Ah, the leaf blowers of spring!

The sun is out, the temperatures are balmy. The worms wriggle forth from the frozen ground, stretch and do whatever it is worms do. And the leaf blowers are back, even though spring is not generally noted as  prime time for falling leaves. 

The blowers are irrepressible, irresistible, frolicking like young rams in the rut -- if the rams were loud, droning, not scenic or majestic and gushed pollution into the air. 

Currently, there are three of these machines attacking a corner of my neighbor's lawn that is roughly 15 feet square, churning up clouds of dust, vegetal debris and the odd leaf left over from winter. My ears ring and my nerves are jangled. 

Why should any lawn need to be so clean? Does my neighbor plan to eat directly off his grass? Perform an impromptu surgery en plein air?

Again, I call upon the civic fathers and mothers of Maplewood to ban these cursed tools once and for all. Save the planet. Save my sanity. 

Until then, the screeds will persist. 

This morning I experienced the exact same thing, and apparently the same company services many of our neighbors, because once they finished with one house, they moved on to the next, all within ear(-splitting) shot of our home.  Hours of fun!

Since I cannot write as eloquently as Moammar, I will simply add that I hope that the hour spent blowing my neighbor's small lawn was a one-time "spring cleaning" and that future visits will be shorter.  

I will admit that I hoped that the noise from their lawn service interrupted their morning meetings.  

I went to a customers house to check to some measurements.  Customer has one of the new camera door bells.  There were yard blasting crews in two neighboring yards.  

Home owner could not hear what I was saying, and I could not hear what he was saying.

(*&^)()(*IQQ&*!

This week has been horrendous.  I'm not exaggerating when I say there have been leaf blowers going for hours each day in my neighborhood. 

I predict that within a few years it will be practical for towns to limit leaf blowers to battery powered ones.

So just hang on.

In the meantime

tomcat said:

I went to a customers house to check to some measurements. Customer has one of the new camera door bells. There were yard blasting crews in two neighboring yards.

Home owner could not hear what I was saying, and I could not hear what he was saying.

Hang on, drummerboy has a suggestion to help you both hear each other next time. See above.

drummerboy said:

I predict that within a few years it will be practical for towns to limit leaf blowers to battery powered ones.

So just hang on.

In the meantime

It's already in process.

DaveSchmidt said:

tomcat said:

I went to a customers house to check to some measurements. Customer has one of the new camera door bells. There were yard blasting crews in two neighboring yards.

Home owner could not hear what I was saying, and I could not hear what he was saying.

Hang on, drummerboy has a suggestion to help you both hear each other next time. See above.

 Oh you're such a card.

yahooyahoo said:

drummerboy said:

I predict that within a few years it will be practical for towns to limit leaf blowers to battery powered ones.

So just hang on.

In the meantime

It's already in process.

what's already in process? trying to switch to electric?

The reason I'm predicting a delay is that I don't think the state of the art in electric is robust enough to support professional usage, so there will be a lot of push back. I think it'll be a few years before batteries are strong enough for that.

Our electric leaf-blower is plug-in. It's fairly quiet (we once blew the leaves off our 2nd floor deck, without the people below us even hearing it).  And likely a bit more powerful than a battery version.

You'd be surprised at how strong the best battery powered blowers are now. They just don't have enough power to make it through a day of cleaning yards.

drummerboy said:

I predict that within a few years it will be practical for towns to limit leaf blowers to battery powered ones.

So just hang on.

In the meantime

 I bet that would happen a lot faster if we banned the gas powered ones now.  

That said, even battery powered blowers still create a massive amount of particulate pollution.  If only someone could invent a quite, less polluting alternative.

Strongly recommend that everyone contact each member of the Township Committee.  Let them know they need to follow the lead of Councilwoman Nancy Adams who has long advocated for a full year ban on gas powered leaf blowers.    Let them know that their lack of willingness to extend the ban is absurd and they should be embarrassed as their position is:  the acknowledged harm done by gas powered leaf blowers in the summer somehow is not harmful in the spring and fall, when the blowers are used every day for hours.    They knowingly fail to protect public health.   It appears that if they cannot paint slogans in the streets for worthy causes, they have no response.   They only care about optics and promoting themselves as being sympathetic to worthy causes.  They are knowingly enabling harm to the health of residents.