I’m always taken aback by the hate. Where and how do you guys live that this is an issue?! Let alone a major annoyance?! I can scarcely imagine noticing leaf blower noise. It’s no worse than gas mowers and those are everywhere (or used to be), and go for far longer. Is this just a circle-jerk complaint kinda thing?
I know everyone around here thinks they’re an ADHD, autistic, OCD mess, but can no one tune out background noise? (No, you’re not special, more likely an normal adult human with modern life issues.) If anything it should be old people bitching as hearing discretion gets more difficult in middle-age+.
The homeless guy that lives behind our Lowe’s probably gets annoyed at the 9PM blowing, but that’s a 20-30 minute thing, and not too late. (Always felt a bit bad when I closed.) I pick every tiny bit of plastic out though. Not in my waterways!
A bit snarky, I know, but those were serious questions.
And BTW, organic refuse gets blown in the street because passing vehicles reduce it to dust very quickly. All organic, no harm no foul in my book. Also, it’s hellacious to corral that stuff for sweeping, no point.
EDIT: This post reminded me I need a new battery blower. And if you think 5-minutes of noise while I blow out my truck bed and driveway is too much, I don’t know what to tell you.
They’re loud, they kick up dust, and they happen at intermittent times based on when the neighbors do it. they also use fossil fuels. Loud mowers are annoying, too! If you – heaven forbid – want to keep your windows open and feel a breeze, you’re going to get all of that noise and maybe even some of the dust.
I understand that we have to clear sidewalks and driveways so that accidents don’t happen. People usually don’t have so much sidewalk + driveway that a broom or something wouldn’t do that job quickly. But then we have to blow the leaves off the lawn, too? I know that your HOA will kill you if you don’t, but doesn’t it seem silly to remove the leaves from a lawn, then buy and put down commercial fertilizer, when the leaves would have biodegraded into new topsoil? To spend so much time watering a lawn to keep it alive when the leaves would have shielded it from the sun? Why are we spending so much time, money, water, and effort to maintain sterile grass lawns? We can have beautiful outdoors spaces without being slaves to an HOA enforcing what plants we grow.
I understand that it’s really the HOAs these days that are a big part of the problem. A good number of people in my HOA-less neighborhood have diverse plants in front of their homes. They look fantastic, they seem to take way less maintenance (I never see them mowing, watering, weeding, fertilizing, etc), and ofc they’re much better for the environment.
So, again, what sort of space do you live in where this is annoyance? I’m only aware of leaf blowers when I’m driving and a lawn service is blowing.
Who’s complaining is my question. People in nice hoods with the neighbors going nuts? Apartment complexes? Is this an autumn thing where leaves fall everywhere?
Maybe I don’t notice because I’m in the deepest South. Trees don’t dump all at once, it’s a gradual thing from fall through spring. All I ever see is landscapers doing a quick blow down after mowing.
Also, we’re not so much into appearances down here, not like other places I’ve lived. Your yard doesn’t have to be perfect.
doesn’t it seem silly to remove the leaves from a lawn, then buy and put down commercial fertilizer
I think you are imagining leaves from small and widely spaced trees. We do not put down fertilizer, but we remove leaves from the part of our yard we want to include grass. The parts of the yard we let the leaves stay kills all the grass (hardier plants grow there, but they are not compatible with mowing to a walk-over height). Leaf mould easily takes two years to create, and grass needs sunlight in a half year from fall. Chopping it up helps, but at the volume created by our over-hundred-year-old oak and several other large trees, even chopped there is just too much mass per lawn area to be able to leave it and not kill the grass.
fair enough. It’s another reason why grass doesn’t make sense to me – it’s so incompatible with the landscape unless you put in the effort to make it habitable. Maybe there’s a type of ivy that would have an acceptable max height instead?
I understand your skepticism, but gas-powered leaf blowers have annoyed the hell out of me for years. I live in a relatively small city in Northern California, and I can always hear and smell a leaf blower before I can even see it. I can’t overstate how strongly gas-powered leaf blowers smell. The smell of gas permeates my apartment, even with the windows closed, and is the kind of smell that gets stuck my nostrils for hours. The noise is pretty disruptive, but the smell is way worse to be honest. I’m not sure why they smell so much worse than other gas-powered things, but it’s like they’re just spewing gas out into the air.
I have no problem with electric or battery-powered leaf blowers, just please use them at a reasonable time of day - after 8am and before 10pm.
Gas powered leaf blowers are small two stroke engines, you’re smelling oil burning (oil is mixed with gasoline to lubricate, it burns by design), and those engines tend to be jetted to run rich so they don’t burn up too quickly.
Unburned gasoline, unburned oil, burned oil are the extra smells that you don’t get from a lawnmower, which would be four stroke like a car.
Two strokes are also noisier than four. They fire twice as often as four strokes, and for the purposes of a leaf blower, they also rev higher.
I’m always taken aback by the hate. Where and how do you guys live that this is an issue?! Let alone a major annoyance?! I can scarcely imagine noticing leaf blower noise. It’s no worse than gas mowers and those are everywhere (or used to be), and go for far longer. Is this just a circle-jerk complaint kinda thing?
I know everyone around here thinks they’re an ADHD, autistic, OCD mess, but can no one tune out background noise? (No, you’re not special, more likely an normal adult human with modern life issues.) If anything it should be old people bitching as hearing discretion gets more difficult in middle-age+.
The homeless guy that lives behind our Lowe’s probably gets annoyed at the 9PM blowing, but that’s a 20-30 minute thing, and not too late. (Always felt a bit bad when I closed.) I pick every tiny bit of plastic out though. Not in my waterways!
A bit snarky, I know, but those were serious questions.
And BTW, organic refuse gets blown in the street because passing vehicles reduce it to dust very quickly. All organic, no harm no foul in my book. Also, it’s hellacious to corral that stuff for sweeping, no point.
EDIT: This post reminded me I need a new battery blower. And if you think 5-minutes of noise while I blow out my truck bed and driveway is too much, I don’t know what to tell you.
They’re loud, they kick up dust, and they happen at intermittent times based on when the neighbors do it. they also use fossil fuels. Loud mowers are annoying, too! If you – heaven forbid – want to keep your windows open and feel a breeze, you’re going to get all of that noise and maybe even some of the dust.
I understand that we have to clear sidewalks and driveways so that accidents don’t happen. People usually don’t have so much sidewalk + driveway that a broom or something wouldn’t do that job quickly. But then we have to blow the leaves off the lawn, too? I know that your HOA will kill you if you don’t, but doesn’t it seem silly to remove the leaves from a lawn, then buy and put down commercial fertilizer, when the leaves would have biodegraded into new topsoil? To spend so much time watering a lawn to keep it alive when the leaves would have shielded it from the sun? Why are we spending so much time, money, water, and effort to maintain sterile grass lawns? We can have beautiful outdoors spaces without being slaves to an HOA enforcing what plants we grow.
I understand that it’s really the HOAs these days that are a big part of the problem. A good number of people in my HOA-less neighborhood have diverse plants in front of their homes. They look fantastic, they seem to take way less maintenance (I never see them mowing, watering, weeding, fertilizing, etc), and ofc they’re much better for the environment.
So, again, what sort of space do you live in where this is annoyance? I’m only aware of leaf blowers when I’m driving and a lawn service is blowing.
Who’s complaining is my question. People in nice hoods with the neighbors going nuts? Apartment complexes? Is this an autumn thing where leaves fall everywhere?
I have lived in suburbs, subdivisions, and city neighborhoods with green space. People (or their landscapers) use leaf blowers in all of them.
Maybe I don’t notice because I’m in the deepest South. Trees don’t dump all at once, it’s a gradual thing from fall through spring. All I ever see is landscapers doing a quick blow down after mowing.
Also, we’re not so much into appearances down here, not like other places I’ve lived. Your yard doesn’t have to be perfect.
I think you are imagining leaves from small and widely spaced trees. We do not put down fertilizer, but we remove leaves from the part of our yard we want to include grass. The parts of the yard we let the leaves stay kills all the grass (hardier plants grow there, but they are not compatible with mowing to a walk-over height). Leaf mould easily takes two years to create, and grass needs sunlight in a half year from fall. Chopping it up helps, but at the volume created by our over-hundred-year-old oak and several other large trees, even chopped there is just too much mass per lawn area to be able to leave it and not kill the grass.
fair enough. It’s another reason why grass doesn’t make sense to me – it’s so incompatible with the landscape unless you put in the effort to make it habitable. Maybe there’s a type of ivy that would have an acceptable max height instead?
I understand your skepticism, but gas-powered leaf blowers have annoyed the hell out of me for years. I live in a relatively small city in Northern California, and I can always hear and smell a leaf blower before I can even see it. I can’t overstate how strongly gas-powered leaf blowers smell. The smell of gas permeates my apartment, even with the windows closed, and is the kind of smell that gets stuck my nostrils for hours. The noise is pretty disruptive, but the smell is way worse to be honest. I’m not sure why they smell so much worse than other gas-powered things, but it’s like they’re just spewing gas out into the air.
I have no problem with electric or battery-powered leaf blowers, just please use them at a reasonable time of day - after 8am and before 10pm.
Gas powered leaf blowers are small two stroke engines, you’re smelling oil burning (oil is mixed with gasoline to lubricate, it burns by design), and those engines tend to be jetted to run rich so they don’t burn up too quickly.
Unburned gasoline, unburned oil, burned oil are the extra smells that you don’t get from a lawnmower, which would be four stroke like a car.
Two strokes are also noisier than four. They fire twice as often as four strokes, and for the purposes of a leaf blower, they also rev higher.
Well damn, there it is. Thanks for the explanation!
Drag is often in physical pain and crying on the floor because of the leaf blower, but sure, autism is fake.
Maybe it is a hearing difference. I was never into loud music and my hearing is still very good.