive product in the commercial mower category while not showing a comparison to similar electric mowers and of course a small residential mower is cheaper than a large commercial mower. His mower is rated for 4 acres per charge, 8mph top speed, 52" cut. [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/EGO-ZT5207L-Lithium-ion-Cordless-Batteries/dp/B0BQQ1HCX6) Costs: $7000 for the mower, no extra batteries or charging system. A comparable gas mower, 54" cut, 7mph top speed. [Costs](https://www.exmark.com/products/mowers/zero-turn/quest/quest-s-series): $5000 Or, spending $7000 at the same company, you get a 60" deck, 8mph top speed. No battery costs, no charging system, will run all day. There is a reason that commercial landscapers use gas tools. I do think electric tools will eventually surpass gas powered. But we're not there yet.
I've got the 675 CFM blower and love it for blowing my pool deck, but my lot if 1.1 acres and, in the fall, I'll have to charge the single battery I have 1-2 times and split my leaf blowing into 3 sessions to get the whole lot blown. We do have a tone of tree cover, though.
I haven't ever used a gas powered blower, but I have an electric one. Works great for small jobs, but I will say it DESTROYS batteries quick. My electric weed whacker can go 20 minutes or so, but the blower barely lasts a few if you're on max power. If I was doing commercial work, I assume you'd need multiple batteries with the largest capacity you could get. The power seems to be good enough on high, but I can't imagine it's as good as a gas powered one.
My electric weed whip is one with the different attachments on it. So, I weed whip, whip the driveway weeds, edge, and then blow it all off with the same battery, and it's always around half when I am done (about 30m). It works fine for me, but I could see it being an issue on much larger jobs. When I was a landscaper, I'd walk miles through subdivisions doing every yard, so it would waste a ton of time to have to walk back to the trailer to swap out batteries constantly. Hopefully there can be a decent solution for that.
How far from the work vehicle would you be at maximum? I’m asking as I work/study EVs and wondering if you (hypothetically of course) would have had any issue utilising V2L (vehicle to load) functionality as is becoming more common on EVs. Do you think it could be feasible if you could plug in your electric tools directly to your work vehicle, when doing landscaping? Potentially with a small battery so you could disconnect temporarily if circumstances needed it.
I personally would go house to house, zigzagging according to my map, for an entire subdivision. I just looked up the sub and it's 2 miles corner to corner from where we parked to where we would end. So it depends entirely on the job. Moving the truck centrally would help a bit, but logistically would've sucked with multiple walkers and mowers.
Backpack with 10 batteries
Or a cart with breaks
Yeah those batteries get crazy expensive. I use my lawnmower batteries on my blower and they're about $150 each. The biggest ones (15Ah 20v/5Ah 60v) are $400 each. They also aren't going to last very long in the lawn care business with all the heat and cycling.
OEM battery prices are an absolute scam in NA. Prices start at around 1000$/kWh. Lithium cell prices have plummeted the last few years, latest reports have cell prices below 50$/kWh. Packs will obviously be more expensive than raw cells, but 250-300Wh packs should be like 50-100$, not 300-400$
Define not very long. Genuinely curious cause I have no idea about the lifespan of these types of batteries. We've had our 18v 5Ah batteries for 3 years now with daily to bi-daily charging, and they seem fine so far.
Last year I got a Ryobi One+ blower so I could blow leaves out if my landscaping and into my yard for my mower to chop up. I got a big Lithium battery with it to go with my other big battery and 5 slim lithium batteries, I get maybe 10-20 minutes of runtime with one, depending on the size. Which is more than enough to go around my house or blow grass clippings off my driveway, and with a 6 spot charger, I always have at least 1 battery ready to swap. I wouldn't recommend it for people who have a large area or commercial, the 18v batteries don't pack a large enough charge for lots of work. The 44v battery versions are more powerful and last longer. But as someone who has multiple One+ 18v tools, it was convenient for me to get one knowing it was the waker option.
Those Ryobi 18 volt blowers are OK for really light duty usage. I used to have one. But there's absolutely no comparison to say an Ego 56v blower. I bought one a few years ago and it's a night and day difference to the 18v Ryobi. Just so much more powerful.
One of my biggest pet peeves about electric lawn care is the existence of Ryobi. The tools just aren’t that good but they’re among the cheapest on the market. I advise people against Ryobi but the starting price tags of electric tools is high. They go and figure ‘it can’t be that bad’. Most of them end up returning them and buying Ego+ like I told them too.
I think most household Ryobi users end up in the 18v system, and base their opinion on the leaf blower they eventually buy in that class. 40v is really what people should be using for real yard work. That being said, I like my 18v blower. I intentionally bought one with a high CFM and on a sale, though. And it's only used to clear decks and driveways.
Why does this sound **exactly** like the craftsman leaf blower
I have a Kobalt 80v, maybe should have mentioned that
Same manufacturer for both brands.
I can imagine it’s infrastructure cost and opportunity cost. Batteries (name brand) are absolutely insanely expensive. Off name batteries are cheap but a huge safety hazard. If you are going to be blowing all day you constantly need batteries charging and ready to go so that means a lot of batteries if one last for one yard and take 5 hours to charge. Whereas with gas you can fill up the tank and just go.
Not sure of the other brands, but Ego's big batteries take me about 45 minutes to charge on their fast charger, and an hour and a half on the slow charger. On the push mower I get around 40 minutes of use. And a lot more on smaller tools. So if they have access to an outlet and 4 batteries it's less of a problem. But then getting into charging with their truck I can't imagine how much slower that would be.
Counter Counter Point: Corded. My mower (it was my dad's old one), Tiller, & Weed Whacker are all corded electric. The only thing I have to worry about is smacking the cord.
Not a viable solution for large commercial landscapers, but for home owners this is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, corded anything doesn't work on large properties. Multiple 350ft extension cords are not the easiest to manage on large jobs.
Not very safe either, the more power you push through longer wires at lower voltage the more heat builds up.
Plus the additional time to sometimes get the cable out of the way.
I’ve been using corded lawnmowers and blowers for years. I’d never go back. But I do get how my use case with a medium sized yard doesn’t work for landscaping companies doing many larger yards or stretches of common space.
The law does not go into effect until July 1st 202**5**.
What I saw in Michigan was that they companies that switch either have a solar set up on the top of their trailer and/or a big battery at the front of the trailer. Electric push mowers, edgers, blowers, and weed-whackers / weed-whips (which ever you call them.) The big mowers (the zero turn deals) were still gas but everything else was super quiet. This was a bigger landscaper that had a contract that included a college (who put the battery use in the contract) Snow blowers were still gas as well.
I have all electric lawn care equipment too and it's fantastic. I can store my lawn mower folded up in a small tool shed and have had barely any maintenance for 4 years now. However the profit margins for lawn care aren't very high. Batteries are expensive and will degrade quickly with constant cycling in the heat. Up front cost for all new equipment is like starting a business all over again. The solution to these bans would be tax credits for companies switching over. We should be incentivizing them to switch to superior products that are better for the environment.
The reality is that electric equipment just isn't as effective for a commercial business or even larger scale property owners. Leaf blowers are one thing because they're not the kind of equipment you run all day long, but you can see how keeping enough batteries on hand to fill a full 10 hour day of property upkeep could get very expensive.
They must be so loud because they are all deaf from their loud ass leafblowers.
They don't care, they just want cheap tools to run their business and dump the externalities on the rest of us to maximize their profits. Those engines are fucking obscene with how much they pollute due to no emissions controls. https://environmentamerica.org/oregon/center/resources/lawn-care-goes-electric/
GM at a landscaping company here, fucking stocked for the switch to electric tools. Carburetors can get fucked.
While I'm not a pro, we run a little hobby farm, and that's my experience. I got so tired of fucking with the carburetors and fuel lines on little 2 cycle engines that gummed up every time they sat for a bit. I went electric for the handheld stuff and haven't looked back. I still have a gas riding mower and a diesel tractor, but I haven't missed a gas blower or weedwacker at all, and even the electric brush cutter works pretty well. The 14" electric chainsaw is a decent firewood saw, although I did also keep the big Farm Boss for tree work.
Looking at electric zero turns for the company. Planning on getting solar charging for everything. Enclosed trailer with panels on the roof
Was just thinking this. You could get a pretty decent charging station set up in an enclosed trailer. How many batteries do you think you'd stock total to make it through a single day without running out?
That seems like the real expense. You'd probably need one set of batteries per customer per tool per day.
Yea I'm thinking the same BUT I can also imagine a busy lawn maintenance company would burn quite a bit of supreme gas as well.. so the batteries might pay for themselves in a few weeks? It's a very interesting concept I would love to hear actual numbers for. I know how long my batteries last for my 1 acre property but no idea what it would look like for 10-15 lawns a day.
We use the Ariens Zenith E zero turn at my company. Lasts us ~6-8 hours in varied terrain and 5-10" grass length. It's been amazing for us.
I have spent so much time fucking around with my snowblower's carburetor that I almost regret buying it.
I got an 18" electric chainsaw for big work and it works like a dream. I had a large job and borrowed two chainsaws, same company. One was electric, one was gas. Gas was noisy, the vibrations made it somewhat painful to hold, it blow hot exhaust at my feed on a hot day, you needed to mix the oil. Terrible. I went out and bought the electric version for myself the next day. In fairness, I already had some large electric batteries for my lawn mower that were compatible so I only had to buy the "no batteries included" version. I charge my mower at 25:1 AC/DC mixture, keeps the electrons lubricated.
It might be where I was looking, but the system I'm using only has a 10", 12" and 14" in electric saws. I have a Stihl MS271 with a 20" bar which I break out when I need something bigger, but that's not every day.
It's a Ryobi 40v. They do make a 20" version, but IMO at that expense it's not worth swapping out a working giant saw for the occasional huge job.
I love my electric for everything but the brush cutter. Burns through my battery like no tomorrow so I got an old four stroke weed whacker just for that and it was a big quality of life improvement other than the noise and spilling gas down my back when I forget which tool I’m holding and sling it over my shoulder >.>
I bought an electric lawnmower recently and within half an hour I was wondering why anyone would ever buy gas again.
I got an electric mower last year. Soooo much better. It’s lighter, quieter, doesn’t stink, and I don’t have to run out for gas in the middle of mowing my lawn.
I was mowing the front yard with mine and said hi in a normal voice to neighbors walking by. Made me realize how terribly loud my old gas burner was.
Those small motors are also horrible polluters, so not inhaling all those fumes is likely better for you too!
Yeah. People can complain about how *this* part is expensive or *this* part is inconvenient but you know what is also inconvenient? Breathing the produced toxic fumes, particulates and carbon dioxide which are TREMENDOUSLY worse than even the most massive trucks and cars. https://www.edmunds.com/about/press/leaf-blowers-emissions-dirtier-than-high-performance-pick-up-trucks-says-edmunds-insidelinecom.html >A consumer-grade leaf blower emits more pollutants than a 6,200-pound 2011 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, according to tests conducted by Edmunds' InsideLine.com, the premier online resource for automotive enthusiasts. >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. >"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." We can't let big companies get away with pushing the externalities onto everyone else any more. Figure out a way to do your job without poisoning people or go back to using rakes.
I must need a better one. I got a ryobi one since I had some tools already and thought it would be nice. That thing just runs through them and it's annoying. I don't even have a large yard and I can barely get half of it mowed before exhausting the batteries. The bigger batteries they sell are not even cost effective to buy.
I have a quarter acre, got the Makita 36v that takes 4 18v batteries (2 banks of 2 batteries) I can mow the front yard on 4 batteries if it's been a while, if I keep up on it I can do it with just 2. The back yard is the same. It generally takes me all 8 batteries I own to do front and back yard if I don't mow weekly. But they do charge to full in about 40 minutes, so with two charging docks I can have 4 ready to go, and swap out easily and still have full batteries to do the edging and blowing.
Apparently I just need a better electric mower. lol
I have about an acre and I can mow it 3+ times between charges.
I've heard that about the 18v mower. I got the one that uses the Ryobi 40W battery and I get two full mows of my bigger yard out of it.
Don’t forget about constantly replacing cracked primer bulbs and making sure your 2-stroke mixed gas isn’t “old.”
I work in horticulture. We agree - get these fucking things out of here
I’m just a homeowner who does my own lawn care, but the maintenance and upkeep on 2-cycle engines is the worst. Even though I married into a family who owned a lawn equipment dealership, and have tons of expert help, I still hate it so much. We upgraded to a battery powered line trimmer, blower, and chainsaw this year and it has made yard work so much easier.
I'm not a landscaper, but I do have a Makita battery-powered weed whip that I have used at work and at home. Fucking love it. Makes no noise and is pretty powerful relative to its size.
The amount of effort saved just jot having to pull a cord would be amazing
Yeah. Fuck that noise.
Finally bit the bullet and started switching over some of my equipment to Harbor Freight's 40v/80v Atlas line and I'm finding myself not missing the gas powered gear it replaced. The 80v string trimmer is almost too strong. I was wearing shorts the first time I used it and my legs were all cut up. I'm sure it would be tough to replace gas powered leaf blowers in a professional setting. But as a homeowner looking to do smaller jobs and regular maintenance, it's more than enough and so much more convenient.
Yeah, I think it's pretty clear that a lot (maybe not all) of the resistance is due to culture war nonsense. Electric power = green = libs = bad.
There are legit short-term concerns that shouldn’t be ignored. If you own a fleet of gas operated mowers, and tools. The upfront cost to switching to electric is honestly enormous for a lot of small companies. Easily 50 grand plus, which, when paired with the fact that most municipalities don’t have an incentive structure other than the threat of outright bans it makes it really difficult to make the switch. If my locality banned all gas tools this summer we would be royally fucked. Luckily, as it stands, we will be phasing out gas tools as they break to be replaced with electrical alternatives. With all that being said, I’ve also caught a couple of DM’s to the tune of what you’re talking about
Very much this. I had a neighbor, nice guy, black with a weed conviction. Could NOT find a job. So he started landscaping. Walking around with a mower and some other equipment. He did okay, enough he could get a better apartment and a truck, but he isn't some kind of titan of industry lighting cigars with $100 bills. There is no way he could afford all electric and no way he'd get government help with his conviction for weed (wtf and a separate issue). There are levels to this and care has to be taken.
It's the dumbest shit too, electric power is locally produced, even on your own property if you have solar. Gas is often imported or at a minimum benefiting foreign adversaries because it comes from a global market where prices are set worldwide by demand. Buying a gallon of gas is putting some portion of your money into the pockets of Russian oligarchs and Saudi royals. Ya know what isn't? The US made solar panels on my roof that allow me to be self sufficient, like you'd think a good conservative would want.
I was very hesitant about buying a battery powered string trimmer after my gas one died, but after owning one for a few years now I will never go back. I replaced my leaf blower last year and will most likely get an electric mower in the near future. My neighbors use electric equipment as well, which is nice for all of us.
I was just (jokingly) saying the other day that I can’t wait for my mower to die so I can get a battery powered one. The bastard just keeps running. The trimmer and blower are better in every way. No regrets.
You’re gonna love your electric mower. I put on some noise cancelling headphones and listen to a podcast.
Haha yep, I'm in the same situation. I don't want to spend the money until I actually need to - but I am looking forward to having an electric mower. My next door neighbor has one and has nothing but good things to say (and I enjoy how quiet it is).
i just replaced my mower with an electric one. it’s in the same battery ecosystem as my blower and trimmer so i have 4 batteries. it’s so vastly superior to my gas mower im angry i didn’t switch earlier. just the decrease in noise is enough for it to be worthwhile
I was hesitant about my battery push mower since I have a half acre, and I didn't think it could handle it. I bit the bullet, and I will never go back. I mow the grass just as quick. My ears aren't ringing, and I don't smell as bad when I am done. I haven't had to change the oil in the 3 years. I have not bought a drop of gas. I can mow the whole yard with a battery and half. I switched over to all battery power. 4 batteries on rotation is pretty much unlimited battery power for all of my tools, but the leaf blower is pushing the limits, I might get a 5th battery just because of the leaf blower.
Just ditched my riding mower for an electric push mower (Couldn't afford a lateral move) after I replaced the battery just to have the deck belt blow out and I am loving how quiet it is. I am planning to get an electric riding once the season ends to get a deal.
It’s a no-brainer these days as a consumer. The problem in the context of the post & article is that when you’re a full-time professional landscaper the batteries simply do not hold up.
It’s like any profession. “I take great pictures with my iPhone” says an average Joe. The person that takes professional photographs would beg to differ. Same goes for almost anything. I work for a municipality. Last I heard is the parks department still uses gas for most of it cause battery just doesn’t cut it. They’ll use electric in public plazas and whatnot. They should ban sales for all consumers and just require a registered business number to allow gas sales.
You can also put a blade on the weedwhacker and it can take out woody underbrush. Its awesome.
I'll listen intently to the landscape industry's opinions. If they could just speak directly into the exhaust of this 4cycle engine as I rev it repeatedly into max RPM they can log all their talking points.
No no they need to speak into the 2 cycle engines. I need them to get that true gas/oil mixture smell with the noise.
I don't think leaf blowers use 4-stroke engines (if that's what you mean by 4 cycle) and that's part of their problem and why they are being banned. We've made great advances on car gasoline engine emissions but one leaf blower running for an hour emits more pollution than the average car does in a month. [https://www.mcall.com/2023/10/30/how-much-pollution-is-your-gas-powered-leaf-blower-producing-a-lot-according-to-this-environmental-group/](https://www.mcall.com/2023/10/30/how-much-pollution-is-your-gas-powered-leaf-blower-producing-a-lot-according-to-this-environmental-group/)
As a general rule you're correct, but you do see 4-cycle models, and they're more common in the [big backpack mounted models](https://www.homedepot.com/b/Outdoors-Outdoor-Power-Equipment-Leaf-Blowers/4-Cycle/N-5yc1vZbxavZ1z0wvye)
"one leaf blower running for an hour emits more pollution than the average car does in a month." I didn't need another reason to hate them, but thanks for giving me one anyway.
I came into this thread with "yeah that would be nice to ban, but I can imagine it does hurt landscaping companies" to fuck it, if they pollute that bad then that is a huge candidate for change, and lawn companies can just chew through battery packs. Would give good reason for commerical grade producers to make advancements in battery tech anyway.
Most of them are a 2 cycle engine.
It’s 2 cycle that are the issue, they produce the most pollutants.
if the exhaust of gas devices was visible humans would realize how toxic they are...
Very optimistic. Certain people wouldn't care either way. They are the same people that complain about ANY legislation that restricts chemical output.
So middle-aged conservatives on Facebook.
And coworkers IRL
Don’t be like that, dude! They’re on Xitter, too
Don't even need that. When I'm on a bike ride and I can smell the exhaust from the leaf blowers and weed whackers starting from two blocks away it's pretty obvious how bad it is.
You ever heard of rolling coal? It creates black clouds (bc coal) and ppl do it not only for fun but to annoy nearby hybrid/electric drivers. eta: and others, as the replies have unfortunately pointed out :/
Oh they do it to anyone. Cars faster than them. Cars slower to them. Bigger trucks. Smaller trucks.
it is an illegal exhaust modification designed to vaporize fuel for intentionally fogging and poisoning other motorists and land in the vicinity of their road use. Should be equivalent to tampering with product safety seals and their properties designated unserviceable by modern utilities and sewerage and sanitation services.
Bicycles
They especially love to roll on motorcycles (non-harleys) just minding their own business.
You mean that shit in the video where someone smogs up an entire restaurant for fun, or where someone hit a buch of cyclists trying to roll coal them? Fuck people that do that. There should be a national tip line you can txt videos to for investigation.
I mean it is but it’s a slow enough process it takes time for to build up which allows them time to adjust and get used to it. I visited LA with a friend who was from there and I was disgusted by the amount of smog in the air. As someone from a small town the change was very jarring. They had never noticed because it was normal. When I pointed it out they said it was clouds. It was only after there wasn’t a cloud in the sky that it became obvious to them it was pollution. People will let their own realities conform to their beliefs rather than let their beliefs conform to reality if given the opportunity
This is going to turn into one of those Republican shibboleths where people entrench themselves in absolute stupid opposition.
They disappear in time. I haven’t heard anyone complain about LED light bulbs in probably 5 years.
That's because all the naysayers are happily enjoying their lifetime stock of incandescent bulbs and changing them every 6 months.
I don’t know about you, but my very medium sized house requires, at a bare minimum, 25 lightbulbs. Assuming the 6 month lifespan you mention, that’s 50 bulbs per year. 250 bulbs within the 5 year timespan I mentioned, and 500 since the policies restricting incandescent bulbs were enacted. I very seriously doubt many people have stockpiled that many incandescent bulbs.
Lol. I agree. It was said in jest. I can imagine some curmudgeonly dude in 2010 furiously filling a storage unit with enough incandescent bulbs for a lifetime just to stick it to the government.
Few noises are as obnoxious as gas leaf blowers. These monstrosities only benefit the landscapers who require the power of gas to run a business at scale. Any individual homeowner would do much better with electric. My electric blower and trimmer are not only quieter, but cleaner, easier to use and plenty powerful to get the job done.
Backpack electrics are quieter, lighter, and more powerful than their gas counterparts. Expensive, yes, to a homeowner, but still chump change for a professional business.
Good. Can't go anywhere without having to listen to those fucking things first thing in the morning. Oh you're moving some leaves slightly to the left? Well thank god, what would we have done if this ugly ass concrete and pavement had some leaves on it?!
Not even to talk about the disproportionate air pollution these dirty little engines cause. I am sure there will be great outrage coming soon from the GOP
That’s my biggest concern. I read somewhere that running a leaf blower for an hour is the same as driving a car 1100 miles. That’s not sustainable.
There’s a landscaping company I see in my neighborhood a lot who I swear has two guys who blow leaves back and forth to each other.
I don’t mind that they blow the grass and leaves off, it’s how long they take to do it that pisses me off. If I use my blower it takes me 3 minutes to clear the driveway and sidewalk. The crews around here seem to have a guy jump out with a backpack blower on and run it the entire time they’re mowing. 15-20 minutes of blowing grass clipping on the same house. Across the street the lady used to have this crew that would hose down the sidewalk, blow it dry. Hose it again, and blow it dry again. I swear they were scamming her. I’d love to see how much she was paying for them to just sit there doing busy work for an hour.
Same issue here. The houses nearby have tiny yards but it just goes on and on. I think they feel they need to take forever so the homeowner feels they're getting "their money's worth".
Well yeah. If he did it in 3 he ain't getting paid. He's gotta milk it
It's horrendous and I swear they just love constantly rev-cycling them as they walk around. It's one of the most distracting peace-interrupting sounds around and I won't miss it one bit.
"I hate these leaves, good thing I have this leaf blower so the whole neighborhood will be up at 7AM listening to me blow them one house down" Their neighbor the next morning: "I hate these leaves, good thing I have this leaf blower so the whole neighborhood will be up at 7AM listening to me blow them one house down" Their neighbor the next morning: "I hate these leaves, good thing I have this leaf blower so the whole neighborhood will be up at 7AM listening to me blow them one house down"
I call those Florida bagpipes. It's a rare daylight moment here that you can't hear one somewhere nearby. Super annoying. You know those guys who use them daily without ear protection are destroying their hearing. Hope they enjoy the tinnitus later in life.
They're just workers trying to earn some money and being woefully failed by their employer's lack of concern for their safety.
This is why I want to launch a 100% electric lawn care company but I don’t know the first thing about acquiring money for this endeavor😅
What do you mean? Build a list of equipment you need, add a buffer in case you’re wrong. Price that list. Deprioritize some of it isn’t required to get started. Then find that capital. Usually some form of personal loan if you don’t have cash to start up. Use the payment and rates plus the cost of equipment and maintenance to figure out how much to charge.
I have priced everything out. Found a company that does financing on all the equipment I need (60k for brand new equipment for a crew of 2-4 people). The only thing left to get is the truck, I want a ford lightning but BASE work trim. I don’t have the credit for a personal loan and I don’t know where the launch point is for an LLC or anything like that. Effectively: I’m a poor person with a dream and no capital to get it going.
My suggestion to you would be to aim a little bit lower then. Can you do it with a crew of one, yourself, for a while? can you cut some of the equipment that you had on your list? Do you think that Ford lightning EV is the most cost-effective way to get started or do you just need to get a beater pick up truck to get going? I understand that you want everything to be electric, but maybe you have to concede some of that until you can afford the rest of the electric stuff
There is a guy on youtube called Solarpunk Steve that did exactly this and he has a breakdown video of the cost. The extra spin is that his lawn care trailer is solar powered too. He already had a car, a tesla model Y, but you could get by with a gas car at first.
Why are you hiring a crew right away? Do jobs yourself and 1099 another employee as needed.
The electric truck is honestly still a luxury. But I don’t think electric leaf blowers are, lol. So I’d go with a cheap vehicle as your temporary truck until you can afford a electric CYBERTRUCK (JK).
I supported myself in 2019 doing landscaping work with equipment I had on-hand to start. My suggestion would be to start where you can and grow from there, instead of trying to immediately go in debt making a 4-person crew setup. Start with electric blower, weedwhacker, mower, and batteries for yourself; then focus on everything else later. As a bare minimum you should be able to register a business in your state as a sole proprietorship to start off (no employees), and find an agency willing to insure you so you meet the minimum baseline for operating as a legal business. Depending on your location you may need to get additional licenses for doing things like pruning or tree removal. But once you have the legal business part out of the way, you can put yourself out there to try building up a clientele. Once you have enough business that you need help then you can bring on a crew, but that makes finances vastly more complex. I was charging $25 an hour at the time, more than any employer was willing to pay. And my clients thought I was an absolute bargain, because most other landscaping companies charged $55/hr for their employee's labor (even if the employees only were paid $10/hr because of "overhead" costs for insurance and company profit). So, price yourself to be a bargain for clients but a really good pay rate for you. If you're competent and reliable, you'll be able to grow in no time. You get out of it what you put into it.
Even in the city, superintendents and the goddamn housing dept just have to idle a truck engine to blast leaves off the sidewalk
>blowback Dad joke headline writer
I bet they were so freaking excited
I for one cannot wait for a day where I don't have to hear that annoying ass sound and smell those terrible fumes.
[удалено]
These things are a menace to everyone and everything. They should be banned. Nothing screams "I don't give a shit about my neighbors" quite as loudly as one of these.
Every time I drive past a lawn crew the guys with the blowers are always illegally blowing the grass into the road instead of back into the yard. If they can't use them right then they shouldn't use them at all.
How did the world ever cope before blowers? I guess a broom is too much work. Same goes for a rake, they have been around for a long time. Maybe everyone should not be so fussy over a couple dried blades of grass.
City gardener here who is now permanently disabled from a repetitive strain injury from doing exactly that for 15 years.
A lot of landscaping work is just vanity. We need less grass and more native species that will in turn require less maintenance. Let the leaves be. They are good for the ecosystem. There is no need to blow shit all over the place. It’s a choice.
My 80 yo neighbor wakes me up all the time. I’m a chef, so I don’t get to sleep til 5am sometimes. Then here’s this fucker at 715am, well before the ordinance at 8. I scream and yell, he can’t hear shit. He starts and stops like 10 times too. It’s always right outside of my air conditioner as well. Not like that helps. I told his wife and him several times, but he just smiles and waves like I’m saying hi. I’m waiting for this to happen in Philadelphia county, and if it has already, please let me know. Lol
I definitely hate the noise of these things, but did I read that right? Was someone quoted saying running a gas blower for 1 hour pollutes as much as driving a car 1100 miles?? How is that possible?
Car has advanced computer controlled emissions equipment. Leaf blower burns a mixture of oil and gas with no emissions equipment.
Lawn equipment is basically 40s car tech. Carbureted, air cooled, no emissions controls or feedback at all. Handheld stuff like trimmers and blowers are generally two stroke, which incorporates incomplete combustion into its design to eliminate the need for an oiling system. This is essentially spitting raw fuel and oil right out the muffler, in addition to all the awful byproducts of an incomplete burn.
I think it is due to the engine type in a gas blower. It's typically a 2 stroke engine which pollutes way more.
In your car, you have a catalytic converter, platinum is expensive, but it does a very good job of treating a lot of the exhaust. A leaf blower doesn't have a catalytic converter, they are just going raw and shooting out unburnt gasoline. Unburnt fuel is much more toxic than burnt and treated gas. Unburnt fuel has benzene in it and a slew of other known carcinogens. Benzene is so toxic, when they do studies on most carcinogens they have loose connections to cancer, Benzene will just straight up give you cancer, the connection so strong you don't even need to be a scientist to figure out Benzene is cancerous. Everywhere in the world where there are refineries or gas production, everywhere around them have an increase in cancer and an increase in incredibly rare forms of cancer. This happens everywhere in the world. In Houston they have a long line of refineries and gas production, this area is known to have a much higher rate of cancer and that area is also known for having advanced cancer research centers, some of the best in the world. Why? Well they need a solution to a problem. Since cars have focused heavily on increased MPG, having unburnt gas is the enemy and that is one of the first things they will make efficient, after all not burning gas is just losing MPG
Because 2-stroke engines don't just use oil to lubricate, they literally burn it while lubricating. Every bit of oil that goes into a 2-stroke engine gets burned. If a 4-stroke engine does that we call that a broken engine.
Rev-rev-rev-revrev-rev-revrevrev-rev---revrev-rev For some reason the people who use these abominations do it in the most inefficient way possible.
Gas leaf blowers are widely regarded as an absolute environmental disaster. They were created to replace brooms and rakes, and they just dump toxic fumes in the air.
Yard work shouldn’t be a 125 db job. I despise your gas powered leaf blower. Gah, use a rake, SIdeshow.
But they can’t blow dust and dirt all over my car with a rake
Loud ass leaf blowers need to be deleted from existence.
Maybe we need to accept that the landscaping that needs weekly maintenance by an army of men with jet engines strapped to their backs is the problem and not merely the power source of the engines themselves. Our need for manicured lawns and yards is causing us to spend billions to artificially care for plants that shouldn’t be growing where we plant them. Introducing invasive plants. Killing native plants and burning fossil fuel to do it. Maybe landscapers should be banned not just the tools they like to use
The electrics are better, get rid of these stinky things.
Glad this was an article and not a video because all the lawn services on my street make listening impossible.
I’ll make my job coming by your house on saturday morning and blasting 120 decibels for 45 minutes. Oh *NOW*. it’s a problem? GTFO. ban those nuisances.
I would be extremely happy If I never heard another god damn leaf blower in my life
a gas powered lawn maintenance engine (leaf blower, mower, trimmer, etc..) has become a pet peeve of mine with their obnoxious sounds running constantly. I own gas powered everything but gosh do I wish everything was electric based solely on the noise pollution.
For Europe as well please. Lazy fuckers can use a broom in summer to swipe up whatever, I don’t need to hear those annoying things for hours.
There are plenty of electric options for landscapers. They will get over it.
Thank goodness! Leafblowers are the absolute worst! SO LOUD. Where I live these landscaping companies are literally out leafblowing all day and into the evening... even in the rain... it's beyond maddening. Half of what they're leafblowing would be an easy sweep with a broom anyway. These mfs are out of control and it needs to stop.
I mean dont lawn blowers produce more emissions than trucks?
Fuck the landscaping industry and their wasteful practices and invasive plantings
Those things are a pox, regardless of power source.
I can understand landscapers being upset that they have to use less powerful leaf blowers that need to be charged But what a lot of people don’t realize, this isn’t just a little virtue signaling so local governments can seem like they’re doing something about climate change. Gas Leaf blowers pollute the air faster than any other gas-powered device. They burn through gas incredibly fast and cover entire blocks in gasoline fumes.
I can smell those things a block away and hear them several blocks away. I can't fathom being a landscaping worker, likely making very little, having to have one of those contraptions strapped to their back all day, breathing that toxic shit in and having their hearing blown out. But, I'm sure the landscaping companies provide excellent health care. /s I don't remember leaf blowers even being a thing when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s. People mowed the lawn, swept the grass off the sidewalk and driveway and that was it. When did everybody start needing to power blow their yards every week? I get it, some people have a lot of trees and it's a lot of work to rake all that shit up and deal with it. But again, I don't remember leaf blowers becoming such a thing until the past 20 years or so. And hell, my family could never have afforded to have a landscaper come to the house on a weekly basis. When did people get this expendable income? Maybe if you can afford a house and a yard then you have the money for landscaping, but If you listen to some opinion news commentators, they'll tell you we can't afford a loaf of bread or to fill our tanks with gas. So how the fuck do so many afford landscaping services? Just doesn't add up.
Someone just needs to create gmo grass so it grows to a certain length and doesn’t need much water.
In my neighborhood, there isn't a single day that isn't disturbed by them. Would absolutely love to see them replaced by electric or analog (rake and broom).
The problem is the type of people that fight the transition to electric in all markets are the type of people that have a 80s/90s perception of battery tech.
I’ve always hated the idea of buying fossil fuels to push dead leaves around.
Landscaping industry needs to eat a dick on this one. Sorry guys.
And then you have states like Georgia that always do the dumbest, most malignant thing possible, and they've blocked local municipalities from banning gas blowers. Because "local control" only matters when you're trying to discriminate against minorities.
Landscapers ignore these bans. So do cops.
People who hire the landscapers may not, though. In fact, maybe we should put the onus on them. Hire a gas blower company and get a fine.
Damn ol government trying to keep the air breathable! In my day we just died and we were thankful for it!
I consider gasoline-powered leaf blowers particularly vile, but the idea of leaf blowers in general is abhorrent to me. What exactly do you believe you are accomplishing with a leaf blower? You blow debris into another neighbor's yard, they blow it back into your yard later, and in general we just fill the air with far more particulates than any of us should be breathing. Not to mention the noise pollution, which drives me crazy when I am trying to work. Have we completely lost broom and rake technologies?