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Gas-powered leaf blowers are being banned across US (www.usatoday.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/usa@midwest.social
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[–] 7 points 1 year ago (12 children)

I have come to love gas powered leaf blowers this past month. There really is nothing better for trail maintenance. If you have to clear a couple miles of trail a gas powered leaf blower makes it a literal walk in the park. Electric ones just don't have the kind of power that the backpack ones do and run out of battery too quickly. Or you have to rake the whole thing by hand which could take a day or two.

That being said in some areas you're not allowed to use a leaf blower (electric or gas).

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    While I disagree on the power (try the Ego commercial backpack leaf blower), the battery life is no question. People don't realize how much energy it takes to blow that much air that quickly.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I love that you suggested something actually professional, but please don't kid yourself, at 56V you're not going to get anywhere near a 2-stroke/4-stoke or even household AC current.

    I do an absolute shitload of electronics repair, and I need people to understand that you cannot ever get close to other solutions with battery power. There are many complex reasons, but the basic answer is: forget it.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    How much current you get is just related to how much current the cells, wiring, and connectors can handle.

    It's very easy to get 2HP or 1500W from a 56V battery, that's only about 27A which is very little and works through small 12AWG wire. Most lawn care 2 strokes are around 1-2HP anyways.

    The run-time is a different story though, when you only have something like a 400Wh battery, drawing 1500W is going to last about 15 minutes.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    It comes down to what you need it to do. Leaf blowing isn't super critical, like if you need torque to turn something it either works or doesn't. But electric leaf blowers work fine if it's slightly less power and you need 10% more labor to finish but it goes from 25 an hour in gas to less than a dollar per hour.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    This supports my stance for the electric vs gas argument. Which basically boils down to use the right tool for the job. Is using an electric blower the correct tool to clear miles of trials, not really. Use gas. Does that Amazon delivery vehicle running stop and go all day need to be gas, no. Use electric. It’s not hard.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    For those ev vans specifically they are better but they have some issues with sandy roads in rural areas because they're so heavy.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Literally exactly what this person just said is the advice I give to you: use the correct tool for the job.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Not exactly. Evs will be drastically cheaper to operate so they will try to use them as much as possible. The owners will push them and the drivers will try to avoid them when they have difficulty. Amazon doesn't like having variants, they prefer to have uniform vehicles that are identical. The point is that the people doing it don't have any choice in selecting the right tool and the people who do only look at spreadsheets.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I haven't seen a comparable backpack electric blower, but for my backyard the one I got is more than enough and I have a lot of overhanging trees.

    Things are progressing quickly though, soon enough you should be able to get one for your needs. Also the lower noose level is nice.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    The little ones were great for clearing snow off roofs and used the same batteries as the tools we used. But if you buy a big one now you've also got to Invest in a new battery ecosystem. Then you may as well buy an electric chainsaw and pole saw/weed whacker. And now does the entire ecosystem make sense to switch yet?

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