Portland has gotten quite a bit more expensive. We've begun rejecting taxes, which as the self-selected second highest taxed city in the nation is new. Our economy has struggled to return post-COVID lockdowns. There's a lot more I could say but people are really feeling the economic squeeze. I doubt this will help, but is pretty minor when you think about housing, electricity, gas, and water costs that continue to rise as wages go down in the city. I call this place the city of a thousand cuts, there's a lot to like, but there's a lot that hurts too.
They have 5 electric leaf blowers available right now. You mentioned you already bought one, but perhaps you could share this info with some of your friends or neighbors to save them the cost. :)
If you’re poor and using it on your own property, a corded electric is like $50 and works fine. The cord is a little bit of a hassle, but you don’t have to worry about mixing gas and oil, fuel stabilizer etc etc. electric has gotten to the point of being good enough, and it’s not reasonable to make so much noise in a residential area when there are good alternatives.
Think of all the rakes you could buy with that!
Context: https://www.oregon.gov/osfm/pages/self-serve-fueling.aspx
closer to home, one neighbor bought a hybrid, the other an electric truck, and it is so much more calm and quiet.
A gasoline leaf blower (or vacuum) that you ride instead of carry would also be allowed.
That's likely an intentional exception because they don't wan't to have to field calls from every busybody who sees the someone riding a bagger equipped mower around in the fall (which serves both the purpose of a final mowing and picking up all the leaves)
I hope this kind of environmentalism never comes for winter gear. At least not until we have fuel cell technology that far exceeds what batteries can offer.
I think batteries are good enough for your needs, just that there's too much junk on the market.
At least what I’ve found, now with more people working from home, there is more attention paid to intolerably noisy stuff that goes on when we used to be at work. I lived near a private school with a big grounds that had these idiots come and rev their leaf blowers for days every fall and spring, and it was basically impossible for me to work. I don’t especially care about the environmental impact and am sort of angry that people use the environment as a pretence when there are certainly more effective ways to be environmentally friendly. But the noise is intolerable, generally very supportive of the bans, though I think it should be about blanket norms on what noise levels are allowed and not about specific technologies.
It's always better to go with batteries for electric outdoor stuff for that (and other) reasons.
I have both a battery leafblower and a corded one. The corded is far more powerful and of course does not run out. The battery one is quick and convenient for small cleanups but only gets about 10 minutes from a full charge, then it's back to the charger for hours.
Recently I cleaned up a large roof full of leaves, took about an hour with the powerful corded leafblower. That would've taken weeks with the battery one given the small power and the ~10 minute runtime.
I mostly use the battery one since it's easier and most jobs I do are tiny. But it is no substitute for the corded one.
Your battery blower sounds like it's just not very good.
I can move piles of wet leaves easily with my makita blower that uses two 18v batteries. It's a pretty old model too.
Batteries can surge power and not risk fire hazard like AC over a long extension cord. Manufacturers know this and have to intentionally limit draw way below the 15A ceiling so a 100ft 14AWG cord doesn't trip breakers or burn houses down.
https://www.agrieuro.co.uk/snapper-esxd20s82k-battery-powere...
Are considered pretty much as good as petrol ones over here, but yeah, if you limited it to only 1000W I guess it would struggle too.
I've converted to electric for everything but the the snowblower is the only thing Ive considering switching back to gas.
To be fair my driveway is 100+ feet. I think this unit would be fine for a smaller driveway.
OTOH, an 80V battery can easily draw 1000 watts+. A good snow blower has 4 of those. That's more than enough, comparable to a gas engine but with way more torque.
I had a corded electric snow blower 20 years ago and it was great for light snows, but I needed the gas one for larger snows. Cordless tools often have more power than corded because there is only so much power you can get from a plug - of course the battery discharges fast when doing this.
Further, where I live (in the UK), there needs to be a serious reckoning about modified cars and road noise. At least 5-10x daily people drive through the city centre near my home with cars modified with unbelievably loud pop and bang ECU tunes and exhaust noise (close to as loud as gunfire). This kind of deliberate noise pollution is exceptionally antisocial behaviour and should not be tolerated by society.
I'd love to have an ALPR system that localizes the noise and snaps a picture of the plate and vehicle and sends them a ticket in the mail.
The problem for both noise and speed enforcement is entirely a problem of will. Some jurisdictions simply don't care, or just do targeted enforcement to drive revenue but not actually change driving habits. Do any driving around the country and you'll see areas where people regularly drive 20mph over the speed limit and areas where people barely go 5 over.
Failing that test is expensive, and you don't see your car again for a few weeks. They revoke your permission to operate the vehicle on public roads, so in addition to the fine, you face fees (towing, storage of car in evidence locker, towing your car to a shop after getting it back in order to make it street legal, then redoing the road-worthiness certification).
But you are not likely to see this enforced outside of rich quiet neighborhoods where police don't have anything better to attend to. Culturally, sentiment in the US does not want the law coming down hard on drivers and their vehicles. For instance, most US states do not even require vehicles to be safety inspected. And in urban areas the police have worse infractions to be going after.
It would be bad only if it didn't result in decrease of loud vehicles. If they run the dyno and impound vehicle, it means that this loud vehicle won't be coming back this street for some time.
The only provable noise polluter in that case is the police.
I'm sure they could also put my car on a dyno and prove it could go 100mph on the 30mph street I was on too.
One assumes this process is generally reserved for vehicles whose driving has earned them a dyno inspection, as it would induce mockery were they to e.g. dyno an old beaten-up Geo Metro without cause, and that the fines are directed towards either the vehicle owner and/or manufacturer, as circumstances require, as the responsible parties for its mechanical-design and/or aftermarket-modded violations of the law. (I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
But as it turns out, the government isn't society, and the law isn't what's right.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/salvadorhernandez/leade...
Actually, you can argue it and it will work.
It’s not all of them. Some ride responsibly but my god, some are extremely good at being the most annoying human beings on earth.
The right thing to do is to ban their use on a local level pursuant to some specific criteria is one thing (as many municipalities do, and Portland took a step further by doing categorically city wide). To ban their sale (but not use, are you kidding?) state wide is a great example of not only crap law, but the exact sort of minutia that the state level government should not be regulating and is necessarily proceeded by the sort of evil "I know best, damn the exceptions" world view that underpins much of the bad policy that sours people on the same institutions you are trying to use to solve what you perceive to be problems.
NYC installed these. Turns out with a city noise limit of 76 and ticketing those in excess of 84dBa, that you’ll ticket certain street ‘legal’ cars whose noise levels can reach into the 90s (!) if driven improperly in-city. Always glad to see technology progressing; I hope it spreads elsewhere.
(by appliance I mean a quiet boring car like a prius, tesla or midmarket vehicle, something that doesn't stand out - I've found those car owners also come with the dreary if I'm not having fun no one else can attitude)
If you're downvoting, reconsider not being a sour-puss and find some joy in something, anything please. It's not good to be bitter your family will suffer.
For all vehicles the police can issue a defect notice to anything that seems too loud. The owner then has to present to an inspection station and prove that they’re compliant. If they don’t show up or don’t test as compliant their registration is voided and they’re fined. Of course, they can remove the modification before visiting the induction station then reinstall it afterwards, but that gets pretty time consuming pretty fast and people largely stay within the bounds of reason as a result. The system isn’t perfect but it works fine.
As someone who is on board with electrify as much as possible - I still see where there are limitations and chokepoints.
Though for noise pollution makes a lot of sense.
I haven't seen any electric blowers get to the same capability in the contractor market segment. Prosumer -- for sure no problems there.
Prices for landscaping services are already getting out of hand, at least in my area. This will make things worse.
As usual, the very wealthy won’t care, and the middle class and small business owners will be crushed. I bet private equity will get some great deals on small landscaping companies.
Hence the ban.
I live in Portland and we have the same issue all over the city. They are much louder and more frequent than gas power leaf blowers. There are supposedly laws against them, but they are not enforced.
I get the use of leafblowers for some. I lived in the deep woods and we'd have to clear a pretty large swath of area every fall to not swim through shin-deep leaves for half the year, but if you already are in an area with light enough tree density to grow nice grass I just personally don't understand the utility of some 1000CFM gas leafblower. I got my parents a relatively cheap electric leafblower and it's been excellent for clearing their driveway and paths.
It's definitely a more personal gripe, but those obnoxious droning leafblowers are one of the worst sources of noise pollution in suburban areas by a large gap.
Unlike your car, a four-stroke engine with a catalytic converter, a leaf blower is a two-stroke that burns oil by design. The amount of particulate emissions is hard to understate, and the amount of NOx these belch out is staggering. Asthma, cancer, heart disease, COPD, all are on the table with this type of system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-stroke_engine#Emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx#Health_and_environment_eff...
Just checked a couple local hardware store websites too to make sure I wasn't crazy... there aren't any 4-strokes leaf blowers available in-store, they're all 2-stroke.
These tools probably aren't ready for professional landscapers yet but they're almost there.
I’m pretty sure the blue cloud that thing belched at startup alone aired more pollution than a weed eater makes all year.
Weight and speed carried more weight than emissions back then. I acknowledge a healthy planet is better, but boy were those bikes fun.
I recall that Palo Alto had this 10-15 years ago and it was somewhat enforced. Although I did see someone put a Honda gas generator on a furniture dolly connected to an electric blower with a 50 or 100 foot extension cord to blow their yard.
2 stroke engines are even worse (chainsaws, weed wackers) because the exhaust has to be tuned for resonance at specific frequencies in order for the engine to make power.
As an owner of some land and many pieces of small engine equipment, I will say that the difference between _no muffler_ and the little mufflers they typically have is still substantial.
The irony: I often run my corded electric leaf blower off of my portable generator just so I can check to make sure the darn thing runs.
The HOA quants who need their lawns immaculate 24/7/365 are neurotic freaks and no law is going to stop them from finding some new way to be obnoxious to those around them. You may one day find yourself wishing for the return of the leaf blower noise if you aren't careful with rules like this.
Factor the penalty cost as a matter of maintenance, maybe even find ways to defray it to financial background noise.
collinmcnulty•1d ago
lm28469•1d ago
We really have to stop acting like gas is free and unlimited, burning fossil fuels used for legitimate reasons is bad enough, but burning them for such dumb tasks is an insult to nature.
sidewndr46•1d ago
sarchertech•1d ago
sidewndr46•1d ago
sarchertech•22h ago
I can hear leaf blowers constantly though because you can hear them in a quarter mile radius.
Also local ordinances in most places ban loud noises without a permit. But lawn maintenance equipment is a specific exception.
throwway120385•1d ago
sidewndr46•1d ago
rascul•1d ago
sidewndr46•1d ago
potato3732842•1d ago
You paid for half a dozen people to spend a bit of labor on what would have 50yr ago been a simple "sidewalk for walking go here, grass everywhere else" exercise. And then every week you get to pay again to be annoyed by them maintaining it (in perpetuity, as they are required to by law, assuming it's part of a SWPP).
teeray•1d ago
olyjohn•1d ago