Fully agree! I’ve read that devices that run on electricity are not so loud.It’s the mobile ones running on fossil fuel that are so loud.Even with ear-plugs in it is distracting me to be productive or to relax.I’ve talked with people I know, and told them about the unbearable noise.Their response : “Yeah, but think about elderly people that could slip because of all the leaves”.Well, how did people cope with this decades ago when these loud devices were not super popular ?
I have an electric leaf blower. It is indeed significantly quieter than a two stroke gasoline powered one, albeit not exactly what you’d call “silent.”
I primarily use it to dry off my bikes after washing, and to blow dust off my shop floor and outside. Sweeping is for chumps. I also use it to remove the grass clippings from my sidewalks (I just blow them back into the grass) because the very same Karens who bitch about leaf blower noise are also the very same Karens who bitch about the sidewalks being “untidy” and getting grass clippings on their shoes.
Unfortunately, my leaf blower is not powerful enough to blow them away.
Lol I will never for a moment care about people complaining about grass clippings on my sidewalk. The wind will always take care of it in the end. You do you, I have nothing against it, that just made me laugh.
It would work, and it does work better for specific applications like metal chips around the drill press and grinders. But doing the entire floor with it would take all day. The nozzle is only 9" wide.
Oh, then the blower is still better but for different reasons. Shop vac is just as loud as an electric blower, and will take significantly more time and energy.
deaf people are generally very perceptive of the fact that they cannot hear, not like people constantly exposed to the noise of lawn equipment, who in turn, block it out mentally, because it means nothing. Only to find out, that actually it means something.
So we can’t use technology to make life easier and faster?
Sure you can be out there for 10 hours fighting the wind with a broom doing a 60% job or you could be done in 10 minute with a leaf blower and be 99% done. It does it better in a fraction of the time.
Fuck people for getting chores done and enjoying life eh?
Better use a scythe to cut your grass, no mowers for you….
Let the leaves lie on the grass sure (and mulch them assuming it’s not too many) but you still need a blower for all the other areas; concrete, landscaped rock, etc. They’re also used for snow all the time where I live. Nothing wrong with an electric blower.
i’m still trying to figure out why a blower is going to do anything for snow? You know that snow blowers exist right? I can’t imagine anything other than a snowblower/shovel is going to work effectively on anything that isn’t a very small layer of fluffy snow, god forbid you get any heavy snowfall, or it thaws and refreezes. Just seems like a complete nightmare to me.
Actually, you know what? With that bullshit attitude, yeah, maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to use technology to get your “chores” done faster. If you’re picking destructive and disturbing over leaves-on-the-ground, then you’ve proven yourself incapable of making good decisions at this time.
You understand blowers aren’t just used for leaves right? They’re great for all sorts of debris in all the difficult or impossible to get places (imagine rocky landscaping for example). Isn’t the issue 2-stroke blowers but not blowers in general? What’s wrong with electric?
They’re less annoying and polluting but still a fucking nuisance. And most of the time they’re just used to achieve some idiotic standard of cleanliness, without any practical usefulness.
I’ll push back a little on the “most of the time it’s just for idiotic cleanliness standards” part there as I’ll assume it’s referring to homeowner use which I’d argue is likely not the ones using blowers the most often. Keeping walkways and ramps etc clear of slippery leaves, snow, or other debris is super important in all our public spaces and nothing does that job as quickly or as well as a blower.
Sure if you compare the loudest backpack blower to the quietest electric there’s a Night and day difference,.
But what about the quietest gas one compared to the loudest electric? I’ve got a 60v leaf blower, it’s iirc 13db louder than the 20v. And it’s far louder than a lot of gas ones people use for personal use.
If the deafening whine of a leaf blower feels inescapable, you’re not imagining it.
Leaf blowers produce a low-frequency buzz that “allows loud sound at harmful levels to travel over long distance and readily penetrate walls and windows,” said Banks, who published a peer-reviewed paper in 2017 analyzing noise pollution from the gas-powered lawn equipment.
The pilot study found that the loud noise produced from the machinery could travel up to 800 feet away from the source.
Short- and long-term exposure to noise pollution has links to a host of health impacts, including, in some cases, increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and other serious heart-related problems, and hearing loss. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers among the sources of loud noise that can damage hearing over time.
Electric leaf blowers are quieter. After testing both types, Consumer Reports gave electric devices an average score of 2.9 for noise at the ear, compared to 1.7 for gas models. (The lower the score, the worse the noise.) And when the sound was measured 50 feet away, the electric leaf blowers earned an average score of 4.8 versus 2.5 for gas.
“It dissipates over a much shorter distance and it can’t penetrate walls and windows easily either,” Banks said.
This is a well known fact about how sound travels through the environment. Lower pitch noises (gas engines) tend to travel very far and very aggressively. They’re so much more potent.
High pitched whining sounds (electric motors) don’t travel nearly as well as lower pitch sounds, and they tend to be much much quieter at distance.
Combine that with the sound profiles of the ICEs compared to the constant whine of an electric motor in a certain part of the spectrum of audible sound. Now you have modulation on the ICE which is going to be much more potent to begin with, since it’s an entirely different sound profile. As well as being much harder to tune out, given the fact that it’s not just a persistent whine.
This is why the abrams powered by a gas turbine are known for being incredibly quiet, even though when up close, you can still hear them loud as shit. The sound just can’t travel through the environment as effectively, and like i said, even if it does. It’s not exactly the incredibly distinct sound of an ICE.
I mean sure you might have to wear hearing pro still. But that’s not my problem, what is my problem is having unavoidable hearing damage from my neighbors who are currently mowing.
I mean, all choices have tradeoffs, right? You might clear the leaves faster, but everyone else has to listen to the loud-ass blower and deal with just that little bit more pollution. In my opinion it would be better to have a hard noise pollution limit. If your blower is too loud (and it probably would be) you can still clear the leaves with a rake and the rest of us can live more peaceful lives.
I’m literally writing this comment listening to a leaf blower outside my house. I live in the suburbs. It’s usually louder outside my house than it is inside my house, thanks to the road noise and lawncare. That’s just not right.
It’s usually louder outside my house than it is inside my house
Isn’t this what you would expect almost anywhere, unless you live with someone who is unusually noisy? Even when I lived somewhere where I usually heard only natural sounds, it was louder outside my house than it was inside because of the ducks, chipmunks, cicadas, etc.
generally i would expect it to be louder inside my house, than outside my house, considering that im living in my own fucking home.
Sure if you’re doing literally nothing, just sitting there in silence, staring at paint dry or something, it’s probably going to be louder outside than inside. But humans aren’t exactly known for doing that.
also tbf, cicadas are a fucking hellspawn. They’re equally as bad as this lawn equipment lmao.
Ever been right next to a tractor trailer or other heavy equipment the city uses? It’s all around 100db so unless you want absolutely nothing, not even buses. Thats not realistic.
They also need to account for construction, your house was built with equipment louder than leaf blowers for example. So how would your house be here with more restrictive sound limits.
Ever been right next to a tractor trailer or other heavy equipment the city uses? It’s all around 100db so unless you want absolutely nothing, not even buses. Thats not realistic.
Yes, and they’re usually gone in 30ish seconds. Those guys with leaf blowers run them a lot longer than that.
They also need to account for construction, your house was built with equipment louder than leaf blowers for example. So how would your house be here with more restrictive sound limits.
I bet if you plotted the noise, it would be numerous peaks and valleys of sound. Leaf blowers are a continuous solid line of noise.
If there’s peak and valleys the people aren’t working consistently…
An excavator or compactor are constant noise all day if they are working effectively. Other than lunch breaks, but sometime they rotate so the expensive equipment doesn’t sit.
No one is gonna pay $300 an hour for equipment and it stay idle 50% of the day, just pissing money away dude.
Sorry, perhaps that want great communication on my part. “Hard limit” as in, “very restrictive.” I.E. If your equipment isn’t quiet, it ain’t allowed to run.
We can make an exception for “one time” tools or locations that have no reasonable quiet alternative. Lawn mowers, leaf blowers, cars, motorcycles, and so forth are all examples of regular use tools, while a literal jack-hammer is not. Simply designate an area a construction area and a different set of noise and safety laws would apply.
Of course it’s possible to build a building quietly, but even I recognize that it would be unreasonable to ask people to do so.
Golf courses, definitely. I managed a hardware store for a while and our primary customer for reel mowers, as well as sharpening services for the same, were golf courses.
So we can’t use technology to make life easier and faster?
I can rake a yard in half the time it takes you to blow your leaves into a pile. People here in California spend hours - HOURS - blowing around leaves. It’s NOT efficient.
When I wrote my comment I was thinking of the municipality workers with these gadgets in my area, sometimes using no ear protection! Hardly anyone at home, where there’s mostly just small gardens, uses these super noisy things.The city council probably thinks that they are saving a lot of money and time and giving their workers a much easier time. And like I wrote : I’ve read that devices running on electricity are quite silent. If there can be electricity poles for E.V. why not for this ?
My electric battery one is just as noisy as most gas ones. They just aren’t feasible for city work since they would need a genset to charge them anyways, or they would be having to need 60 batteries for one crew for a day.
I hate those fucking things so much. To anybody who uses one: I hate you!
Fully agree! I’ve read that devices that run on electricity are not so loud.It’s the mobile ones running on fossil fuel that are so loud.Even with ear-plugs in it is distracting me to be productive or to relax.I’ve talked with people I know, and told them about the unbearable noise.Their response : “Yeah, but think about elderly people that could slip because of all the leaves”.Well, how did people cope with this decades ago when these loud devices were not super popular ?
I have an electric leaf blower. It is indeed significantly quieter than a two stroke gasoline powered one, albeit not exactly what you’d call “silent.”
I primarily use it to dry off my bikes after washing, and to blow dust off my shop floor and outside. Sweeping is for chumps. I also use it to remove the grass clippings from my sidewalks (I just blow them back into the grass) because the very same Karens who bitch about leaf blower noise are also the very same Karens who bitch about the sidewalks being “untidy” and getting grass clippings on their shoes.
Unfortunately, my leaf blower is not powerful enough to blow them away.
Lol I will never for a moment care about people complaining about grass clippings on my sidewalk. The wind will always take care of it in the end. You do you, I have nothing against it, that just made me laugh.
Shop vac wouldn’t work?
It would work, and it does work better for specific applications like metal chips around the drill press and grinders. But doing the entire floor with it would take all day. The nozzle is only 9" wide.
9” wide?
9" wide!
That’d take 10x the effort and time.
Do you mean use the vac as a blower? Less effective compared to a proper blower, and just as loud (maybe louder?) as an electric blower.
I had meant just to vacuum up all the dust.
Oh, then the blower is still better but for different reasons. Shop vac is just as loud as an electric blower, and will take significantly more time and energy.
My electric blower and lawnmower are pretty quiet.
If you use an electric one, I hate you only a little bit.
have we thought about all the elderly people that might get run over by vehicles they can’t fucking hear?
I mean, deaf people are handling themselves just fine while hearing no cars.
deaf people are generally very perceptive of the fact that they cannot hear, not like people constantly exposed to the noise of lawn equipment, who in turn, block it out mentally, because it means nothing. Only to find out, that actually it means something.
So we can’t use technology to make life easier and faster?
Sure you can be out there for 10 hours fighting the wind with a broom doing a 60% job or you could be done in 10 minute with a leaf blower and be 99% done. It does it better in a fraction of the time.
Fuck people for getting chores done and enjoying life eh?
Better use a scythe to cut your grass, no mowers for you….
Alternatively, let the leaves lie - which is beneficial to insects as well. And lets your neighbours enjoy life :)
But a suggestion from the post you’re replying to is using an electric one.
Let the leaves lie on the grass sure (and mulch them assuming it’s not too many) but you still need a blower for all the other areas; concrete, landscaped rock, etc. They’re also used for snow all the time where I live. Nothing wrong with an electric blower.
i’m still trying to figure out why a blower is going to do anything for snow? You know that snow blowers exist right? I can’t imagine anything other than a snowblower/shovel is going to work effectively on anything that isn’t a very small layer of fluffy snow, god forbid you get any heavy snowfall, or it thaws and refreezes. Just seems like a complete nightmare to me.
Actually, you know what? With that bullshit attitude, yeah, maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to use technology to get your “chores” done faster. If you’re picking destructive and disturbing over leaves-on-the-ground, then you’ve proven yourself incapable of making good decisions at this time.
You understand blowers aren’t just used for leaves right? They’re great for all sorts of debris in all the difficult or impossible to get places (imagine rocky landscaping for example). Isn’t the issue 2-stroke blowers but not blowers in general? What’s wrong with electric?
They’re less annoying and polluting but still a fucking nuisance. And most of the time they’re just used to achieve some idiotic standard of cleanliness, without any practical usefulness.
This is likely region dependant I suppose.
I’ll push back a little on the “most of the time it’s just for idiotic cleanliness standards” part there as I’ll assume it’s referring to homeowner use which I’d argue is likely not the ones using blowers the most often. Keeping walkways and ramps etc clear of slippery leaves, snow, or other debris is super important in all our public spaces and nothing does that job as quickly or as well as a blower.
Goes against their narrative and they don’t like being called out.
I’ve got an electric powered one, it’s just as loud as a gas one, but still within municipal sound limits.
Sorry, find something else to complain about.
No it’s not.
Source: I have ears and have been around both.
Sure if you compare the loudest backpack blower to the quietest electric there’s a Night and day difference,.
But what about the quietest gas one compared to the loudest electric? I’ve got a 60v leaf blower, it’s iirc 13db louder than the 20v. And it’s far louder than a lot of gas ones people use for personal use.
If the deafening whine of a leaf blower feels inescapable, you’re not imagining it.
Leaf blowers produce a low-frequency buzz that “allows loud sound at harmful levels to travel over long distance and readily penetrate walls and windows,” said Banks, who published a peer-reviewed paper in 2017 analyzing noise pollution from the gas-powered lawn equipment.
The pilot study found that the loud noise produced from the machinery could travel up to 800 feet away from the source.
Short- and long-term exposure to noise pollution has links to a host of health impacts, including, in some cases, increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and other serious heart-related problems, and hearing loss. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers among the sources of loud noise that can damage hearing over time.
Electric leaf blowers are quieter. After testing both types, Consumer Reports gave electric devices an average score of 2.9 for noise at the ear, compared to 1.7 for gas models. (The lower the score, the worse the noise.) And when the sound was measured 50 feet away, the electric leaf blowers earned an average score of 4.8 versus 2.5 for gas.
“It dissipates over a much shorter distance and it can’t penetrate walls and windows easily either,” Banks said.
https://archive.ph/Nmwsj
TL;DR - Not only quieter but the sound from and electric leaf blower doesn’t travel like the sounds from a gas leaf blower.
Electric just as loud… WHAT? ARE YOU EVEN A HUMAN?
They produce the same DB the percussive sound of the engine travels further. At the point of sound they can be just as loud.
yeah, me and my homies mow and blow within ten meters of each other so that way we all share equal hearing damage.
Once you’re about that distance away you’re safe from hearing damage even if it’s annoying to listen to.
It’s only important for people using the equipment and their crew. If you’re that close, the fuck you doing that close lmfao.
you’re very wrong btw.
This is a well known fact about how sound travels through the environment. Lower pitch noises (gas engines) tend to travel very far and very aggressively. They’re so much more potent.
High pitched whining sounds (electric motors) don’t travel nearly as well as lower pitch sounds, and they tend to be much much quieter at distance.
Combine that with the sound profiles of the ICEs compared to the constant whine of an electric motor in a certain part of the spectrum of audible sound. Now you have modulation on the ICE which is going to be much more potent to begin with, since it’s an entirely different sound profile. As well as being much harder to tune out, given the fact that it’s not just a persistent whine.
This is why the abrams powered by a gas turbine are known for being incredibly quiet, even though when up close, you can still hear them loud as shit. The sound just can’t travel through the environment as effectively, and like i said, even if it does. It’s not exactly the incredibly distinct sound of an ICE.
I addressed that in another comment, at the point source the DB is the same, but the percussive sound of the engine travels further.
yeah, and that’s a good thing?
I mean sure you might have to wear hearing pro still. But that’s not my problem, what is my problem is having unavoidable hearing damage from my neighbors who are currently mowing.
I mean, all choices have tradeoffs, right? You might clear the leaves faster, but everyone else has to listen to the loud-ass blower and deal with just that little bit more pollution. In my opinion it would be better to have a hard noise pollution limit. If your blower is too loud (and it probably would be) you can still clear the leaves with a rake and the rest of us can live more peaceful lives.
I’m literally writing this comment listening to a leaf blower outside my house. I live in the suburbs. It’s usually louder outside my house than it is inside my house, thanks to the road noise and lawncare. That’s just not right.
Isn’t this what you would expect almost anywhere, unless you live with someone who is unusually noisy? Even when I lived somewhere where I usually heard only natural sounds, it was louder outside my house than it was inside because of the ducks, chipmunks, cicadas, etc.
generally i would expect it to be louder inside my house, than outside my house, considering that im living in my own fucking home.
Sure if you’re doing literally nothing, just sitting there in silence, staring at paint dry or something, it’s probably going to be louder outside than inside. But humans aren’t exactly known for doing that.
also tbf, cicadas are a fucking hellspawn. They’re equally as bad as this lawn equipment lmao.
They do fit within municipal sound limitations…. So to your point, they should be perfectly fine.
Or the municipal sound limit isn’t the hard limit that Liz would like to have
Ever been right next to a tractor trailer or other heavy equipment the city uses? It’s all around 100db so unless you want absolutely nothing, not even buses. Thats not realistic.
They also need to account for construction, your house was built with equipment louder than leaf blowers for example. So how would your house be here with more restrictive sound limits.
Yes, and they’re usually gone in 30ish seconds. Those guys with leaf blowers run them a lot longer than that.
I bet if you plotted the noise, it would be numerous peaks and valleys of sound. Leaf blowers are a continuous solid line of noise.
If there’s peak and valleys the people aren’t working consistently…
An excavator or compactor are constant noise all day if they are working effectively. Other than lunch breaks, but sometime they rotate so the expensive equipment doesn’t sit.
No one is gonna pay $300 an hour for equipment and it stay idle 50% of the day, just pissing money away dude.
Sorry, perhaps that want great communication on my part. “Hard limit” as in, “very restrictive.” I.E. If your equipment isn’t quiet, it ain’t allowed to run.
That’s what I was talking about, how do you expect your house was built if there’s a hard limit?
We can make an exception for “one time” tools or locations that have no reasonable quiet alternative. Lawn mowers, leaf blowers, cars, motorcycles, and so forth are all examples of regular use tools, while a literal jack-hammer is not. Simply designate an area a construction area and a different set of noise and safety laws would apply.
Of course it’s possible to build a building quietly, but even I recognize that it would be unreasonable to ask people to do so.
People do still use reel mowers and such.
Golf courses, definitely. I managed a hardware store for a while and our primary customer for reel mowers, as well as sharpening services for the same, were golf courses.
That makes sense. In town I still see enough of them that they stand out, but these aren’t huge yards or anything either.
but to make them, and ship them to you is more destructive than a scythe.
That’s how stupid these arguments are. Forgetting the big picture while looking at a blade of grass.
I can rake a yard in half the time it takes you to blow your leaves into a pile. People here in California spend hours - HOURS - blowing around leaves. It’s NOT efficient.
Your aren’t getting as good of job done, that’s just reality, and maybe they should use a vacuum option instead? Same noise, more efficient.
What job exactly? What are you trying to achieve that would outweigh the noise and pollution, you’re creating?
Clearing leaves in ten minutes with a minor annoyance to others while saving themselves what little time our corporate overlords allow us to have?
When I wrote my comment I was thinking of the municipality workers with these gadgets in my area, sometimes using no ear protection! Hardly anyone at home, where there’s mostly just small gardens, uses these super noisy things.The city council probably thinks that they are saving a lot of money and time and giving their workers a much easier time. And like I wrote : I’ve read that devices running on electricity are quite silent. If there can be electricity poles for E.V. why not for this ?
My electric battery one is just as noisy as most gas ones. They just aren’t feasible for city work since they would need a genset to charge them anyways, or they would be having to need 60 batteries for one crew for a day.
Not when it makes the lives of others shorter and worse.
I mean, you CAN, just not without being a dick 🤷
Hard physical labor like raking and shoveling snow is directly linked to increased heart attacks, so that’s kinda disingenuous.
mmmmm leaded gas, make my engine go brr more harderer, but make my brain go bonk, totally worth it.