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.
I really hope noise pollution in general becomes a bigger topic of conversations. Yes, I hate gas leaf blowers and they ruin so many spring and fall days. But what about my annoying neighbor who insists on revving his Corvette at 5:30am? I hear that damn car for a good five minutes as they are driving away from the neighborhood.
Most suburbs have noise ordinances for max decibels, if you can record it a few times and include the db at the time.
I think even skimming under the noise limit won’t remove the annoyance of these things. And why is it even necessary to blow grass clippings off the sidewalk? If it’s really that bad it didn’t take much more effort to just sweep them back on the grass.
Mowing lawns is killing pollinators.
People put so much energy into growing grass. Seeding, liming, fertilising, watering... so they can create endless, mindless busywork and destroy biodiversity.
Lawns were originally a status symbol. A "hey lol look at me I have enough land I don't have to grow food." Shameful that it took off as a defacto standard.
This. I am SO sick of lawn mowers! My neighbor does the lawns once every single week. She will spend all day mowing it and using weed whackers etc. I am so sick of the noise! I don't want to always be forced to wear my noise canceling earbuds. I want to hear the birds and the wind for god sake...
Also, people driving slowly down the street with their car music so damn loud that you can hear/feel them coming 2 streets away because of the subwoofer...
But how else will you know how rad their taste in music is?
It’s so rad. The listener is so cool.
Mowing lawns is killing pollinators.
People put so much energy into growing grass. Seeding, liming, fertilising, watering… so they can create endless, mindless busywork and destroy biodiversity.
Lawns were originally a status symbol. A “hey lol look at me I have enough land I don’t have to grow food.” Shameful that it took off as a defacto standard.
Good point. As a matter of fact a friend of mine living in another country in Europe told me that in his country it is forbidden for people to have a garden and put only stones and tiles (sp?) in it so it cannot breath. In my country there has been a trend for many years that people turned from a garden with plants and flowers to a garden with just stones and zero green. This week I saw in an on-line newspaper that lots of people in my country are now getting rid of the stones and buying plants. The "help-the-bees" cry of help which some people have been talking about seems to finally take off with larger numbers! Fingers crossed.
I hate seeing gravelled gardens, it's so ugly. There's loads of low maintenence plants you can choose from.
I'm in the process of overseeding my yard with clover so I have an excuse to not mow nearly as often. Literally the first mow of the season was just to chop it down to give the clover room to grow.
I have a lot of clover covering my yard. I really love it when it blooms. My whole yard looks magnificent and I don't mow for about 2 weeks as I enjoy the carpet of color.
I take advantage of not having an HOA and have curtailed lawn mowing to 3-4 "harvests" a year in order to comply with county ordinances. Clearly this is helping the local ecology as we have a robust population of lighting bugs every summer, unlike the neighbor's yards.
Leaf blowers strike me as a very American thing. People do use them here in the UK, but rarely
The US specializes in technologies that enable laziness
Ah yes, tools. The crutch of the lazy everywhere.
It's warm enough here that we can open the windows and turn off the heating. Not hot enough to need AC yet. So what do I hear all day today?
Lawnmowers.
I mean, we have a lawnmower too, but ours is 100% electric. So we basically mow the lawn in stealth mode. I don't think anyone realises we're doing it unless they physically see us out there with it. We're good neighbors. As for our neighbors.... Ehhh, not so much.
One of my neighbors has a small electric one and I was floored by how quiet it was. I might actually get one this year if my finances add up right...
In my case it's the AC units that ruin it for me. We have nice weather that would cool the apartment if we open the windows but if some of the closest neighbors has their unit on it makes it unbearable for the rest
not just fucking leaf blowers, but mowers, weed wackers, and edgers as well, they're all so fucking loud.
I can't believe the house i currently live in is considered to be worth more than 150-200 thousand dollars. It's 1.5-2x the price of that btw.
Electric lawn tools are pretty great. The blower is still pretty loud but everything else is comfortable without ear protection. And they don't stink or require as much maintenance. I can't see why they aren't more popular.
Me: opens windows
Saws, ATVs and motorcycles: Doom Blood Swamps noises
I like the German approach of having silent Sundays.
When I was younger I spent an afternoon hanging out with my grandfather. We sat on the porch of my fathers house smoking cigarettes. My mom came outside and asked me to clear the fallen leaves off the porch. Well, young me went to the garage and pulled out the awesome backpack leaf blower my Dad had. Proceeded to spend a few very noisy minutes trying to get some leaves out of a corner, when my grandfather laughed and said, "you know, sometimes the harder way is easier." and handed me a broom. Took all of a 5 minutes to sweep everything off nicely, whereas I was getting nowhere blowing leaves every which way.
I don't even own a leaf blower now, don't need one.
I know it’s spring because that’s when the drone of small gas motors starts up. Non-stop mowers, blowers, trimmers, and chain saws.
I’ve started moving towards electric. Some of the newer, smaller equipment like trimmers have gotten really good with good power and longevity. I prefer it to gas. However, bigger equipment like mowers haven’t caught up yet, there are quite a few for smaller lawns, but bigger lawnmowers are quite expensive so far.
Hope that continues to improve.
E: it takes me an hour to do my lawn with a gas ZT mower, we have a large lot with lots of trees. Thank you, northeast US, for large lawns being in style when this house was built. Yes, we’ve looked/are looking at low/no-mow lawn alternatives. The closest in performance replacement mower in electric costs nearly $6k. It’s just not in the budget.
Honestly, if you have a relatively small yard, an electric one works great. I had cheap, battery powered Ryobi mower back when I had a yard. It lasted two years without an issue before I moved and didn't need it anymore. I've definitely had gas mowers that cost more that started needing extra attention after the first year.
2 stroke bees
The timing of this post could not be more perfect. I'm sitting at my desk at home, with the windows open for the first time this year, sipping coffee and browsing Lemmy... and the duet of leafblower and weedwhacker begins next door. The most infuriating part: the property in question is a NEVER-used artist's studio/gallery that nonetheless gets multiple visits per week from landscapers/caretakers/contractors/etc. I've lived next to the property longer than the studio has even existed, and I've seen the owner once.
Yeah, I am always surprised when I visit friends in the suburban parts of Germany. We live in an appartment in the middle of the city and it is so much calmer here. :)
But German suburbia at least has sundays when lawnmower (etc.) are illegal to be used.
Related: AC. I live in an apartment complex in which each unit has a shitty, absurdly loud AC unit. Come 17 °C and one jackass ruins it for everyone else who might to sit outside or have their windows open. Between that and landscaping....
I feel like the biggest crime is apartment and condo buildings putting individual ACs for every single unit instead of a more efficient full building system. There's fancy systems that pump the heat from the air into the waterheaters and between units to run at more efficient ratios, or radiant systems that basically run a "cold" utility through the building to be tapped into by units and has the benefit of economies of scale, etc.
I used to have a neighbour who would use a leaf blower purely to blow away litter from his driveway, which would then blow back onto his driveway shortly after.
I'm not sure why you wouldn't just use a brush like a normal person.
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