blowers

[Shepherd]

Your logic under whelms me and I can see logic of any kind would overwhelm you.

Cornflakes indeed!

Shepherd

[Sherwin Dubren]

I wonder if leaf blowers are legal in the countries that export them to us, like Japan. We can also thank them for the noisy motor scooters, water scooters, trail bikes, etc. That is the American way: you build them, we will use them. It's time to pass national legislation to curtail these noise and pollution monsters. I read recently that the rangers in Yellowstone have resorted to wearing face masks in Winter because of the clouds of polluted air from the snowmobiler's. Our homes and our places of recreation are fair targets for all these idiots.

Sherwin Dubren

Phisherman wrote:

[Snooze]

So 1 minute of leaf blowing releases same amount of pollution as driving a car 17 minutes.

As cute as your fart analogy sounds, it's hardly accurate. What percent of the total air pollution released millions of cars on the road every day, and compare that to what percent of air pollution comes from the perhaps thousands of leaf blowers and other two stroke engines being on any given day.

And oil or coal fired power plants are heavily regulated, in the tons of pollution they are legally allowed to release.

I agree that 2 strokes are much louder, and release far more pollutants then a similarly powered 4 stroke. But it does no good to bandage the paper cut when the patient has also been shot in the chest. What is the marginal benefit gained reducing air pollution by eliminating 2 stroke engine? Compare that to the marginal benefit gained by using leaf blowers?

Sameer

[Mike Prager]

I have had a Stihl string trimmer for over 10 yrs, and it's continued to run reliably with no repairs and only basic maintenance. If that's any indication, they make good, reliable products.

Everyone has an opinion about leaf blowers. Mine is that when used to clean up grass clippings, they are not objectionable if you don't try to get the streets and walks absolutely immaculate. (It's a street, not an operating room. So make it decent, not spotless!) Then, the total time in use should be only a few minutes. I've tried to do it with a broom or a rake, and it can take 10 or 20 times as long, and still not give very good results.

For gathering leaves, I suggest you find another way if possible. The blower would be running for a long time to do that, and the noise is really unkind to your neighbors.

The blowers do pollute, but so do many other things. I figure in the absence of legislation it's up to everyone to make their own choices.

I suggest wearing ear and eye protection when you use a leaf blower.

Mike Prager Beaufort, NC (on the coast in zone 8a) (Remove spam traps from email address to reply.)

[Françoise]

Anyway, try to put your head at 1 foot from the exhaust of your car and l= ook how you feel. Persons operating these blowers are standing too close from the=

exhaust to not have serious effects on their health after awhile. A minut= e may even be too long.

When I see these young workers working for some contractors and they use = them all day long, I am sad for them. Lost of hearing and bad effect on their = lungs may both be irreversible.

Fran=E7oise.

[Françoise]

What is wrong with an electric aspirator? I think they are OK espciallywh= en they chew the leaves.

Fran=E7oise.

Mike Prager wrote:

[Shepherd]

Spoken just like a pre-teen, urban, apartment dweller. A dumb one too.

Shepherd

[Warren]

cleaning

No. Spoken like a suburban homeowner with 7,000 square feet of lawn, and a dozen deciduous trees, including a 60' sweatgum tree that dumps quite a few leaves on the front lawn. (Most of the other deciduous trees are back in a little wooded area where I leave the leaves where they fall.)

A number of times I've wanted to be like the neighbors, and get a blower, but when I stop and think about how I can already do everything a blower does, do it better, and take less time than with a blower, I save my money and use it to buy some DVD's to watch after I've finished my work, and my neighbors are still out there trying to use their blowers.

Whether it's cleaning up after mowing, or raking leaves in the fall, I find I have no use for a blower.

Revoke my membership in the macho home owner's club if you must, But I really don't have the need for a penis extender... er.. a... leaf blower.

[Jim Lewis]

about getting

and

Of course you _should_ be mixing your leaves and grass clippings and putting them in a compost pile, or at least using them as a nice, heavy mulch under those trees.

Gas-powered blowers add to air pollution, create noise pollution, move debris from your yard to someone else's, and increase our trade deficit in a couple of ways -- by making us buy more foreign oil, and by buying equipment which was at least in part manufactured out of the country.

Raking leaves is excellent aerobic exercise and by doing so you need to spend fewer non-productive hours in the health club on exercise machines.

Jim Lewis - [e-mail] - Tallahassee, FL - VEGETARIAN: An Indian word meaning "lousy hunter."

[Warren]

Grass clippings get mulched back into the lawn. The leaves are moved to the vegetable garden. The shreaded leaves are tilled into the soil this fall, and in the spring I test (among other things) the nitrogen level (along with visual inspection) to make sure they have incorporated well.

When I rake, I use a big rake, and a large tarp. Dragging the loaded tarp through the gate and to the backyard is more of a workout than the raking itself. As long as you're not trying to get every little leaf fragment, raking is no big deal.

[Shepherd]

On a yard as small as yours with only one tree, raking is no problem at all. On the lawns around here that measure from 20,000 to 25,000 sq. ft. or more, with half a dozen large mature oak trees, it is a very big deal indeed.

Shepherd

[gregpresley]

[Ann]

"Shepherd" expounded:

Very true. I've got a yard that big, with many oaks and pines, and use both rakes and electric leaf blowers. The electric ones need cords, true, but they're much quieter and less polluting than the gas ones.

[Warren]

indeed.

If raking up one tree is faster than blowing the leaves, why would it be faster to blow the leaves of 12 trees than rake 12 trees.

Or to put it into numbers: Time it takes to rake up one tree: 30 minutes. Time to rake up 12 trees: 12x30=360 minutes. Time to blow the leaves of one tree: 60 minutes. Time to blow the leaves of 12 trees: 12x60=720 minutes.

The difference? When I swing the rake, it doesn't matter if there is just the natural layer of leaves under it, or up to 5 or 6 times that depth. Takes the same effort. With the blower, it may blow that single layer just as fast as the rake, but as the pile builds up, the blower becomes less efficient.

And if those leaves are wet, add 50% more time to raking; double -- or may be triple, depending on the size of the engine -- the time for blowing.

It's also more difficult to blow onto a tarp than it is to rake onto a tarp. With the rake, all you have to do is lift the rake high enough to miss the tarp. With the blower, you have to aim pretty darn high to miss the tarp, and when you do that, you miss the leaves, too.

I'll grant you that my arms would be falling off if I raked-up under 12 trees, but I'd be bored to death, and my arms would still be sore after spending 12 hours with a blower hanging from them. At least if I raked, my pain would be accompanied by a muscle and aerobic workout, not simply cramps from stretching my arms out, and carpal tunnel syndrome from the vibration of the blower.

If I had a dozen trees, I wouldn't have the time to rake or blow the leaves. But I would have the time to use a yard vac. A dozen trees in about 180 minutes. The leaves are already shredded, and if they're wet, there's hardly an increase in the time it takes.

But if you want to carry around your blower, that's fine with me. It's not my time, and it's not my arms.

BTW... 20,000 to 25,000 square feet of lawn is far too much work to begin with. Unless you need that size of a lawn for kids to play football, you could save yourself a lot of work, and have a much more aesthetically pleasing landscape, by converting some of it to perennial beds. There's nothing attractive about 20,000 square feet of nothing but grass.

[Shepherd]

Your math would not get a passing grade even in elementary school!

Your option of what others like is unasked far, unwanted and stupid.

Go find a busy street and see if you can dodge the cars.

I don't have time nor desire to play silly games with an obviously immature, ignorant adolescence.

Shepherd

[Warren]

Okay. Why don't you stop the name calling long enough to actually check the math with a calculator, find out what logic is, and learn the difference between "option" and "opinion", "for" and "far", and "adolescence" and "adolescent". My goodness, if you're going to call someone a name, at least get the right word.

Either get on-topic, or get out. Attack the ideas, not the person. Hint: You do that by contributing information and experience, not by name calling. At least that's how adults discuss things.

My mistake was to defend myself against your original name calling. I should have been smart enough to know by your lack of contribution that you wouldn't care what I wrote, and would only take it as another chance to show off your lack of originality in name calling.

Or to bring it down to a level even you can understand, bite me.

[Shepherd]

Thanks for the spelling lesson, now if you could learn just a little bit about gardening, logic and math.

Shepherd

[J Kolenovsky]

Sherwin Durbren, right on! Lets target leaf blowers, 2 cycle motorcycles, jet-ski's, all 2 cycle motors, and snowmobiles. (did I leave any other 2 cycles out?) =

Phisherman wrote:

[Spud Demon]

J Kolenovsky writes in article dated Sun, 23 Nov 2003 17:38:47 -0600:

2-stroke motorcycles are already illegal to ride on public roads (in the US). Jetski's stink if you're downwind, so do 2-stroke snowmobiles probably. I wouldn't ban 'em but when I buy one I'll get 4-stroke.

The only advantage to 2-stroke engines is they are lighter than a 4-stroke engine with the same power output. So it makes sense to make 2-stroke chainsaws and hand-carry leaf blowers. As I said in an earlier post, I've been put off those blowers because of the short (100 hr) engine life.

My neighbor who's a manager at a lawn company got out his blower-on-wheels the other day, I don't know if it's 2- or 4-stroke. But it really did the job quick! He made one pass right next to his house and most of the leaves went into the street, 40' away. I think he did one more pass at 20', total time 1 minute.

-- spud_demon -at- thundermaker.net The above may not (yet) represent the opinions of my employer.

[Shepherd]

dated Sun, 23 Nov 2003 17:38:47 -0600:

If you could find out the name of that blower and post it here I'm sure many of us would like to check out buying one.

Shepherd