What is the point of a leaf and grass blower. Talk about a device which is a waste of energy, you see gardeners and council workers using them to clear grass onto the grass from paths in parks and gardens, and about five minutes later the wind blows it back on the path again!
Brian
All sorts of uses, Brian. One of the most used out-of-doors items here
- when I can get the damn 2-stroke to run.
PA
I'm getting the impression that these and a few other gardening machines are about making a noise by people who get anxious when things go quiet.
I have a combo unit that can blow or suck..... and it has a bag on it so it can suck up grass clippings and fallen leaves.....
I also have a vacuum cleaner for hoovering the patio and pavements after mowing the lawns.....
All the waste gets put into the garden waste wheelie bin which I pay the council £52 a year for... (well worth it to avoid the risk of catching Covid at the local "recycling" centre or giving myself asthma when having a garden waste bonfire!
S.
I think a lot of people in the gardening business use them to make the client think they are getting good value for money.
If you want to spread weed seeds all over the neighbours garden then there is no more efficient device.
They are the professional gardeners version of the "Oil flush treatment" scam, so beloved by back-street garages.
A friend suggested, in a letter to the Times, that the first project for the Dyson Engineering Collage should be silent garden blowers. Of course, no-one would by them since they'd appear to be doing nothing.
They can move a significant quantity of material quickly from most surfaces - far more effective than a grass rake in many cases.
That is not so much the fault of the blower so much as the tool using it!
You could be right. It sounds like an area for a certain very quiet fan maker to move into. Garden machinery that does not make a racket. Back in the day of push mowers you did not make a lot of noise cutting the grass, just a gentle whirring sound. Then came electric and petrol and the silence was shattered, Not to mention Strimmers and chippers and leaf and grass blowers, garden vacuums and the like.
I wonder if it might be actually possible to make a strimmer that did not rely on a fast rotating piece of whatever to cut the growing plants?
Brian
Talking of back street garages, somebody round hear seems to try to release a lot of stuck nuts on Sunday afternoons with his shiny new pneumatic hammer action spanner thingamijig. I'm sure these have a name other than neighbour annoyance device. mind you you need to go a long way to beat the person who uses an angle grinder to cut flagstones up seemingly day after day in his back garden.
Brian
Those hand dryers they make for public toilets are anything but quiet of course, they also have no heating element the heat is from the air circulating around the motor which runs hot. Brian
Nice idea. Ironic since Henry vacuums are almost silent, compared to Dysons. With not that much less suck. Quite a lot of the noise comes from the two stroke or the fan on the electric motor of course.
We have to pay 80 quid here in Kingston Upon Thames for this bin.
Luckily since I cannot see these days It matters not if leaf blowers blow, but people tell me nothing much has changed.
Brian
+1 (and there needs to be a wind to move stuff around, which isn't always the case.)
When the council cut the hedge outside my house they used to collect up the arisings abd take them back to the depot, where they did whatever they did with them. Then someone realised that they could time and money by blowing the arisings into the hedge bottom.Cutting it only twice a year, and not cutting it very closely, meant that what had been a 4ft 6in hedge when I moved here was becoming a 6ft plus hedge, which I didn't particularly want, as I couldn't see over it. So I pursuaded the council to give it a hard trim to get its height down on the basis that me and my neighbour would look after it in future. That was about three years ago. They sent a guy round with a tractor equipped with a cutting head that looked like it used hatf a dozen angle grinder blades (Back on topic, surely). It look a bit rough to start with but is OK now. I can see over the top of it and trim it close three or four times a year. I sweep up the stuff that falls on the drive and leave the stuff that falls onto the green on the far side. The bit that my neighbour does doesn't get trimmed so closely and has started increasing in height. The difference is notable.
+1
Not to mention rapidly clearing leaves etc. out of gutters.
And removing the soil that collects under the gravel of our drives. Effectively gravel-blasting away the soil. Best done when there's a cross-breeze.
And cleaning out the leaves etc. that work their way into a tool-filled shed without needing to move anything.
The only limit to its uses is your imagination.
QED
PA
It happens that Brian Gaff (Sofa) formulated :
I wouldn't think so, it is the speed of the line hitting the plant, which allows it to cut. The only other way to cut, is a scissor action, as per the push cylinder mower and some electric mowers.
Compressed air impact guns are part of the basic toolkit of all garages and tyre fitters. Sometimes they do up wheelnuts so tight it is impossible to remove them on the side of the road using the manufacturers 'spanner'.
There are usually planning restrictions on work hours so you could complain to the council, but if it is someone working from a mobile van, nothing will happen.
Andrew
Peter Able pretended :
Substitute for broken hair dryer?
Those are sensible uses, but I ccan't see the point of a council worker noisily blowing leaves that have piled up along edges of pavements into a wide random area. What harm were the leaves doing where they were? The wind will blow the randomised leaves back there in no time.
Well, you say that, but I blow up leaves on my gravel paths and the wind doesn't blow them back again. The trick is to blow them up when they're damp. The leaves stick to each other and when the wind blows - and it blows quite strongly here at 200m asl - it doesn't blow them anywhere.
Now that's just me and I wouldn't argue that a lot of council work is barmy. Not the least when they resurface an adequate road, yet ignore surfaces so pitted you can see all of the previous surfaces in the deep, deep, holes.
Still, they've got to waste our thousands of pounds of council tax somewhere, I guess.
Just ordered a new blower this evening!
PA
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