Washington D.C.’s “Leaf Blower Regulation Amendment Act on 2018” just went into effect, and it’s effectively a local ban on gas engine leaf blowers.
This is a local regulation, meaning it affects Washington D.C. residents and landscapers or city officials who work in the area.
Shown above is a Husqvarna gas engine blower. If you’re caught using this in Washington D.C., you’ll be subjected to a fine of up to $500 for each offense.
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An October 16, 2018 draft of the bill points out that, as of that time, over 170 municipalities in 31 states have enacted regulations on the use of gas-powered leaf blowers.”
Regulations differ depending on the location, but D.C.’s is an overall outright ban that doesn’t look to have any exemptions.
The ban applies to everyone in the D.C. area, including residents and landscapers. According to their FAQ, if a resident hires a landscaper who uses a gas-powered leaf blower, and a complaint is filed against them but the landscaper cannot be identified, the fine may be issued against the homeowner.
It seems that noise control is at the heart of this D.C.’s regulation.
There have been additional talk, complaints, and local ordinances about gas engine leaf blowers over the past 2 years. Many more people have been working from home due to the pandemic, and they’ve experienced how noisy landscaping machinery can be in the spring, summer, and fall.
California recently announced a ban on gas engine leaf blowers, lawn mowers, and other gas-engine lawn & garden and landscaping tools, and this is expected to go into effect starting in 2024.
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Whereas many modern gas engine leaf blower regulations are tied to their significant noise levels, California’s are tied to air pollution complaints.
Reports say that California’s regulation also affects generators and pressure washers, as it applies to a broad category of small gas engine equipment.
California’s is the first state-wide ban on the sale of gas-engine leaf blowers.
With D.C.’s local ban now in effect, and California’s expected to go into effect 2 years from now, there’s a high likelihood we’ll see an increase in gas blower bans and regulations, whether motivated by a desire to reduce noise pollution, emissions and pollutants, or both.
Battery-powered cordless leaf blowers have become quite good.
In addition to being quieter than gas engine blowers (at least from everything I have seen, heard, and read), cordless blowers don’t give off any fumes or emissions.
Landscapers in my area seem to use gas-engine tools exclusively, with many using different brands of tools. But when using different brands of cordless outdoor tools, each tool usually works with a completely different style of battery pack.
Bans and regulations are sure to cause headaches for landscapers and other existing equipment owners.
But for someone who is looking to buy new equipment, are there any downsides to these types of bans? In other words, why might someone still want to buy a gas engine blower over a cordless battery-powered blower?
What do you think the gas engine outdoor power tool industry will look like in 5-10 years?
Mac
Well…go karts for one…not sure if I can modify an electric motor from an old lawn mower or leaf blower into a kart.
Other than that I’m all for electric.
What has me worried is trail maintenance. It’s one thing if you have a truck or charger close at hand.
It’s another situation entirely when you’re six miles down a trail. Less gas chainsaws and brushers on the market just means higher costs…less volume equals higher prices for everyone else.
-Mac
Koko The Talking Ape
Hm, that’s a thought. I used to do volunteer trail work some years ago, up in the high country in Colorado.
What do you think about carrying in a lot of batteries? Heavier than gas for the same energy, for sure.
You think less demand for gas tools would mean higher costs? I wonder if it would mean lower costs, because they would reduce prices to try to keep demand high so they could make their moolah.
Rafe
I can’t remember what the ratio is, but the weight of batteries required to perform the same task as gas is astoundingly heavy. All in for cordless tools personally, but interesting to know.
Mike
~100x. Energy density of Gas is roughly 100x Li-ion. Even if you factor in engine efficiency, gas still wins.. for now.
https://simanaitissays.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/density.jpg
Brad
California’s law does not ban already owned equipment just what can be sold in 2024 and there is an exemption for fire fighter and similar workers in hard to get to area’s.
The DC ban is stricter but there’s nothing but lawn workers effected in that area.
RI Guy
What about chainsaws?
Dave
As a homeowner I think the Flexvolt blower is great. I use it to clean up leaves, snow, and clippings. I can’t imagine trying to use it professionally. I go through a 9ah Flexvolt battery every 15 minutes and they take an hour on the fast charger. It seems crazy and short sighted especially considering the resources required to make batteries.
Munklepunk
I agree with this. What I’m hoping is it will bring battery tech to a whole next level. Solar charging, safe hyper charging, something other than lithium ion.
Rx9
The “bringing battery tech to a whole new level” bit should happen before the shortsighted law gets passed.
Troy H.
Companies don’t tend to innovate in the direction of public benefit without regulatory pressure.
You want to put the cart before the horse and then hope the cart starts pulling.
Munklepunk
The issue being no company will do it, most times they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern era. That’s why we don’t use carburetors or lead pipes. It’s the transition period that sucks. Imagine if the major auto companies had stuck with battery vehicles when they had come out in the 1800s. Foresight is always ignored when a profit is involved.
Birdog357
It’s a physics problem. You can not get enough energy into a battery to match gas on a power to weight ratio. I did the math. My commercial lawnmower would need a full size Tesla 3 battery pack to make it through a day. These laws are irrational and demanding things that are not physically possible.
MM
Birdog357 is correct here, it’s fundamentally a physics problem when you’re dealing with commercial tier power levels. In addition to the weight of the battery you have bottlenecks when you charge it.
Solar has a huge bottleneck in that you only get so much energy from the sun, period. No matter how good your panels are you will eventually run against that hard limit.
Traditional rechargeable batteries have a major limit too: the power supplied by a wall outlet. Practically speaking you’re not getting more than 1800 watts out of a standard wall outlet… that’s about right to operate a 2hp motor. So, for small power equipment like a basic trimmer or a compact chainsaw that are traditionally about 2hp it takes us roughly as long to charge as it does to run the tool. Now lets say we’re talking a big pro model chainsaw that’s pushing 10hp. Now it takes us five times as long to charge the battery as we get run time out of it. Need to run that saw for a total of 3 hours out of a workday? It’s going to be tough to get your 15 hours of charge time in. Something even more demanding like a commercial ride-on mower that could be 30hp or more? Now we’re at 15:1 charge time to run time. If a pro landscaper needs to run 8 hours out of a day where is he supposed to find the five days needed to charge it?
The solution is obvious, just as it has been for electric cars. They don’t plug into a normal wall outlet, instead they require a special circuit installed by an electrician that can handle the higher currents needed. But it’s still not that great. Suppose we had a charger on a 240v 40amp circuit that can support 10hp rather than the 2 from a normal wall outlet. We’re still at a 3:1 ratio for our commercial mower. Run it for 8 hours and you need an entire day (24 hours) to recharge. This solution is both expensive and not very good, so it’s not surprising it hasn’t taken off.
Munklepunk
I’m actually not disagreeing with you. I do not believe battery technology is good enough. I use it on a small scale for yardwork and it does me fine but if it was my job it wouldn’t work. What I’m saying is that if battery tech had not been held back we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Koko The Talking Ape
@MM, Hello! I have to say, I think you’re getting a little overbroad there, and maybe confusing “solar” with “electric.”
“Solar has a huge bottleneck in that you only get so much energy from the sun, period. No matter how good your panels are you will eventually run against that hard limit.”
Hard limit on what? If you want to run your car or power tool from a solar panel mounted on the thing itself, sure, that will never happen. There’s a limit on how much energy you can get from a solar panel.
But that limit is PER SQUARE FOOT. If you need more energy, you put up more panels. That’s why you don’t put solar panels on the thing itself. You cover about a hundred thousand square miles of unused federal land in New Mexico and Arizona with them, and that can supply the entire s energy demand of the US (though you still need storage and backup.) Or you use the billions (with a b) of square feet of roof space in the US. Etc.
That’s why nobody is talking about solar-powered blowers. They’re talking about solar-powered grids.
I believe you’re right about ELECTRICAL tools re charging time. The simple way around that is have more than one battery, just as millions of us have already. We charge one battery (or five, or ten) while we’re using another battery.
And where that’s not possible (as in cars), you increase the wattage going to the battery. Already there are cars that can charge at 400 volts (I don’t know the amperage), so they go from zero to 80% in about 30 minutes. Of course, they need chargers that can supply that to reach that speed. But practically speaking, most people don’t drive their cars continuously all day, so they can charge at work or at home, so even 8 hours charge time is fine.
MM
@Koko
My fault for not being clear. The “hard limit per square foot” is exactly what I was talking about. I assume in this context that “Solar” means that a landscaper has panels on the roof of his truck or perhaps unfolds a couple panels when he visit’s a customer’s home, the same way that a general contractor might plug in his cordless charger to a customer’s wall outlet. And in that context there’s nowhere near enough area available for a meaningful amount of solar power.
Now of course a large solar installation like a proper solar farm or even just panels on home or business roofs could work, but that’s so obvious it’s not worth mentioning, and it’s really just a variation on existing “charge tools with a wall socket” problem, it’s not something that would “bring battery tech to a new level” as munklepunk mentioned in an earlier post. Now if a landscaper could charge batts while he drove the truck to his next job that would be a game changer for sure, but physics makes that one impossible. Not enough watts per square foot from sunlight, solar only works if you have a large installation.
Koko The Talking Ape
@MM,
Thanks for the clarification. I was SURE you understood the numbers!
“I assume in this context that “Solar” means that a landscaper has panels on the roof of his truck or perhaps unfolds a couple panels when he visit’s a customer’s home, the same way that a general contractor might plug in his cordless charger to a customer’s wall outlet. And in that context there’s nowhere near enough area available for a meaningful amount of solar power.”
Exactly right. But just to add this: nobody is suggesting we do that. None of the laws mentioned in the post call for that, nor do environmental advocates that I’m aware of. Because it won’t work, as you say.
Ultra-local solar CAN work for a few applications, like trickle-charging your car battery so it won’t die from being unused. That was an issue for my old car. I didn’t drive it enough to keep the battery charged. (Not a problem with my new hybrid, which has a gargantuan battery.)
If people are curious, on clear days the sun can give us about 1,000 watts per square meter for about nine hours a day. Solar panels are about 15% efficient, so that’s 150 watts per square meter of solar panels, which is probably more than most people expect. But you have to consider shade from clouds, other buildings, etc.
As MM says, solar works for utility-scale power, not for individuals. Even on your own house, your 100 square meters of south-facing roof won’t power your own house (unless you’ve planned for that.) But it will feed into the grid, reduce the demand for coal or gas-fired power, make brown-outs less likely, etc.
mark
Just curious what’s going to happen when all these batteries get buried
Kevin
We find a meteor like in the new Netflix movie don’t look up and make new batteries from that.
Franco Calcagni
I think what Mark meant is the impact to us with all this lithium buried in the ground. Maybe part of your answer would be the solution. Find a meteor that we could send a rocket carrying all this lithium and land it on the meteor.
Would be curious if hundreds of years in the future aliens found this meteor with all this lithium, what they would think.
Jamis
There are multiple companies who are now recycling lithium batteries down into components for remanufacturing. As their supply lines increase, lithium packs will become nearly as cheap to recycle as lead acid batteries. The local battery shop near me (Battery Wholesale) takes lead batteries in for recycling for free, but there is a small surcharge for lithium due to the current cost. As EV packs become stationary power and then recycled, the costs will come down.
Andrew
This is going to be the problem. When I landscapped I could easily be using a blower or trimmer for over an hour straight. Battery prices are very high, I would need 4 batteries to do one stop, potentially 10 to 20 to get through the day. Currently its just not feasible.
Troy H.
Professional landscapers aren’t using tools with batteries like this. They’re using tools with large backpack batteries that last much longer.
Professional level battery powered tools already exist from the brands that were already making professional level landscaping tools.
Michael Morton
@andrew. You hit the nail on the head. I use a Milwaukee 18V blower with a 12ah battery it runs for one hour. It is less powerful and therefore less efficient at moving leaves then my Husqvarna gas blower. For a landscape company that means higher labor costs on top of the astronomical investment in batteries, chargers, and a facility to house it all. To make matters worse the equipment is at least as expensive as the gas powered units.
There are very few people in my area that do there own landscaping. I see the crews all the time. Three or four of guys swarm out of a truck pulling a big trailer and attack a 1/4 acre in about 20 or30 minutes. It’s the same for spring and fall cleanup. It’s extraordinary how efficient they are at moving vast quantities of leaves. Most crews run 10 hours plus per day. They are not at any location long enough to plug in a charger. I would never send a crew into the field with a minimum required energy source. So, without direct experience, let’s say 12 batteries per man per day that’s 36 to 48 batteries per day. And I’m just talking about leaf blowers, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg.
Don’t forget that the jobs will take longer and then at the end of the day all those batteries have to be put on chargers and at the beginning of each day all those batteries have to be loaded up which means even more labor costs. And then where the heck are all those batteries charged? They already invested in mobile storage for all their equipment, they would also need a building with power on land that gets taxed.
I don’t see how it’s feasible at except at the high end. I don’t want to get all conspiracy theory here, but do you think the power tool lobby maybe behind such a ludicrous law?
George
Agree. It is not going to work on a commercial basis, not practical. Chrysler Corp. said it was going all battery in 3 years. Do not wait Chrysler, go ahead and file bankruptcy now and get it over with it will happen.
John Fal
Dewalt needs to make us one of those power stack batteries for Flexvolt real quick and not charge an arm and a leg for it lol. Btw. I love my Flexvolt chainsaw. It’s flat out fast! Plus my jet fan axial 60v blower will blow all the leeves on my drive in just seconds.
Tim
Just think how many batteries you would to have if you had 2acres of leaves to clean up
Robin Larsen
My belief is Government on all levels is overstepping their authority. Switching to battery powered lawn equipment and having enough batteries to equip an entire crew of 3 or 4 guys is prohibitively expensive, especially for a small landscaper.
Chris I
I wish I got 15min out of FV batt’s on that blower. I do just to driveway and it’s dead. I love cordless, but DeWalt batt’s SUCK!!!!
Daniel
We use the 40 volt flexvolt DeWalt grinder at work, I’m a welder fabricator working at PJ trailers, we have 4 batteries and 2 chargers that are always charging a battery. Yes the grinder is awesome, but like was already stated, the batteries die really quick.
But for as much as we use it per day our battery and batteries being charged is about the right ratio, but if another person on the line next to us starts using it then we start having problems.
If I had to run that same grinder all day polishing parts, then it would be impossible.
As for lawn equipment, I would like to see a battery powered chainsaw that could keep up with my Husqvarna 572xp, almost ten HP, imagine the batteries that would be needed to stay cutting firewood all day that takes about 2 gallons of gas and a couple ounces of two stroke oil in my saw.
Maybe one day, but that day sure isn’t today.
Big Richard
The 572 is a professional logger’s saw, you don’t need a $1000 70cc 28″ saw to cut firewood for a day, unless your cutting redwood or sequoia regularly. And for the record they have 5.8hp, not 10hp. If you port it you can probably get about 6.5hp
I mentioned it somewhere else in here, but Stihl and Dewalt are both coming out with 4hp 20″ saws, which are more than enough to cut firewood for a day. With the DeWalt, run a couple 12Ah/4Ah batteries and their 12A charger, you could cut pretty much non-stop.
For the homeowner, battery saws can be enough. It will be a while, maybe never, that they replace a true professional loggers saw (70cc and up).
Birdog357
Where are you going to plug in a charger in the woods?
Franco Calcagni
When one is wrong, they can say “thanks for correcting me” or “I wasn’t aware” or. they can deflect.
Big Richard
@Birdog357, I am talking about homeowner/farm saws for maintenance and firewood prep as Daniel alluded to. I already said these aren’t replacing professional logging saws yet.
And when you’re in the woods, you aren’t refining your own crude into gasoline, you just bring gas with. So a similar circumstance would be bringing spare already charged batteries. Not as practical, but possible.
Birdog357
You’ve never cut firewood have you? You’re going for hours. You’re talking thousands of dollars worth of batteries to replace 10 dollars in gas….
Big Richard
@Birdog, I actually just cut up a cord of ash, which is a decently hard wood, using DeWalt’s old 40v 16″ saw. A lot of the pieces were around 16″, so I had to put on a 18″ bar with a slightly heavier .050 gauge chain versus the stock .043 chain. I’m sure that reduced my runtime, but I still got it done cycling between 2 batteries. I don’t like to run my batteries dead, so I swapped them when I was down to 1 bar. Finished the job on the second battery, also down to 1 bar. Charge the first battery while your using the second.
Living in an urban environment, I’m sure my neighbors were thankful I did not get out the old Stihl 026.
When we are up north cutting mostly <12" diameter softwoods, that is when it really shines.
And I'm gonna say this one more time, hopefully it'll set in this time: for an urban homeowner, since this what this article is centered around, cordless saws can handle cutting firewood. If you are a professional logger (I am not) using large displacement saws with 36" bars, they are not going be sufficient.
Birdog357
This urban ban is a teaser of what the feds want to do to all of us. That’s why we must fight it. For people that heat their homes with firewood, you’re out in the woods all day cutting. You can’t just charge a battery while you’re working. These are home owners, not professionals. What about farmers that are out cleaning treelines? Again, not professionals but they need high end gear. I could go on and on, but you get my point. This is a similar argument to wanting to replace ICE vehicles with EV. The rules are made by ivory tower city dwellers with no concept of how the real world functions. The current supply chain issues should put that into stark perspective…
TJ
You guys certainly know a lot more than me about the physics and practicalities of gas vs electric equipment, but I’m definitely enjoying the irony of the debate. I totally get the noise issue, but choosing (or being mandated) to use one over the other out of environmental concerns for the cutting of FIREWOOD just makes me chuckle.
Big Richard
Touche TJ, touche. I personally wasn’t talking so much about environmental concerns, but I see the irony.
Chris
This is going to be a huge mistake. Just watch 😂😂
Koko The Talking Ape
I helped pay for college by doing some lawn maintenance work. After a day of using a gas blower, my ears were ringing and didn’t stop ringing for a few days. I think I got permanent hearing loss from it. Doesn’t bode well for my sunset years.
So I’m firmly on the side of electric, even if they have to have cords and a generator.
And that new Ryobi Whisper-something blower really is quieter. I gave one to my brother.
Robert Walker
I have the Ryobi blower. Love it.
Dave Brock
Ear Plugs.
Jim Felt
Kinda like the Rock concerts I promoted in my early twenties. No dang ear protection for any of us. Old rockers always have hearing aids. Google a head shot of Mick Jagger’s industrial black model. Lordie we were dozy.
Woody harding
Most all the comments are true I think. Cutting down a huge tree is going to need gas power. Another trueism is that these small engines create huge pollution. Way more than cars do. Get out the rakes and barrels and hire more immigrants and charge huge money because the job is going to take much longer.
KMR
Good. The noise is obnoxious and the 2 stroke engine emissions are incredibly bad.
Mike
I started replacing my gas powered yard equipment a couple years ago with M18 stuff and there is no way I’d ever switch back. That M18 chainsaw is next on my to-get list. For a homeowner the battery powered stuff has gotten too good. Now I’m not sure it’s ready for commercial use yet but with these regulations it won’t be long until it is.
Michael Quinlan
I’ve got several M18 outdoor power tools – the chainsaw among them – and they’re okay for my use. But I can’t imagine the cost of powering them for all-day use without a bank of charges nearby. I have 3 standard & 3 rapid chargers mounted in my garage, and they can’t keep up when it’s just me using the blower. An entire landscaping crew would need dozens of batteries and chargers, plus an A/C power source to get through a day.
Matt B
Once again a case where the free market could and would solve most people’s complaints, if we just let it.
If and when battery electric is more cost effective than gas, people will buy it. It’s hard enough to keep these small engines running well, especially if you put gas with ethanol in them. It wouldn’t be a hard sell.
You only need these mandates if you don’t think that day will ever come – you still think the gas product is more powerful and/or cost effective, but want to force people into an inferior product. And when you do that, you artificially make everyone buy an inferior product, potentially delaying or totally preventing it from every reaching parity/cost parity with the product that was banned.
I’m hugely in favor of taking care of the environment. I also have a gas blower because, for now, it works better. I know a lot of people who have swapped and, for their use, been very happy. They swapped without mandates because they liked the product better. Let the market work
Jfg
The “free market” can’t solve all problems. The problem is that the true cost of the gas engines is externalized. If you want the market to solve it, then agree that the engine users must compensate those around them for the noise invasion. Also, make them pay into an environmental trust fund to account for the pollution that they create.
Zack
Jeff’s answer, just above, is excellent. In addition, keep in mind that manufacturers are more likely to attempt the improvements you’re looking for if they know that a market exists. Once you create a guaranteed market for electric OPE as DC and California are doing here, you’ll see vigorous competition from companies to establish a dominant position in the new market.
Rx9
Matt, you’re right about the free market, but we don’t have that. In crony capitalism, the system we actually have, the trick is to first buy up political and media control. Then you can change the system to make sure you get paid.
Dave B
You’re right about the free market solving this. Who should I bill for 2 hours of leafblowing in the 2 nextdoor houses? What’s the appropriate charge for the 2 stroke smell and pollution, as well as the fractionally increased cancer hazard?
Matt B
I see some of what all three of you said. The new competition to meet demand I totally do agree on. Had not considered that.
Yes, we unfortunately have instances of crony capitalism. But you have to get rich before you can ‘buy up’ that influence. A great many companies and individuals didn’t start rich, so to at least some degree the system is still working.
Noise ordnances work / are not needed on large properties. But yes, these machines are loud. I don’t necessarily agree on a significant difference to the environment, but maybe. Is small engine oil usage and emissions worse than lithium and cobalt mines and emissions overseas? What about waste and pollution from discarded batteries (which most will throw in regular trash)? I think that’s a much more complicated question than simply shifting money from oil cronies to some other crony (see, I admit it does exist) claiming to fix the oil issue.
Regardless, we can see how it works out by looking at how it works in the places with bans. I wish we would evaluate policy more often this way.
MD
Matt,
I agree with everything you are saying except for one philosophical important issue, crony capitalism. There is no such thing as crony capitalism, crony is the opposite of capitalism. When the capitalism is perverted and bastardized in repeated connection with crony it prevents someone to morally defend capitalism as it should be defended as the greatest moral achievement in the history of mankind. We have cronyism, not capitalism.
Hon Cho
I am of the opinion that battery capacity for portable electric blowers is not at the point yet to effectively replace gas powered blowers, particularly in commercial use.
Folks in jurisdictions with these bans are likely to see leaf removal costs increase dramatically. More expensive equipment and lower productivity until battery powered units equal the typical commercial backpack blower will drive up costs for landscapers and they will pass it on.
While electric blowers are quieter, moving lots of air at high speed does create noise. To be irritating, I think I’d make my electrics blowers shriek with a whistle or something as a protest. “That’s the sound of clean landscaping ma’am”
Jim Felt
Most professional leaf “removal” pros I notice simply blow everything in the public streets for the local municipality to street sweep. AKA lazy budget driven hacks. Their clients too.
For sidewalks we’re responsible for we love the M18 Milwaukee Blower with a pair or three 12Amp batteries. Power, run time and tool balance.
Birdog357
We do that on occasion, because our client is paying the taxes for that service and would be paying it twice for no gain if we remove them. The city actually has a tow behind leaf vac for this purpose.
Rob
This is a surefire way to increase taxes. Your taxes are paying for the time spent clearing the leaves that fall in the street, not the ones that fall in your yard. If you increase the amount of leaves in the street by pushing all the ones from your yard into the street, then you increase the time the city needs to spend to clean up all those leaves, and also increase wear and tear on their equipment. Therefore the city street clearing committee will request a higher yearly budget to pay for that, and the city will increase taxes to pay for it. Congratulations: you have increased yours and everyone else’s taxes.
Birdog357
You’re not listening. The city already taxes them for this. It’s a specific, enumerated service they provide. They have guidelines and everything. They have specific leaf vacs just for this.
Dan
Taking away gas powered leaf blowers is like taking away gas powered engines.
It takes more resources to produce, make, and maintain the electric world. Not happening.
Please lord give us the war we need.
MM
You are 100% correct about this.
There are good homeowner class leaf blowers. I own the exact Husqvarna that Stuart showed a picture of, and a family member has a mid-tier Ryobi. They’re about on par when it comes to blowing performance with the Husky having a slight edge.
Now go look at commercial models and things are very different. Stihl puts a larger engine in their contractor grade backback blowers than they put in their largest chainsaws. The same is true for SCAG power equipment: their large blowers have significantly stronger engines than their largest ZTR mowers.
Replacing homeowner tier tools with electric is no big deal, assuming one can afford it. but for pro models? That’s a different story.
Jared
Exactly. Clearing residential sidewalks is one thing, big commercial spaces are something else. Maybe you don’t need a big pro unit to clear homeowner sidewalks – they might save some time, but not so much that the job is dramatically different under battery power – but moving less air when you’re trying to clear a big space can be a big time waster.
Perhaps bigger badder units are on the horizon. I expect they will come with a substantial price tag though.
MM
I’m sure larger electric units will be forthcoming, but I think there will be two problems that will soon be encountered:
1) weight of the batteries. While batteries are improving they still have terrible energy per unit weight compared to gasoline. a big electric blower with long runtime is going to be very heavy to carry.
2) charging time. It is very quick to top up a fuel tank with gas or diesel. A normal wall outlet can only supply about 1800 watts peak…so this creates a situation where it takes longer to charge batteries than they last in the tool. That may be OK for a homeowner, but it is completely impractical for a contractor needing to keep up with a crew of guys working all day.
Birdog357
It would take a tesla battery pack to power this thing https://www.scag.com/product/stand-on-blowers/windstorm/
IndianaJonesy (Matt J.)
There’s other options besides blowing leaves (not saying leaving…I worked in landscaping a bit and enough to know that no matter how good they are for the lawn, some people will never be convinved). I wonder if you’ll see commercial companies moving to more leaf vacs and lawn sweepers towed behind tractors as these are nearly (sometimes more) efficient. Combining something like this with a few battery backpack blowers (even if not as powerful) should come pretty close to similar efficiency. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see MX Fuel or similar capacity batteries implimented in walk-behind blowers and similar in the not-too-distant future.
Not saying this ban makes sense (especially the way it was implimented) or that the financial impact for businesses ($75 rebates for going electric is not going to help much – that’s not even one high cap battery), but I think it will get there in the end.
Hank
While I can see these bans expanding over the next few years, hopefully their reach does not go beyond major metro areas. I can’t even imagine myself trying to manage
my 7.5 acres of rough pasture and timber, using only cordless and corded tools. …let alone, those who have hundreds, or thousands of acres to manage.
Is California’s ban going to have exclusions for rural areas?
Christopher
You should be good. My understanding is that the ban is on the sale of, not the use of the products. I live in a metro area and the noise really bugs me since I’ve been working at home…but I don’t see it ending any time soon since a good quality tool will last for years.
Even if your tools break down, and online sales are shit down, you could still take a road trip to a state that still sells them.
Christopher
whoops…*shut* down. Surprised that typo made it through
Scott Davis
I’m against it. The landscapers will charge twice to five times as much in D.C which doesn’t affect me right now… What will happen is the homeowners will not be able to afford to live in D.C. anymore and move into Va. where they will then implement their dumba$$ ideas in Virginia which will affect me.
As far as noise goes, Airpod 2 is a great noise protection device. I use them anytime I’m using any of my tools. I can listen to music and not have my ears ringing afterwards. Hell I used them the other day at the shooting range, worked great.
L
Be careful using noise canceling ear buds as hearing protection, they are not rated for such a thing and you will damage your hearing when exposed to loud noises.
https://toolguyd.com/noise-cancellation-headphones-vs-hearing-protection-earmuffs/
Scott Davis
The Airpods Pro (which I have , I mistakenly said airpods2) are just like earplugs when they are in off mode. They may not be perfect but it is better than nothing. I keep mine in transparency mode and even the microwave beeping will shut them down.
OldDominionDIYer
My point was that those inside working from home (who are complaining about the noise could use noise cancelling style ear buds or headphones, not those operating the OPE
MT
“The landscapers will charge twice to five times as much in D.C…”
No they won’t. Cost increase estimates for switching to electric are generally around 10-30% just for the leaf blowing, and leaf blowing is only part of what they do. D.C. is also offering rebates for residential and commercial leaf blower purchases to offset some of those costs ($75 on commercial blowers). If an increase in landscaping costs is what drives people from D.C., they could barely afford to live there anyway.
Birdog357
Those estimates are garbage. There’s not a single battery blower on the market that can even hold up to a mid range backpack. Throughput is halved at best, probably 25% is a more realistic number. That means labor just went up double to quadruple and it’s the single largest expense for landscaping. And then you have this to consider https://www.scag.com/product/stand-on-blowers/windstorm/ you ain’t replacing that with a battery machine.
Bobby
Not surprising given the location. I won’t give up my gas blower because it would take too many batteries for my property size. Battery lawn equipment is okay if you have a small yard, but for people with acreage it’s not up to the task.
Michael Quinlan
“…cordless blowers don’t give off any fumes or emissions.”
True. But the plants that generate the electricity that charges the batteries do. This will improve over time as we find/implement more environmentally friendly ways to generate electricity, but as of now, this is just making the emissions someone else’s problem.
Koko The Talking Ape
That’s true, that power plants generate emissions, and electricity isn’t totally clean.
But even taking that into account, electric tools (and cars) create less pollution than gas-powered machinery. For cars, electric makes about 1/3 the carbon dioxide emissions (which can’t be scrubbed out). For 2-stroke gas tools with no catalytic converters, the emissions include SOx and NOx, particulates, unburnt hydrocarbons, etc. and electric does many times better, even if the electricity comes from coal-fired power plants.
Jerry
Is that factoring in the batteries? Every battery I know of is made by mining, uses toxic chemicals, etc. I have heard that by the time you factor in making the battery and disposing or recycling the battery an electric car really isn’t any better for the environment overall, it just moves the pollution somewhere else.
I want to assure you I am not trying to argue but rather am asking an honest question that I don’t know the answer to and am hoping someone can fill me in with a link or similar.
Sunny
Battery manufacturing isn’t great environmentally, but it is not as bad as it used to be. Still, it’s not that much worse than manufacturing any other car, which is about half its lifetime carbon. The best car from a climate perspective is the one you have right now virtually always, but that is not here nor there. The difference between a car engine and a power plant is that a power plant doesn’t move, doesn’t have to fit in a tight space, doesn’t get bounced around all that much, and gets maintained by the book. A car engine has to have compromised efficiency because it is weight and cost-restricted. In contrast, a power plant sits in one place for all or most of its service life and runs many more hours a day. Those are optimized for efficiency and serviceability essentially exclusively. Whereas gas lawn equipment is even less efficient and even more cost, and weight constrained with lots of options using an engine design from the 50’s essentially unchanged
Birdog357
My 37hp commercial lawn mower burns the same amount of fuel in an hour as my wife’s 34 mpg Subaru. I’d call that pretty efficient.
Koko The Talking Ape
Yep, it is factoring in the battery manufacture and disposal. Because to compare apples to apples, you should also consider extracting petroleum, refining it (with the accompanying leaked natural gas), and distributing it (electricity has low or no distribution costs, because the infrastructure is already built and operating.)
There’s also the geopolitical issues to consider. Lithium and rare earth metals come from places we don’t necessarily want to make our buddies, like China and various African countries. But petroleum comes from unsavory places too. IIRC, we spend something like $5B a year protecting oil shipments from the Gulf with our military. And we are actually finding more rare earth minerals in the US. We aren’t going to find more oil (at least not without expensive and toxic processes.)
But I don’t have numbers handy re cradle-to-grave comparisons for electric cars. If I remember tomorrow, I’ll look something up for you.
Koko The Talking Ape
So this is the best I can find with a few minutes of looking.
This analysis is “cradle-to-grave,” so it includes the carbon cost of building the car, including batteries for electric cars, and also the carbon released by power plants that are charging those cars.
It says that electric cars are more carbon-intensive to build, but less carbon-intensive to run, so they reach parity with ICE cars at about 20,000 to 50,000 km, about 12,000 to 31,000 miles. (The reason for the range is that some areas of the US rely a lot on coal to generate electricity. In those places, it takes longer to achieve a net gain.) And beyond that, they are a net positive.
https://medium.com/@maximilian.zoller/ice-vehicles-vs-electric-vehicle-d16eb0d78487
The average American drives about 15,000 miles a year, so if they drive their electric car for more than two years, they will be helping the environment!
(Here’s something more general that says about the same thing: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths)
Now, you are right that recycling the batteries IS a big issue that we haven’t really dealt with yet. There’s nothing that makes it impossible, we just haven’t bothered to start doing it yet (maybe because electric cars are pretty new, on average.) We will have to deal with that to keep the environmental costs low. Here’s an article about that issue.
https://undark.org/2021/01/21/electric-car-looming-recyclability-problem/
Cheers!
MM
Interesting data, thanks for sharing.
…though this deals with the carbon cost only. Where is the information for the rest of it? I.e. the pollution caused by lithium mining has little to do with carbon, but it’s still a huge environmental risk. Carbon alone isn’t the only concern.
One of the big problems I see with recycling the batteries is that it’s dirty, nasty, hazardous work. So it’s going to be fighting two problems: environmental regulations and expense. This is the kind of work that traditionally gets farmed out overseas to 3rd world countries with lax laws and no worker protections. Recycling batteries is either going to be very expensive to do in a manner which is safe for the environment and the worker, or corners are going to be cut in both of those areas.
Koko The Talking Ape
That’s a good thought. The other environmental costs of mining lithium are important to consider. When I get a minute, I’ll have more information for you.
But extracting petroleum has environmental effects too, entirely separate from the effects of burning it and releasing CO2. And an ICE car never stops demanding petroleum, while an electric car needs those lithium batteries once, perhaps twice at most, in its entire lifetime. And there’s the potential for recycling those batteries for the lithium and other metals, though that is not really set up yet.
And carbon is by far the most difficult pollutant to deal with (because basically every use of energy causes the release of CO2) and also the most dangerous and urgent pollutant we must deal with (because no other pollutant can, for instance, alter entire ecosystems, wipe out entire crops, make entire nations unlivable, etc.) Here in Colorado, potato farmers are giving up and moving away, because water is becoming too expensive (because crops need more and more water, because of the heat.) And you may have heard of the Marshall fire a week ago, that destroyed about 1,000 homes between Denver and Boulder. We have already had the four worst forest fires in Colorado history in the same year (2020), but this was the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history. In DECEMBER! I have two friends who lost their homes. It was caused by decades of drought and “extreme” drought, one of the driest falls ever in Colorado history, and winds gusting over 100 mph (itself a consequence of climate change.) So. I’d be fine with more ozone or NOx or whatever air pollution if we don’t have to deal the heat. 🙂
Mark Fogleman
We used to know the family of the woman that taught Koko ASL. They ran a restaurant we went to frequently.
Koko The Talking Ape
Oh, well tell them thank you! 😀
Dave S
There are many good reasons to object to these bans (power density, impractical recharge times, battery weight, low run times, etc). But, the “long tailpipe” fallacy (seen here) is not one of them.
Modern power plants have to run at over 90% efficiency to be economically viable. Small carburated gas engines (particularly 2 cycle engines) rarely exceed 10% efficiency. Thus, the emissions for the same amount of work are already an order of magnitude smaller. Then, factor in power plants use sulfur scrubbers, particulate showers, etc to clean the worst pollutants from the emissions they do produce and this argument is well and truly sunk.
Doug
Even the most modern CCPP design stations only manage around 60% total efficiency. 90% efficiency is basically impossible to achieve.
DRT42
Really not trying to start an argument, but “Efficiency” has nothing to do with “Emissions”. Efficiency of a powerplant or engine relates to heat. How much heat energy actually turns a shaft, as compared to the heat coming off the muffler and cooling fins. High efficiency machines can be dirty and low efficiency devices can be clean.
Flotsam
agree most coal fired power plants were shut down because they were economically not viable, not because of environmental regulations.
Eric
Even the dirtiest power plant in the US is orders of magnitude cleaner than a 2 stroke motor with no form of emissions capture.
Jp
I am not usually political…but forget this noise. Nothing portable will do what my Tanaka backpack will do. Batteries either too heavy, or nowhere near the run time. These bans are what make me strongly “anti environmental ” even though I am not generally that way.
George
I’m all for it.
Our neighborhood gets serviced by a commercial landscaper. The noise is cacophonous. The stench of unfiltered fuel burning lingers in the air for an hour or (much) more and is also really, really bad for you, the wildlife, and the environment. Top that off with the sheer waste of energy: idling engines in between areas blown (more than you think as they walk around the neighborhood) and indiscriminate use (not specific to gas, I’ll grant, but battery economy might make for selective use).
Then there’s the vastly less efficient conversion of gas to rotational power vs electrical — including the generation of power to charge.
The icing: service inevitably gets scheduled on the nicest days of the week meaning I have to seal my house like a time capsule on the days that would be best for throwing the windows open and enjoying the porch.
I’d gladly let them plug a few chargers into my home for not having to deal with any of that. Pay them more to use newer equipment. And live with the knowledge that when I hear one of those gas motors, it’s just one of my neighbors who can’t seem to master a broom.
Tim
As a commercial landscaper I am for this too. Worst case I just run a generator on my trailer to power the leaf blowers. Just need an extension cord and I am back in business.
Frank D
I hate noise pollution and fumes as much as most people who want to have the windows open or enjoy a book in their back yard … but there is no way battery power can handle average property needs. The power is not really there, the battery life is not there … and for anybody engaged in yard maintenance … where is the value of needing dozens of large heavy duty battery packs? How many do you need to get through a day? Because you are not going to get those charged between property A, B, C …
Birdog357
As a professional landscaper, screw that. There is not a single battery blower on the market that can compete with even a midrange gas blower. Not one.
Jared
That is similar to what I was thinking. A cordless blower is great for blowing grass off a sidewalk, gathering leaves in a regular-sized yard, etc. – but would I want to use it for professional landscaping? Yikes.
The power from large backpack blowers is just way higher than what cordless offers right now. Imagine trying to clear a heavy snow dump with a cordless blower. Even if it could be done – the cost would skyrocket if it takes a bunch more man hours to compensate for the low power.
That said, I use cordless OPE around my farm. I like it just fine for my use and really appreciate the instant-on and low maintenance.
I have some gas tools too though when I have bigger projects to tackle.
Dave
I’m more curious about what’s going to replace it. I’m guessing the idea is an average home owner would use an electric one with extention cord, or a battery powered one.
But what’s a law service to do? Maybe they just stop offering that service in that area? (That’s what I’d do.) Or just run a generator and an electric? I guess they could come and plug into the house if it’s accessible.
The worst case though, is the batteries. Batteries are related for years of service, they’re rated for charge cycles. My Makita uses 2 18v and it barely blows off my large driveway, carport, pool deck. (about 10-15 minutes at max). In about 3 to 4 years , we’re going to see tons of batteries just being thrown out. (I guess they can be recycled… But how often do they?) I think we’re going to need some more breakthroughs in battery tech. Maybe this will force some new stuff.
Al
I still don’t understand why people blow leaves and grass around. Leave them. They are nutritious mulch. And, they feed the bugs, which feed the small animals, and so on…
California will be having the same problem with my trimmer/edger. The lawnmower’s a 4-stroke, so a little bit cleaner.
The Ryobi 4-stroke weed whacker is a couple of pounds and several dollars heavier than the 2-stroke.
Anyone have one of those?
Birdog357
Even when you mulch leaves like we do, you still have move them to where you can mulch them. Then you have customers that want them removed, no matter what you try to explain. 4 stroke trimmers suck. Slow to spool and ANY extra weight is bad when you use it all day.
Al
Yeah, I’m afraid of the extra weight of a 4-stroke.
They’re going after generators next, making them zero-emissions by 2028. That might be do-able if PZE is allowed, like in automobile engines.
Luckily, the ban is on new sales. Not a ban on used sales. Not a ban on using the equipment.
This was how they forced out the oldest/worst of diesel construction equipment. It gets sold into NV and AZ. We buy new stuff, or pay higher prices for the contractors to buy it.
That’s how we end up with houses that are 10x the cost of something in the midwest…yet we still get broken water pipes and sewer lines.
Tim E.
Can’t say I have experience with the Ryobi 4 stroke, but I went Makita for my outdoor equipment, and among all the battery equipment I use normally is their 4 stroke handheld blower and 4 stroke couple shaft power head. Both have served me very well. The gas power head is heavier than the two-battery head, as is the blower heavier than their x2 blower, but I also have the luxury of normally using the battery equipment, and only getting out the gas stuff when I have a particularly large task at hand. The gas handheld blower is spec’d at similar power to the battery blower as I recall, but neither stand up to the power of backpack blowers. I’d say the same for the gas power head, it’s pretty on par with the battery power head, and there isn’t a “larger” option like a backpack blower for that. The main difference I notice is the engine just bogs down on attachments like the tiller if they get jammed up, then either powers through or you stop and clear it. The battery unit shuts down when it stalls to protect everything, which is not a bad thing, but can be annoying using the tiller in rocky soil for example. But for more common attachments like the pole saw, pole hedge trimmer, or string trimmer, I’d put the battery versus gas performance as not noticeably different to me. Full disclosure: I actually prefer the standalone battery string trimmer rather than the couple shaft because the motor on the head I think gives better balance and maybe better power as well.
DRT42
You cant let leaves remain on grass. Or you wont have any grass next season. They block sunlight and the grass dies. Running a mulching mower only works when you have only a few leaves.
Birdog357
I’ve mulched real thick, real heavy leaves down to dust. I have a true mulching deck though with 37HP behind it.
MM
I can confirm that mulching them is no problem if you have a suitable mower and your blades are sharp. I’ve had no trouble mulching heavy layers of leaves in one pass with my old Scag Tiger Cub 48″ 24hp, and my current Tiger Cat II 61″ 30hp, in both cases using the factory mulching deck kit.
I will say that blades matter a lot though, my dealer loves to push “Gator” blades. In my experience those have far too high a lift to work with a mulching deck, but the “Eliminator” blades which Scag provides with the mulching kits will handle an amazing amount of leaves, twigs, etc without blowing out.
Birdog357
True story. Gators are garbage. Are your blades a wavy shape? That’s what we run on our Hustlers.
MM
@Birdog357
Yes, the Eliminator blades that I like to run are wavy.
for example:
https://www.scagmowerparts.com/scag-elim-61.html
What’s crazy is that my property has a lot of extremely fine sand so that wears out blades fast. Yet those blades last longer than the Gators despite the Gators having that hard surfacing material welded to the edge.
DRT42
Not at my old house. You end up with 2” of dust. When you have large trees, they produce a lot of leaf litter. Anyway, I moved so its somebody elses problem now.
Chrisk1970
I think I’m 5-10 years tech will change and popularity will exceed 50/50 vs battery. But…having said that, in NH I don’t think that widespread local ordinances like that in DC will be the norm rather governmental regulation will push the the engine out to pasture forcing the eventual retirement of such tools as they wear out. In NH, the State still enjoys some of the free thinking individuality that makes us NH and enough business input will force politicians to listen to our citizens. We have the 4th largest House of Representatives in the world and the state representatives do tend to listen.
Corey Moore
Mixed feelings, but I generally support this so long as it’s implementation isn’t waffled like so many government policies. Exemption eligibility for personal property owners exceeding the low-estimate range of a standard 2 battery kit, and something for business owners along the lines of subsidies to re-outfit. Likewise, establishing incentives/subsidies for manufacturers to accelerate development and maintain availability/affordability would be a bad thing to not include. All in all like so many things, this seems to be the right move, but it’s effectiveness and longevity will heavily depend on how the move is actually made.
Birdog357
So you propose to use taxpayer money to solve a problem that is 100% caused by government? Plus make it more expensive going forward.
Jim Felt
I’m thinking “government” is trying to address the future. No one likes the present day noise, pollution or smell. Everyone would like a quiet cleaner running alternative.
Together we’ll all get there. Just not overnight. Fortunately science itself is relentless.
Birdog357
The only thing more energy dense than liquid, petroleum based fuels, is highly exotic(that means highly poisonous) liquid fuels or nuclear. Until you can circumvent this fundamental physics issue, you’re never truly going to replace fossil fuels. There’s a reason the most advanced rocket in service today still burns kerosene. Because it’s the best bang for the volume for a rocket.
Corey Moore
The government didn’t invent the 2 stroke motor, lawns, sound, emissions, or people’s dislike for that combination of circumstances. And yes, I believe taxpayer money should be used to enact and maintain policies voted for by thetaxpayers to best benefit their communities.
Birdog357
The government created the problem by banning things. That’s not the government’s role. In typical shortsightedness, there is no alternative, but they banned it anyway.
Corey Moore
I see the disconnect here-the government created YOUR perceived problem, that being convenience. In reality, as clearly stated, the ban is in response to the identification of the community’s problem. I’m not sure what to do with your misunderstanding of what governing is, though. Sort of the same conundrum with the “no alternative” declaration, but it seems to revolve around your over-emphasis of convenience again. A rake and pair of scissors is an alternative to gas blowers and mowers. That’s an extreme example, but for the sake of demonstrating what alternative means, it’s factual. Comparatively, electric is a far better alternative, as alternatives to gas goes, wouldn’t you say? Efficiency and affordability are where electric trails behind gas, but it seems that public opinion has ruled the negative impacts of the gas method no longer justify the convenience. At which point the government responds to the public’s appeal, and governs matters related to that issue. That brings us back to my original comment, where I expressed my belief that it’s a responsible government’s duty to use the public’s provided taxes to minimize the financial burden of that public until the cost increase to compensate lost efficiency isn’t needed anymore.
Birdog357
I see you don’t understand what liberty is. What this is, is a tyranny of the majority(in reality it’s a small group of Karens that squawk a lot) that’s going to crush small business because they are ignorant of the reality that faces real working people.
Corey Moore
I think I’ve got a decent grasp on liberty. Sold me on it at 17 and I don’t think I’d have made it through both 4 year enlistments if it didn’t mean a lot to me. I definitely believe that misappropriating concepts like tyranny for every nuanced situation, to avoid discomfort or simply not being agreed with, severely weakens peoples’ understanding of liberty and thereby it’s actual significance. It’s very chicken-little or “Karen” behavior, as you called it. I can’t speak to the statistics of that community members and the varying levels of support on the noise issue specifically, but emissions and climate issues definitely have broad support these days, regardless of how you personally feel about it. I also don’t know of many tyrants whom have to pander to constituents lest they lose their position of authority. The preference for convenient, polarizing narratives these days is worrisome.
Mike
Just one more good reason to not live in a major metropolitan area.
Scott K
I have a gas powered generator, lawn mower, leaf blower, and snow blower. When I bought these about 5-7 years ago the battery platforms weren’t even close in quality in the price range I could afford. I also spent a bit more in order to buy equipment that would last, and I have no real regrets. I do plan to buy electric as items need replacement, but with some maintenance and care I don’t expect my equipment to go anytime soon. I think these bans make sense if they focus on the sale of items after a specific date, but to outright ban the use seems unfair. This would also result in a large amount of waste if perfectly good pieces of equipment need to be prematurely replaced.
John
What about gas powered snow blowers? Does the ban apply to them? Are there any battery-powered alternatives yet?
Birdog357
Yes, and they suck.
Greg
I would use an electric blower. The electricity will come from a loud smelly gas powered generator. I am not, and don’t use a landscaper so no problem.
MM
Last I looked there were a couple nice old generators on Ebay with 3-71 “Screaming Jimmy” 2-stroke Detroit Diesels….
Kent Skinner
I’m all for it, with two exceptions: generators and chain saws.
I cut roughly 6 cords to help my folks heat their house every year, and we do a lot of thinning for fire suppression. I have a Stihl and a Husky, and my dad has 3 or 4 of each. In addition we both have an M18 chainsaw.
The M18 is fantastic for pruning, cutting small wood and making a few cuts in a big log, without all the hassle of getting out the 2 stroke. In no way is it ready for real world logging. A landscaper/maintenance crew could probably do 90% of the work with a battery saw, but there will always (at least for now) be need for a saw with a big bar and a ton of horsepower.
As for generators, the electric “generators” are wonderful, but how do you charge them when the grid is down? That 100W solar panel isn’t going to keep your freezer and fridge running all day.
For those of us on a well there’s no electric “generator” that can spin the pump, until you step up to the whole house battery systems.
As California’s power company becomes more and more cautious about turning off the power when the wind blows, it’s stupid to ban generators. That said, I hate them and am looking forward to when there’s a good replacement.
Big Richard
Both DeWALT and Stihl have new farm and ranch saws coming out that can support a 20″ bar, and really look like they could replace a mid-sized ~50cc saw. Both put out around 3000W, or 4HP. They are not going to replace a MS 880 Magnum, but if you are cutting a half dozen cords a year, they would be more than enough.
The Stihl will likely be over $1000 with their new pouch cell battery, but the DeWALT is “only” $499 with their new 15Ah/5Ah FlexVolt battery.
Kent Skinner
I’m not planning to cut 6 cords with a 50cc saw.
For now, I’ll keep my gas and battery saws – and use them both where it makes sense.
Again, I’m not anti-battery in any way, and think battery tools can replace a huge percentage of gas tools. But not all of them, yet.
Glander
Good. removing leaves and wee grass clippings are not worth all the noise and pollution. We don’t need to live in a PGA golf tournament everywhere we look.
Flotsam
i’ve been going mostly cordless on OPE. Got a good deal on a 40v Hedge Trimmer from Ryobi then in the past 6months got an 18″ chainsaw, a pole saw & finally a pole hedge trimmer. All Ryobi.
Been giving away all my gas powered OPE to my new neighbor who had nothing.
So much happier without having to deal with gas.
Champs
Were it up to me, I’d federally regulate small engines by displacement and minimum tank capacity. If you need gas power to maintain the back forty, that’s fine, you’ll just have to maintain what you have or buy at least medium duty tools.
When I read about California, I started thinking that once you’ve invested in small gas engines, it would seem you want to use that common base for string trimmers to motorcycles and everything in between. What actual commercial users have said to me, though, is that the total cost of ownership is a wash, the main difference is noise, and customers appreciate less of it.
Skye A Cohen
“A new gas engine leaf blower went into effect, and more are on the way.”
It looks like you forgot the word “ban”
This is on the main page viewed with phone browser
Vards Uzvards
How to rake leaves. Difficulty level: beginners.
https://www.homedepot.com/c/ah/how-to-rake-leaves/9ba683603be9fa5395fab901f8c30745
Wayne R.
Exactly what I was thinking…
I don’t know why blowing is the only option, and why noisy motors are also the only option.
Springtime, the season of open windows and loud little motors every friggin’ day of the week, almost all day long.
Birdog357
It’s the only option for a business because it is hands down the most efficient method.
Wayne R.
Seems like a different muffler might make the whole noise problem go away, but little motors are not where my insights lie.
Bob
My guess is the rich people in DC who voted for this law are still going to hire landscapers to use gas powered OPE to maintain their landscaping and just pay the fine. Or pay 10X for landscapers to actually rake the leaves by hand.
Just like all the celebrities that still watered their lawn’s during the California drought. “Rules for me and rules for thee.”
Stupid rules made by self important, celebrities and politicians. The average Joe gets screwed.
I’m generally a supporter of environmental policy if it stands on a factual basis. This is stupid. The amount of outdoor power equipment pollution compared to the coal factories burning in China and India is insignificant. Or all the diesel trucks delivering Amazon packages. Or hell even all the methane released from a cows rear end. We’re splitting hairs. Problem is self important politician types have little to no control over what India, China, Amazon or McDonalds does. So they pass feel good measures that do nothing except give talking points so they can get reelected to further screw over the average Joe with stupid red tape and uninformed political activism.
I’ll bet if they had to rake leaves by hand or use one of these inefficient, expensive and ineffective battery blowers they would change their minds. But then again how many politicians have ever actually done real work?
Wayne R.
“It seems that noise control is at the heart of this D.C.’s regulation.”
Your argument reminds me of the Giant Soda ban they tried in NYC. On one one hand, it wasn’t thoroughly banning all stupidly gratuitously fattening foods, so it’s dumb, and on the other, it only banned one stupidly gratuitously fattening food, so it’s dumb.
BTW, I’m an average Joe, and I’d love to not have to hear all those dang machines all the time.
Bob
Well to be fair I am also an average Joe…er Bob as it were:-) and I would rather get my leaves cleaned up quickly and cheaply and move on to the next chore. I also try to be reasonably mindfull of when I am running my lawn care equipment. Not too late/early etc.
You are right tho. Banning one kind of noise (gas powered OPE) in a major (noisy) metropolitan city is about as dumb as banning certain sized containers of sugar water.
Jamis
I own an electric riding mower. After over 40 months of use and storage, the machine is 12 times cheaper to run than a comparable ICE mower. Break even cost for battery replacement was 36 months and the batteries should be good for 1,500 – 1,700 charges. The unit has 225 charges in 40 months. Commercial use would shorten those times somewhat. By comparison, Tesla CEO states 1,600 charge cycles (300K – 400k miles) for the cars. I have a battery powered snowblower and four batteries. That’s over 2 hours of run time and with two rapid chargers, I can run non-stop. Commercial operators will adjust to a new operating procedure.
Bill
Jamis, could you elaborate on the brand of riding mower and other OPE that you are using? I have mostly switched over to EGO OPE and they have all proven to be fantastic equipment with good customer service. With closer to zero maintenance, I’ve been loving the experience thus far and so has my wife. While I don’t really need a riding mower, it would be a fun toy to have and my grandkids would love it. Also not much need for a snow blower here in South Florida but I can imagine it’s a little more fun to use one minus the noise.
Jamis
I have had a Ryobi RM480e mower for 41 months now. It costs $0.24 per hour to run. Been so good there are four of them on my street of 16 homes. I have a 40 volt Ryobi attachment capable trimmer that replaced a TroyBilt 4 stroke unit which replaced a Ryobi 990r 4 stroke unit. I tilled my garden this fall with the 40 volt head and it did it as well as the gas units. I also have a Ryobi 40 volt RY408100VNM 21″ whisper snowblower, but haven’t had a real chance to use it yet. My son has the new Ryobi 40 volt twin blade mower and a Ryobi 40 volt whisper leaf blower. He says the leaf blower is the best tool he’s ever owned. I also have approximately two dozen Ryobi One+ tools and 5 LiOn batteries. Most of these tools date from the ’90s of the NiCad era.
Jamis
I have two 6 ahr. & two 7.5 ahr. batteries and two rapid chargers to use with the 40 volt brushless snowblower. The two 6 ahr. are good for 60 minutes of run time. When they are depleted, they go into the two rapid chargers. Then the two 7.5 ahr. packs go in the machine for 70 minutes of run time. By then, the two 6 ahr. packs are fully charged and I get another hour of use. The 7.5 ahr. packs take 75 minutes to recharge, but by then, I’ve been outside for over three hours and a 15 minute break is OK. Add more batteries and some multipack chargers should allow commercial users to adapt. Also, all of these tools are residential grade. I foresee commercial grade machines and packs producing longer runtimes. Charging batteries from the truck would allow depleted batteries to be recharged while in the move whether the truck is ICE or EV powered.
Jamis
The 7.5 ahr. batteries that produce 70 minutes of run time each cost $0.035 to fully recharge from shutdown. My Toro gas snowblower will go through a half gallon of gas in that time. Gas here is $3+ per gallon. Eventually, the cost savings will pay for new batteries before they need replacing. My riding mower broke even at 36 months and at 41 months the batteries are still able to do more than the 2 hour run time as advertised.
Jamis
Just to update run times for the Ryobi RY408100VNM snowblower. Recent back to back snowfalls gave the following run times. Two 6 ahr. packs delivered 45 minutes of run time. Switched to two 7.5 ahr. packs and got 75 minutes of run time with the two packs half discharged. By that time, the two original 6 ahr. packs were fully charged (60 min.). I could have switched packs and the 7.5s would have been recharged by the time the 6s were discharged again.
Jamis
Bill: I have two neighbors with Ego OPE equipment. When I was looking for a rider, the Ryobi was the only one on the market with a local repair center. Actually, it’s a mile and a half from my house. Ego can’t find a repair center within 70 miles of my zip code and I live in the fifth largest metropolitan area of my state.
rob
Yeah, but you don’t have a battery powered blower. I can wax poetic all day about how A LOT of electric products that kick their outmoded combustions engine counterparts in the nards. There are, however, zero electric blowers on the market that can handle more than wood dust cleanup on a hard surface. There could be. There should be. It’s not rocket science. Alas, there’s nothing. I’m saying this as a dude that loathes combustion engines.
Jamis
My Son’s Ryobi 40 volt Whisper Series leaf blower does 730 cfm & 190 mph. Pretty sure that puts it in the ICE powered class. Yeah, you do need more than the two 4 ahr. batteries supplied for more than the 30 min. run time on high. The blower can use 4, 5, 6, or 7.5 ahr batteries. At a max. of 57 dB, it is definitely way quieter than any hand held gas blower.
Jamis
When I bought my battery electric riding mower, gas was $2.50 per gallon here and I was able to calculate the break point for battery replacement. It made sense to buy the mower. Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon and the purchase makes even more sense.
Tim E.
One thing I think about that’s a bit off the wall for regulations like this is what they do to newcomers to the market, new landscapers in this case. There’s a large market of secondhand gas equipment that simply isn’t there for battery equipment, nor do I see it emerging even as these regulations take hold. Batteries will always be a commodity, so even if you can pick up used tools, you’ll likely still need to buy batteries for them. That could exponentially increase upfront cost for somebody trying to get into the business, which is already a tough and usually-low-profit business to begin with. Back in the day you could (and still can) grab a bulletproof tank of a Honda commercial mower for a dime a dozen because they run forever, plus whatever string trimmer and blower you could find that wasn’t beat to heck, and you were ready to start mowing yards. Half the time you could find a friend who would give you an old piece of equipment for an excuse to upgrade themselves. Few hundred bucks, say a thousand if you splurged, and a gas can, and you’re “in business”.
Looking at battery though, if you had to be gas-zero starting out, you need a battery push mower, a battery string trimmer, and a battery blower let’s say. There is some secondhand for these things, but not a lot, and particularly not much for commercial grade equipment. While you could start out a business with Ryobi battery equipment, I don’t see it lasting that long, and then you’ll have to replace stuff before you’re ready to and the business would sink before it got going. When I bought my Makita OPE (still not commercial grade stuff but decent) with the 4-battery deals and stacking $off or %off coupons on top, it was still almost $300 for the string trimmer, same for the blower, and a mower would have been about $800. That’s $1400 for tools and 12 5Ah batteries, which I would say is still not enough to do more than two lawns, maybe 3 smaller ones, a day (assuming no charging). Add enough batteries to be comfortable with 3 medium lawns a day and you could be looking closer to $2000. Step up to commercial grade, even assuming sales or clearance, and that number increases further. Ego consumer-grade OPE has probably the best secondary market right now, but even that by the time you get the tools and enough batteries for a 3 lawn day, my back-of-napkin math puts you around $1800-2200. Their commercial grade again goes well up from there.
If it takes that much upfront investment for battery versus gas, how does that effect people getting into the field, or folks retiring that don’t want to make the switch or deal with it? I’m assuming prices will go up for equipment cost, will they also increase because supply and demand goes lopsided from a lack of landscapers?
Steve F
What is funny is I could use my 1970s straight pipe diesel tractor to mow the lawn and it is most assuredly louder and stinker than any 2 smoke engine. Having used a Milwaukee fuel blower I agree they just aren’t ready yet. Even the 12 AH battery died in something like 15 minutes. The energy usage of a blower is just too high for the energy density of today’s batteries.
KMR
You’re right about old diesel equipment also being incredible pollutors. Next on the chopping block should be pre-emissions diesel outdoor and construction equipment. And that includes my Kioti 30hp TLB, which produces horrible emissions and diesel soot. Diesel soot being a well known carcinogen and it is being expelled about a meter from my face. It is to the point that I barely use my Kioti, and we really should have a federal incentive program to get owners like me to upgrade to newer equipment.
Cash for Clunker-Tractors and then crush these old polluting pieces of crap. Farmers would love it and Ag equipment companies would love it.
Jeffrey
Oh no… not yet.
We actually should do this subsidy some day, but not during the chip shortage.
Raoul
That is a terrible idea. All cash for clunkers accomplished was driving prices for used cars up a ridiculous amount and line the pockets of the car manufacturers. You also must have missed all the farmers specifically buying old equipment since they don’t want to pay the dealers to have to maintain the new stuff. It sounds like you just want a handout to replace a tractor you don’t like?
CountyCork
If your diesel tractor is expelling soot as you say somethings wrong. Maybe on initial start up but not after warming up a bit.
KMR
Where i live it didn’t get above 20degF yesterday… it would have been expelling visible soot for a good 10+ minutes. And even when warmed up, older diesels still produce considerable amounts of soot. My neighbor has a farm that has been in his family for 150+ years, they have 5 old diesel tractors to work the farm (none of them newer than the 1980s). Like most farmers, they’ll keep using their tired old equipment until it can’t be resurrected any more… I don’t fault them for that, but the amount of emissions and particulates that these old engines put out is astronomical compared to newer tech.
I’m an actual Powertrain Engineer (spent over a decade in OEM valvetrain design including work for professional motorsports). As a “car guy”, I love internal combustion, but I hate how dirty 2 strokes and older diesels are. Just because you can’t “see” excessive soot after an older diesel engine is warmed up, doesn’t mean you aren’t producing harmful particulates during operation.
All of my handheld OPE is battery powered. If you don’t find it powerful enough, you have the wrong platform or haven’t invested in higher capacity batteries. Greenworks 80V platform handles pretty much anything I can throw it on my rural property. 80V 2.5aH battery will run the weed whacker for 45-60mins with the standard double line string head, but I’ll get 4 hours of run time (same battery) with the Trimmerplus Brush Cutter attachment with a solid disc head to clear brush.
Similarly, I’ll get 45-60 mins of run time out of the 80V 4aH battery on my blower, which I find to be sufficient. Considering they have a 6aH battery available, which I imagine produces about 1h15m of run time, I think that would satisfy most residential use cases with just one battery, or two if you swap. Batteries charge quickly enough.
The only battery OPE I’m not sold on is snowblowers and lawn tractors / zero turns. But these aren’t 2 stroke engine’d platforms to begin with, so we’re already doing vastly better in terms of emissions levels. Get me a 52″+ cut width EV zero turn for under $5k that will run for 2.5-3hours and I’ll gladly give up my Kawasaki powered zero turn.
MM
I think the real problem with electric equipment is for the commercial user, where the issue isn’t so much power but the inability to keep up with charging the batteries. If you have a crew of guys running 20-something HP ZTRs in addition to edgers, trimmers, etc, you’re using far more energy than you can get out of a wall outlet charging batteries all night long. You just can’t charge the batteries fast enough to keep up with the work. Homeowner use, even on larger properties, is a different situation since you have plenty of time to charge.
CountyCork
I think the biggest issue is financial when you talk to farmers. Old equipment is cheaper to maintain and super reliable. I’m on some tractor groups/forums and you do see regen issues so I’m guessing a lot of farmers shy away from the newer cleaner technologies for that reason alone.
Mxx
A friend has a similar Kioti tractor. He had the same problems with it polluting. Spent a lot of time and money trying to get it fixed. Tractors are expensive to buy, parts are even more expensive, and compared to cars, there is very little information available. Was your experience similar?
CountyCork
I’m up hear Massachusetts and the leaves blanket the ground in November. I’m rotating sheep daily and graze through early December before switching over to hay for the winter. I have a 80v kobalt 630 cfm and that won’t move heavy wet leaves. In order to make daily moves and be efficient I use a backpack gass blower. The gas is night and day as far as what I’m able to move in a few minutes in the morning when everything is wet.
Stacey Jones
Tried doing the lawn with the Ryobi push mower, but it was a lot of work for my youngest son in brutal Southern heat, so I got him a gas riding mower. The push mowers will take all kinds of abuse though. It was a lot of 40v battery swapping/recharging too. The blowers are nice but the gas Hitachi is really a dandy. The blower and riding mower are my only gas tools left.
Dave Brock
Let DC wallor in their own filth, if they want battery power let them pay for it. Myself, I prefer to be free to make the decisions on how to manage my lawn the way I want.
Wayne R.
That’s cool, but I’m tired of hearing it.
Birdog357
Move then. You don’t have the right to force someone to do your bidding.
Wayne R.
Paraphrased from Oliver Wendell Holmes: Your rights end where mine begins.
It’s stubborn, selfish attitudes that cause these laws in the first place.
Birdog357
Yes, my right to make a living or maintain my own property ends after your “right” to peace and quiet in a densely populated area begins.
Dominic S
I use a battery powered string trimmer and have to say it is in no way shape or form a viable option for commercial users. For homeowners battery is a no-brainer but if you need to get a lot of work done, battery just can’t hack it.
There is something to be said about the noise levels of the constant 2-stroke drone of a leaf blower. In my neighborhood depending on the season there are always at least a few leaf blowers going and it gets irritating after a while. Definitely not as annoying as an unmaintained lawn but let’s hope there is a better way in the coming years.
Rx9
This is just more Agenda 2030/ Great Reset insanity. Anytime I hear someone talk about “climate change” all I see is an unpaid dupe willingly shilling, on behalf of the billionaire power elite, for the reintroduction of serfdom.
Your standards of living are being deliberately reduced.
CJM
I can’t wait for these knuckle head bureaucrats to watch when their landscapers are towing around a gas powered generator to keep their batteries charged.
Maybe they could issue littering fines to the trees for dropping their leaves.
Daniel Reyna
Interesting that the politicians who pretend to be fighting for the little guy are constantly passing legislation that screws the little guy. Battery-powered landscaping equipment will not be practical for your average dude running a landscaping business. I blow through two high capacity DeWalt batteries doing my small front/back yards with a trimmer and blower. Now, imagine how many batteries and chargers a landscaper would need going from house to house during his daily run. Then trying to maintain them every night. This doesn’t help anybody.
Heck, my DeWalt blower isn’t really any quieter than a gas powered one, just sounds different and makes no noise at idle.
Also, other equipment like power washers for auto detailers. Well, they then have to run a generator for the washer. Oh, wait. Those idiots are also banning the sale of gas generators. I guess they can eat cake.
Oats
I wrote a long post about why this is a terrible idea, how the technology isn’t there yet, how electric blowers are nearly as loud but only a fraction as efficient and how this will cripple the entire landacaping and property services industry.
Then I remembered that the self righteous law makers we supposedly elected don’t care about any of that. Their sole concern is writing laws “save the planet”, whether they work or not, and they consider anybody who gets in their way collateral damage.
It’s all over folks.
Andrew
Still burning coal to charge batteries and burning diesel to mine for heavy metals.
These bans are just a band-aid on the pollution front. I can understand trying to push toward 4-stroke equipment rather than 2-stroke to burn cleaner, but people don’t consider all the pollution in making and recycling batteries.
Run time is the big issue here for me. I had battery equipment when I lived in the city because it fit my needs. I have gas equipment in the country because it fits my needs. A string trimmer is one thing, but a pressure washer, leaf blower, chainsaw, etc are a different discussion.
Battery technology is limited. Even with big improvements, it will still not be as good as gas from a weight and energy ratio. Gas has its limits as well, but it still sets the standard.
MM
I do agree that blowers can make obnoxious noises, but I feel this is a classic case of blaming the inanimate object for the actions of human beings. The blower isn’t the problem, it’s a person choosing to use it during a holiday, early morning or late evening hours when it can bother other people. This is no different than blaming food for obesity or weapons for violence when the user is the problem.
Personally I find cell phones to be terribly obnoxious in public. Should we ban those? Or should we simply ask that users be respectful of others in general?
Lee
I love that everyone is very concerned about the bottom line of landscaping businesses but not about the poor worker who inhales poisonous gas all day to more effectively blow some leaves around your yard.
Birdog357
As the guy inhaling it, it’s nothing to worry about. When you wind them up they run clean. It’s only at idle they are dirty. Trust me, you urbanites breath nastier air everyday.
Jared
That’s not the point though.
At least in my opinion, cordless blowers are a reasonable alternative in residential settings. They might take a couple extra minutes per yard, but it’s not so outlandishly different that they can’t be substituted.
However, sometimes you absolutely need the peak power of a pro blower to get a job done in a reasonable amount of time.
For example, I visited the campus of a university recently. There was heavy snowfall overnight and several people were out with backpack blowers clearing walking areas. These weren’t 3ft-wide sidewalks, they were big sections of concrete – think parking lot more than a section of sidewalk, but with garbage receptacles, trees, benches and persistent pedestrian traffic, etc.
They had machines with brushes and skid steers out clearing snow too, but there were many areas were that was impractical – either due to obstacles or just because of the risk to pedestrians.
You’d need an army of M18-wielding workers to get much done in a situation like that. The big blowers clear a much bigger swath and push it farther away. They can also lift and push deeper and wetter snow.
It’s a case where a big gas blower doesn’t just save 5 minutes – instead its probably worth 5 or more cordless blowers.
Lee
I do hear you man, I’m just being a sardonic little jerk.
I agree there are a lot of cases where electric won’t scale, 100% — but I think the free market will figure out how to stuff more batteries into a backpack blower.
This is just a case where I think the benefits will outweigh the negatives.
Andrew
Just think, people out raking their lawns, talking to neighbors, enjoying the fall breeze. Our world is going to to hell.
Sean
I have 36 volt makita blower 10 – 5 amp batteries when doing my 3/4 Acre property batteries had a hard time keeping up and after five hours I finish the property purchased a stihl 800 m backpack 2weeks later 1..5 hours wet leaves I love battery tools but sometimes you need gas/ electric
OldDominionDIYer
No matter how good current cordless OPE is today it is still a compromise over ICE OPE. Perhaps capping Db levels in a graduated way would have been a more practical way to phase out ICE OPE and allow Cordless OPE to continue to improve. There is fantastic noise cancelling headphones and ear buds for those that are somehow bothered by the noise, it seems rather ridiculous really. Wanna really make them made just start removing grass from the lawns in favor of hardscaping and the environmentalists will have a cow! Or let your grass grow free! Seems a bit extreme to me but whatever! I strongly suspect the motivation has nothing to do with noise but everything to do with political placation. Sad really but we the people are responsible for putting these folks into a position to make these laws!
Travis
I love my M-18 leaf blower around the house and for cleaning out the garage. But backpack blowers with gas engines are a must when clearing fire lines for prescribed burns and trail maintenance on larger properties. Banning them before there is an equivalent replacement is nuts but so is DC.
MJ
California laws are absolutely ridiculous, they are legislating away peoples rights to do anything. Who comes up with this crap and who does it benefit ?
OldDominionDIYer
Just to clarify my point, I was referring to those inside working from home (who are complaining about the noise) who could use noise cancelling style ear buds or headphones, not those operating the OPE.
rob
So how will a lawn-care company do it’s job? We had to buy a blower for our property at work. I looked at everything. There’s not an electric nor battery powered blower on the market that can realistically even get half as close to an average Stihl or Echo model from 10-15 years ago. Forget about the current flagships. Runtime doesn’t even enter the equation. I hate gas, but the blowers are the one thing where there’s just no serious battery options atm.
Wayne R.
Do the gas machines have to be so loud? Wouldn’t a more effective muffler on the exhaust and maybe some design “fix” on the business-end of those big blowers have avoided this problem in the first place?
Cars are generally pretty quiet, but a kid’s car with its fart-cannon and the old guy with the Harley really demonstrate just how quiet things usually are.
Birdog357
Yes, you can not restrict a 2 stroke much or it doesn’t run and 4 strokes are too heavy. The smallest 4 strokes in Sthil equipment still burn mixed gas like a 2 stroke so there’s zero benefit to the extra weight. Most of the noise is the impeller anyway….
Franco Calcagni
I have a Shindaiwa 4 stroke, as well as a 2 stroke. They weight difference is minimal, not really noticeable. But the noise…night and day, the 4 stroke is so much quieter. As for the emissions; I can’t say as they both use the same mixed gas jug, but many of the bans are for noise.
Tim
Not all engines are 2 stroke…stihl, honda, and some others use a 4 stroke engine setup using 2 stroke gas mix as the lube…no oil sump like a car or mower engine…doesnt suffer the 30% raw gas loss of a 2 stroke engine and burns much more complete compared to a typical 2 stroke setup by a factor of 10…
Franco Calcagni
I just moved 2 years ago. Where I was living previously, they had a ban on all noise on weekends after 4pm, in effect for about 4 years. No circ saws, no vacuuming the car. no outdoor power equipment….nothing considered noisy (don’t know what battery powered lawnmowers were categorized).
Another municipality about 15 minutes from where I lived just passed a law about 3-4 years ago banning all gas trimmers and leaf blowers (specifically these 2) because of noise.
This law kind of bugged me. The average couple, each working during the week, typically come, make supper, spend time with the kids, homework etc. Then on weekends either shopping or family time at the zoo, pool, picnic..etc…can’t! Need to cut the grass because any noise after 4pm and you get fined. Cutting it at 7 am would be sweet revenge but can’t do that either; weekends, no cutting grass before 10am!
Our province just passed a ban that goes into effect in 2024, no more oil for heating, and no grandfathering laws for those that already have an oil furnace. By 2024, all oil furnaces are banned.
The tree huggers are slowly winning the war.
Rx9
It’s not the tree huggers winning this war, its the multibillionaire financial elite pushing this. Blackrock, the world’s largest hedge fund ($2 trillion in assets) has enormous power over the companies it owns, and is pushing these changes top-down via its ESG policies. In addition to this, there is an absolutely gargantuan amount of plutocrat money poured into “green” politics via NGO, PAC money, and media support.
These billionaires stand to make a massive amount of money via the carbon regulation schemes being passed world wide.
Corey R
Dc’s ban is not a big deal. I know most of the country can’t quite fathom property size around here, but it’s not that big of a deal.
“The median lot size for new single-family detached homes that were sold in 2019 dropped to a record-low 8,177 square feet (0.188 of an acre), down 390 square feet since 2018, according to the latest figures from the Census Bureau.”
https://nahbnow.com/2020/10/median-single-family-lot-size-hits-record-low/
Ok, so the median for the country is 8,200 sq ft.
“Lot sizes vary greatly across different types of single-family lots. The median lot size for a rowhouse is 1,633 square feet, and 90 percent of rowhouses are built on lots that are smaller than 2,700 square feet. The median lot size for a detached single-family unit is 3.3 times that of a rowhouse (5,460 square feet), and the 90th percentile lot is 9,970 square feet, or nearly four times the 90th percentile lot for a rowhouse.”
https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/single-family-zoning-2019/
The median for a detached single family home in DC is 5,500 sq ft. So that’s 67% of the median lot size for the country.
“Almost half the single-family units in the District of Columbia—45,800 units—are characterized as rowhouses by tax assessors; another 18 percent (16,650 units) are described as semi-detached (such as duplexes). Together, rowhouses and semi-detached units collectively make up 66 percent of all single-family housing stock in D.C., but occupy 37 percent of land that has single-family units. The 31,673 detached family units are spread over 8.2 square miles—62 percent of all land with single-family units and 18 percent of all taxable lots in the District. ”
Detached single-family homes in DC make up 33% of all the single family houses in the District.
That means that 33% of the homes in DC (~32k households), which are 34% smaller than the average home in the country, are effected by this ban. And the median single family home has roughly 33% of the land covered by living space. That averages out to 3,700 square feet of lawn, or roughly a 60 foot square of space.
DRT42
Wow. 60 square feet. An 8’ diameter dripline cant support a full sized tree. So, hardly any trees in DC? I guess thats one solution to noisy leaf blowers – just get rid of the trees.
Rossmon
That’s a 60 foot square, not 60 square feet. 60’x60′
DRT42
Ah, my bad. Thanks for pointing that out – too many numbers in Coreys post and late for a Menards run. Still, 60×60 total? Thats not very much, which I guess is Coreys point. You have to have some space on each side of a detached house, so front and back yards must be less than 60×30. Like 60 wide x 20 deep per yard? I assume they have sidewalks in DC, and there is usually a space between sidewalk and street, not to mention a driveway on the side. Put in a little patio or hot tub in the back and there’s not much left. A two car garage would consume half your backyard. Wow…
Birdog357
My entire property is 50×100 I have a 1200 foot house and 800 foot garage on it. It still takes me over 3 hours with a small commercial backpack to to clean all the leaves up because they are ankle deep. My rather powerful decently specced battery blower that I use to blow out my garage is worthless for that kind of work.
KG
I appreciate and support the goals of these legislative efforts but they are decidedly backwards as well as unrealistic.
It’s backwards because good policy generally sets goals, measures, and realistic timelines rather than dictating methods or picking winners. These bans dictate the technology “someone” without even offering measurable sound/pollution goals or limits. I could sell/use an electric tool that’s twice as loud and that’s powered either directly (cord plugged) or indirectly (battery charged) by a V8 pickup with 110v inverter+ outlet and be fully compliant while contributing worse noise and air pollution than the outgoing gas OPE blower or generator.
The above example also illustrates why this is unrealistic given current battery density and costs even if electric reaches parity on OPE power relative to gas for professional or heavy homeowner use. A landscaper can’t afford to buy and carry enough pre-charged batteries to work uninterrupted all day so they’ll have to charge near constantly and the customer’s property presents a number of challenges so it’ll be the vehicle, ie just transferring emissions to another machine, much like electric cars aren’t truly emission free systematically, they just transfer emissions to the power plants burning natural gas.
We faced similar noise and emissions and even fuel use concerns long ago with vehicles. We devised catalytic converters, mufflers, emissions standards, gas pump taxes, gas guzzler taxes, and fleet economy standards. We continue pushing the targets in addition to technological efficiency improvements ranging from fuel injected 4 cycle gas engines, diesels, to turbos for both, to regenerative hybrids and full electrics. These all helped reach for the target standards without dictating a solution.
We have a model for legislating and registering these public concerns. Decide how to measure it, set a standard with a date and sticks/carrots, let people and companies do what they do best to get it. The result is more ideas and more potential solutions, many if which are additive rather than either or. It also doesn’t matter what your market or micro/macro economic philosophy is. Measurable solutions win.
KMR
2-cycle OPE equipment is actually far dirtier in terms of emissions for the same run time than V8 automotive engines. Auto engines are extremely sophisticated today with high compression ratios, direct injection, per cylinder ignition timing, all controlled by an ECU that can adapt with changing environmental variables, and all topped by very effective emissions equipment and emissions strategies. 2-cycle engines have none of that on top of the noise pollution they create. 2-cycles are unsophiticated relatively analog engines that really do need to be banned.
2cycle leaf blower vs Ford Raptor V8 emissions:
https://www.edmunds.com/about/press/leaf-blowers-emissions-dirtier-than-high-performance-pick-up-trucks-says-edmunds-insidelinecom.html
Mike
How is the parks department going to keep all of those areas clean and maintained on batteries alone? Is the city going to fine the feds? Most homeowners are fine on battery power and guys doing regular residential work should be ok on batteries. Big lots and commercial work it just doesn’t work.
The only place that going battery blows is in blowers. Run times just don’t cut it. But I also don’t use the backpack blower to just blow off the patio. Time and place for every tool and different tool for every job.
Jamis
I’m lucky. My utility supplied residential electricity costs me $0.13/kwh and it’s all green generated, no coal or natural gas.
Franco Calcagni
If I may ask, what part of the country do you live in?
Also, is that the rate charged by your POCO before any fees and taxes or is that the total of your bill divided by the hours (meaning including taxes, admin fees, base fees…etc)
Jamis
NWOH. $0.13 per kwh after all taxes, fees, etc. Shows on every electric bill we get.
Jamis
Not to hijack this topic, but I just read that the second railroad company has ordered multiple battery powered locomotives for over the road use. This adds to the emergence of battery powered construction equipment from multiple companies. Kenworth just announced their OTR class 8 semi tractor to go along with their class 6 and 7 EV trucks. My point is that nearly any manufacturer of ICE equipment is bringing battery power to market. Anybody got a Wrangler with Dana axles? Dana has a completely separate facility dedicated to manufacturing EV drives including motors and not just for Jeeps. The transition is inevitable.
Maps Bam
This would be asinine and part of the smoke and mirrors show about pretending to care about the environment. You want to save trees, reduce chemicals, reduce energy consumption of factories and vehicles all at once? Ban junk mail. I guarantee that alone has way more of a negative impact on the environment then lawn equipment. But if junk mail is banned we wouldn’t get the political fliers and we can’t have that now, can we?
MM
Banning engines in OPE is “low hanging fruit”. It’s an area where there’s less industry pushback compared to automobiles, trucks, construction and farming equipment, etc, and at the same time the politicians get to quote massive numbers for how many engines they got out of service….nevermind the fact that those engines are tiny.
Something else that would go a long way to reducing pollution would be to ban drive-thrus. No good comes from all those cars just sitting there idling. But no way that is going to fly with anyone’s constituents.
Franco Calcagni
“Something else that would go a long way to reducing pollution would be to ban drive-thrus. No good comes from all those cars just sitting there idling. But no way that is going to fly with anyone’s constituents”…so true and hilarious!
Even funnier is that some might argue that because of the pandemic, drive thru’s make sense….while the people that would be in an absolute fury about denying them their burger and fries, or morning coffee and donut, drive thru, would be the same people that say the whole pandemic is a govt conspiracy!
JoeM
I genuinely don’t know if this response will be political, or not. Upsetting… Possibly? But… Know I’ve had to think this over for several days due to my uncertainty of how to post in as civil a way possible, without involving politics or conspiracy theories (or my opinions therein.) surrounding this issue.
Okay… I fully support the phasing out of the Gasoline-Based Internal Combustion Engine. I’m also in support of phasing out the use of Hydrocarbons as a fuel source of any sort. Whether that means a Hydrogen Fuel Cell, an Ethanol-Based Combustion Assist for charging batteries in a pinch, or a fully Tesla-fied roadway dominated by vehicles that can avoid accidents and still run entirely on electric fuel cells… I can only see one use for Carbon now. Construction materials, and Electronic Components. The Carbon Nanotube needs to be made out of Carbon, right? A Hydrocarbon like Coal can still be mined for making that. Plenty of Hydrocarbon Extraction jobs still needed to make that kind of Carbon, and also various Polymers we need.
Just not Fuel. Nothing we can’t control the gas for, when released for other purposes. At some point, and my Northern country of origin is quite guilty of this with the trailing pools from the Tar Sands in Alberta, we need to reclaim all this runoff excess byproduct, and use it to build. Use it to form the products that shape the future that doesn’t burn fossil fuels to operate.
My reasoning isn’t as “Hippie-Dippie” as it sounds. I’m not some activist… I just think, from a business standpoint… there’s more money to be made in pivoting to distributed energy solutions, and a different processing method for crude petroleum. We’re betting on a finite resource that has made a lot of people very wealthy, but nobody from that sector is thinking about how they’ll keep their profits up once that resource is truly, and verifiably, gone. Plus, considering the massive wealth of the Energy sector, the countries that use all the energy don’t pull in enough taxes to cover the switch over in infrastructure that is needed. But the Energy Sector does have that kind of money. Tesla proved they could do it, and they didn’t start in the Energy sector at first. Imagine what actual Fuel magnates could accomplish in that investment, and how much it would benefit their image in the public eye.
I just feel like Gas is at the end of its life. If we want to be able to have a seamless transition, we need to start with regulations that ban the use of the combustion engine on some level. I think it’s a fake reason, quoting the noise level of a gas engine. If that were the case, then F1 and NASCAR would have been cancelled first. Being honest up front, Petroleum is a dead-end industry, unless it shifts what it makes, and soon. When it does run out, we don’t want to be stuck in some sort of 3rd world barely-functioning society situation. We need to start moving over to the newer infrastructure ASAP. It’s just good business sense… so… If it starts with DC and “31 Other States” then that’s a good start toward pushing companies to invest in having a future making money somehow, instead of heading for a dead-end cliff.
This was a little ranty, and I’m sorry. It’s hard to express this in smaller forms.
Birdog357
You can never truly eliminate oil. You still need lubricants and plastics.
JoeM
I already addressed that. In fact, that’s where I was hoping the Petroleum production would pivot to, instead of Gas/Petrol/Combustion Engine Fuels.
But it’s good to see we agree we’ll still need Crude to some degree as well. Plus, those products are significantly less toxic, and produce more product per barrel of Crude than the Fuels do.
Birdog357
You can’t really change what comes out of a barrel of crude. When you break it down, you get a ratio of different products. The ratio can be tweaked, but you ultimately will still get the same stuff out of it. Gasoline will always be produced if you’re making heavy lubricants. It’s a by product.
MM
I agree with a lot of what you wrote, and it didn’t come across as political at all.
But I do feel the need to point out a couple things:
First, the risk of “running out” is greatly overblown. The permean basin and Canadian tar sands alone can sustain the entire planet, assuming today’s rate of growth, for at least a millennium. Now obviously that has serious environmental concerns, but “running out of oil” is a not one of them. It’s there, and it’s there in massive quantities. Running out isn’t much of a concern, its environmental impact is the real worry.
Obviously there’s money to be made here, the real problem is our technology just isn’t up to a practical replacement just yet and I don’t think it’s for lack of trying. The energy density of a battery is terrible compared to chemical fuels. And we also need to be careful we don’t trade a fossil fuel environmental disaster for a mineral environmental disaster, because just as how extracting and refining petroleum generates a lot of pollution, the exact same can be said for mining lithium to make batteries or rare earth minerals to make LCDs, semiconductors, etc. Until those issues get resolved I don’t think this is as clear cut as it may seem.
JoeM
I agree. It isn’t clear cut. I believe your estimate for how much Crude is available is possibly exaggerated by a factor of a couple zeroes, but regardless of how much there is, we need the environment more than we need the Fuels.
As to our Technology being “ready” for the switch over… absolutely not… it’s not ready in the slightest. But the ones with the money to invest in making it work are the ones with trillions in profits from Fuels. Gasoline, Kerosine/Jet Fuel, Diesel… These are major money makers in the Energy sector, but if we want our supplies to truly last into the future, we need to stop relying on the tax dollars of nations to advance the tech. We need those responsible for all the environmental damage to use the money they’ve gained to take over the advancement of the Technology and the Infrastructure it will require. At some point in that process, those same discoveries will have to include the mining of resources being cleaned up safely, and we are totally in sync in our thinking there MM.
My only real… Quibble? If you can call such a minor thing anything other than a comment in this case… Is that we need Fuel companies to start the investment into their future pivot into providing raw materials for Polymers, Lubricants, and all the other non-fuels we’ll need when the Technology is ready. Holy run-on sentence, Batman… I know, I’ve used that before.. Just don’t know how to break these sentences down any better. But in all honesty, we’ve created such an environmental disaster as a species, that we’re already calling this the Anthropocine Epoch. Where everything Humans do, controls the state of the rest of the planet, including its survival. Anthropologists and Paleontologists are already calling this the beginning of the next major MET (Mass Extinction Timeframe.) and potentially Fossil Fuels as the ELE that triggers it. (ELE- Extinction Level Event.)
Now… In all that doom and gloom, I see a chance to pivot business interests into taking over the expenses of building and maintaining the path to the mythical “Green Future” people want so badly. And honestly… a few years back… Might even be a decade or so ago (time has lost its meaning during Covid, I don’t know about any of you, but I’ve lost track of when everything is, what day it is, and how long ago everything happened in history. I can’t even guess how long things have been in seconds or minutes anymore. Despite being born with a photographic memory, time has lost meaning.) there was this massive world concert to raise awareness and funds for saving the environment. It was like Live Aid… in fact I think it Was Live Aid who put it on, some time in the 2000’s… Well… when I saw that concert series live on TV, my first thought was “Why don’t they hold this every year? Only, instead of just some concert, it is a full on World Expo for Environmentally Advancing Technologies, and Green Tech.
I may be Indigenous, and I may care about very Hippie-Dippie things, but the vast majority of my perspective is from that of Business. Thinking moves ahead of moves, so that business can thrive as we need it to change.
I think, honestly, the start of putting pressure on the fuel companies with these government ordinances can motivate them to start trying to find new ways to make the funds they’ll lose from the laws. That’s where I see… okay, I don’t see it, I hope the top businesses in the world aren’t so stupid that they miss the opportunity here… to have big business interests become directly responsible for advancing the sustainability of our environment. For a huge profit in the long-run. And yeah… I want to be able to breathe, too… I don’t want the fresh water to run out, or the rainforest to be burned down, I want all those annoying hippie things… but I want them because Business can’t sustain itself on destroying the planet much longer. Humans and every other life form on the planet will die off in a Mass Extinction if they do… So… As weird as it is to hear… I would seriously love to see the big pollution creators go Hippie for a moment, and make moves to make their money on non-toxic things. It’s going to be really difficult, and I’m thinking very long term here… but to say that is where I would like to see it, doesn’t take as much to say… He says, ironically ranting enough to make Stuart consider having a hit put out on me…
Pete
I wonder what would happen if ALL landscape companies refuse to service DC including the WHITE HOUSE.
Jamis
Not likely to happen, I’ll bet. Someone will rise to the occasion by demonstrating that the new ruling will require additional capital expenditures to perform the contract, and being the gubberment, they’ll antiup to keep the place looking right.
Pete
Like they say, there is a chair for every butt……
Mxx
As long as the peaker plant, wind farm, solar farm, whatever is cool this month, is located in the same governing body, equally distributed among wealth classes.
Jamis
Just got my June electric bill. Generation cost was $0.02/KWH. All generation is 100% wind/solar. The utility added $0.04/KWH for transmission costs. The 7.5 ahr., 40 volt batteries for my leaf blower cost $0.02 each to fully charge and run the brushless leaf blower for over a 3/4 hour on full speed cruise control, longer if using the trigger.
Jamis
Oh yeah, the leaf blower is rated at 730 cfm, 190 mph, and 57 dB. Think that’s in the ICE backpack arena, but way quieter.
Jamis
Had a bit of an epic moment today. Lawn service was across the street doing the neighbor’s lawn. When he had finished mowing and trimming, he went to start his Stihl backpack blower to clear the walks and drive, but he couldn’t get it to run. At first, I was sort of glad as the thing is noisy beyond belief, but after watching him struggle for some time, I took my Ryobi Model# RY404100VNM 40 volt over and offered it to him. He quickly cleared everything on the property and didn’t even use one bar on the 7.5 ahr. battery. At 57 dB, it was a lot quieter than the Stihl unit . It also didn’t seem to bother the neighbor’s dog who usually barks when he’s there. The Ryobi will clear a 22′ wide drive by just walking down the middle and sweeping side to side.
Franco
Interesting and good to know. Sounds like you are very happy with it. I have been casually looking at cordless OPE and not ready just yet, but soon. One thing that has bugged me is the near nonexistent choice in BP blowers.
The Ryobi on HD website gets a 3.5 rating, I was hoping it would do better but some reviewers might have unrealistic expectations.
Jamis
I’ve found the key to good cordless OPE operation is to have multiple batteries and multiple rapid chargers. I have a Ryobi 21″ Whisper Series snowblower and 3 4 ahr., 2 6 ahr., 2 7.5 ahr. batteries, and 2 rapid chargers. With that set up, I can run the snowblower non-stop. The leafblower will clear over 400 feet of sidewalk, a 60′ long double wide drive, and a large patio on one bar of a 6 ahr. battery at full speed with some turbo boost. Ryobi has 8 ahr. and 12 ahr. 40 volt packs out now.
Franco
My bad, when you mentioned the service guy could not get his backpack blower started, I assumed your Ryobi was also the backpack version. I now see it is a handheld, which is very good, but I am looking for a backpack.
Jamis
Franco: How about this one? https://www.homedepot.com/p/RYOBI-40V-HP-Brushless-Whisper-Series-130-MPH-730-CFM-Cordless-Battery-Backpack-Blower-with-2-6-0-Ah-Batteries-and-Charger-RY404170VNM/317348668
Franco
Looks like a newer model with only 44 reviews, but 4+ stars so far, could be promising. The one I have seen in the past is this one
https://www.homedepot.com/p/RYOBI-40V-Whisper-Series-145-MPH-625-CFM-Cordless-Battery-Backpack-Leaf-Blower-with-5-0-Ah-Battery-and-Charger-RY40440/306706763
Looks nice but reviews are over 1000 and only gets 3.5 stars. The stars is not the only indicator, but still gives you an idea of how people feel about it, especially when you have over 1000 reviews.
I haven’t read them lately as I am not quite ready to switch all my gear, but from what I remember a while back when I did read some, the unfavorable comments were from people comparing directly to gas models…expectations were a bit high.
Jamis
Franco: Yes it is a new model this year. Many of the Ryobi OPE have been replaced with the Whisper Series maodels. I have a WS 40 volt snowblower from this year and it is way superior to the prior Toro 2 stroke machine. Anyway, Ryobi is moving production out of China and the newer models have “VNM” attached to the model number, designating they are from Vietnam. So far, they appear to be superior to the older like models.
Jamis
Franco: Ryobi now has a 40 volt battery backpack with a “plug” that connects to their other 40 volt OPE tools. Now everything can be a backpack tool! Tad pricey at $449.
Franco
Good to know, thanks
Bill
Take a look at the EGO BP blower and their full line of OPE.
https://egopowerplus.com/blower-600cfm/
https://www.lowes.com/pd/EGO-Power-Plus-56-Volt-Lithium-Ion-Brushless-Cordless-Electric-Leaf-Blower-Battery-Included/1003130710?irclickid=Xz5Xgm1c8xyIT-gRPLQYZ0DAUkD1rnThM0cISQ0&irgwc=1&cm_mmc=aff-_-c-_-prd-_-mdv-_-gdy-_-all-_-0-_-2481278-_-0
While I don’t the BP blower I do have their 650cfm hand held unit, along with their mower, string trimmer, multi-head system and chainsaw. After a few years of these battery powered OPE I would never go back to gas.
Jamis
The Ryobi Model# RY404100VNM currently has a 4.7 stars rating on HD’s web page. The other Ryobi leafblowers have different ratings.
Jamis
Had another moment yesterday involving a lawn service. He mowed the next door lawn at the same time I mowed mine. His ICE zero turn vs. my electric rider. We finished mowing at almost the same time. He struggled to start his handheld gas leaf blower. By the time he got it running, I blew my drive and public sidewalk clear and was almost done with the sidewalk on his lawn using my 40 volt handheld blower.
Jamis
A lawn care worker was found shot to death in the yard he was contracted to work on with the back pack leaf blower still running in Mississippi yesterday.
Jamis
Just read that Black and Decker estimates that 85% of the leaf blowers sold in the US are electric. Based on what I see the lawn service folks are using, that 85% is residential sales. I have yet to see any commercial users with electrical powered leaf blowers.