Everywhere I am there is a guy running a leaf blower. At my house, leaf blowers everywhere all day long. At work, of course, leaf blowers blowing dirt and allergens into the air. It’s such a special noise, it goes through walls and headphones so effectively. They are the most pervasive, annoying things on the planet. I hate them more than mosquitoes.
You know…leaf blowers have feelings too and I think it would be appropriate to apologize for your hurtful words…Time to head to Alaska boys/girls/?s
Oh, what about when there’s like 3 or 4 going in the same yard, sounds like that Tibetan Monk chanting with their motor rev going up and down.
I hate them, but we use gravel a lot here to save water and can’t think of a way to keep gravel walkways clear without blowing debris. Brooms, rakes, etc don’t work in this case.
I hate when they wait along the side of the road, and blow the leaves at the passing cars.
https://newatlas.com/around-the-home/leaf-blower-silencer-quieter-black-decker/
You might enjoy this recent discovery.
Most of the problem is gas-powered blowers, which you can’t silence with that technology.
Here’s a “fun” story: my old place had at least four different agencies doing leaf blowing of a fire lane right out my window.
- The condo I was in hired one weekly
- The condo across the lane hired one weekly.
- The city hired one weekly.
- The county(?) hired one weekly. (Or maybe the fire dept? Not sure but it was four a week total)
Despite a ban in Culver City, they all used gas blowers (yes, the city even paid for one) and the gas fumes went directly into my window and lingered because it was essentially an alley and I was on the second floor directly above. I had to close my window almost every day, even during heat waves, but the noise echoed loud enough that it barely mattered.
I’m so glad to have moved.
Ask your city to ban them
Wish that worked. I was in a city that had banned gas blowers but they still used them instead of the quieter electric ones. Cities never seem to enforce that stuff, and maybe because it’s difficult to enforce.
I’m conflicted on this one. My hatred aside, the guy running the leaf blower is just trying to feed his family. I like @mipadaitu’s idea about the silencers. I doubt lawn companies would adopt them without them being mandatory or the same price as not silencing them somehow.
The guy feeding his family can feed his family with a rake.
Or even an electric leaf blower. They’re like half the noise.
They work absurdly well, too. Ours takes the same battery pack as the lawnmower and a few other things and it’s basically inaudible if you don’t have direct line of sight on the unit.
Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
So, we had an office whose building enclosed a tiny parking lot, maybe six or seven spaces. Two guys showed up with leaf blowers. Our location put us on the edge of the space with a door and windows making the noise quite prominent.
An hour in, my buddy said something to the effect of, “I wish they’d be done soon. They’re giving me a headache.” Queue other buddy cracking up hysterically. Turns out, he’d surreptitiously tuned our stereo (hooked up to a computer) to a youtube channel of leaf blowers blowing for hours. None of us caught on. The actual guys with blowers had been gone for a long time.
It’s still one of the funniest pranks anyone has pulled on me and I’m still mad at him for it.
Gas run ones for sure. I have a battery operated job that’s perfect for cleanup but doesn’t fill the neighborhood with WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Let me guess. America?
Accurate.
Doesn’t need to be. Europe says hello! I’ve got a chap close by with a massive stone “garden” who blows leaves on a daily basis. Town will come by playing ghost busters too, thank $deity not too often in spring and summer though.
I’m from The Netherlands. Every autumn there’s a whole leaf lower army coming out of nowhere, municipality workers who start way too early, and instead of running the damn thing constantly, they are playing with the gas making them even more annoying then bikers screaming for attention. Wrrrrr wrrrr Wrrrrr Wrrrrr wrrrrrrrrrrr wrrrr. They are moving leafs from one side to the other, then to move them back again. They are paid by the hour, not by the amount of work they do, so they are just messing around waking up everyone at 7am which is horrible for anyone working late or night shifts. Hours and hours. They are even blowing leafs in parks, clearing grass and dirt spots from leafs, destroying the natural decomposing and fungi creating great compost for next year’s greenery. It’s so fucking useless, it’s so fucking annoying, it’s so fucking stupid, yet every year they manage to get more and more leaf blowers out, all running on diesel, moving leafs around pointlessly. The leafs are all put in big round baskets. While they are blowing all the leafs around, the wind blows all the leafs out of those baskets again, creating a circle of never ending leaf blowing.
I saw this post and I immediately fell a great anger boiling up from deep inside of me. I had to vent this anger, as you’ve seen. I probably need therapy because of leaf blowers. If you ever hear of a Dutch leaf blower massacre, you can assume it was me.
There, I did it. Have a nice day, keep kalm and kill leaf blowers.
Edit: grammer/typos
Had to check i didn’t write this in a fugue state. 100% can relate.
All summer it’s the weekly lawn mowers and then it’s the leaf blowers and year round it’s all of the neighbors constantly using drills and saws and other equipment.
I may be overstimulated in this country.
I agree 100%, I’ve had similiar rants :D
seemingly half of all independent businesses in the burbs are landscaping, and landscaping is to HOAs what Christianity is to cunts everywhere, so … It makes sense
We know when spring has hit in our typical suburban neighborhood. The constant drone of small engines. Mowers. Leaf blowers. Trimmers. Doesn’t matter the day, you can always hear at least one somewhere, but weekends are obviously the worst.
I’m doing my best to go electric. Electric trimmers are fantastic if you get a decent one. I’d like to get an electric blower, but reviews seem to indicate they’re not quite there yet in terms of power and useful time. We’ve got a large-ish lot, and an EV mower that could last long enough would easily be high 4-figures. Can’t swing that when I’ve already got a paid-for gas one, but I’d love to go all electric.
I hear you. I make up for my leaf blower by using a reel mower. It’s a push mower and makes next to no noise.
You need to get your own leaf blower and blow back
I have one that I use mostly during leaf season since I have several trees and a bad back. Using a leaf blower, I can clean up the yard in less than 10 minutes. Manually raking would take a few hours and thwn I’d be unable to move around for a while. I just blow the leafy goodness onto flower beds though so they can act as mulch.
