"Warren" wrote in message
news:n88vb.198415$ao4.706157@attbi_s51...
Shepherd wrote:
My car is used about 1000 hours a year. My leaf blower is used less
than 10
hours a year.

What's your point?


People buy Kellogg's Corn Flakes 100 times more often than store brands.
By your logic it would be okay if the store brands included 17 times as
much toxins. But in reality, it's irrelevant if Kellogg's is used 100
times as often. The public interest is served when both are held to the
same standards.

The fact that you use your car more often than your leaf blower is
irrelevant. Per minute, the leaf blower produces 17 times as much
pollution. That's as unacceptable is it is for some goofy little car
with a smaller market share being allowed to not meet standards simply
because people drive other cars more.

Would it be okay for you to disable the pollution controls on your car,
and justify it by saying for every 10 hours you drive it, the other cars
in the neighborhood are driven 1000 hours? Of course not. So why would
you think it's relevant that you drive your car 1000 hours for every 10
hours you use your leaf blower? It doesn't make the leaf blower one iota
cleaner. It's not a logical justification.

--
Warren H.


Your logic under whelms me and I can see logic of any kind would overwhelm
you.

Cornflakes indeed!

Shepherd

I wonder if leaf blowers are legal in the countries that export them to
us, like Japan. We can also thank them for the noisy motor scooters,
water scooters, trail bikes, etc. That is the American way: you build
them, we will use them. It's time to pass national legislation to
curtail
these noise and pollution monsters. I read recently that the rangers in
Yellowstone have resorted to wearing face masks in Winter because of the
clouds of polluted air from the snowmobiler's. Our homes and our places
of recreation are fair targets for all these idiots.

Sherwin Dubren



Phisherman wrote:

Anyone comment on gas-powered blowers? I'm thinking about getting one
for leaf pickup, and more importantly, to clean driveways and streets
from grass clippings. Any comments on Stihl blowers?

"Warren" wrote in message
news:up_ub.190057$mZ5.1410569@attbi_s54...

But the point is that for each minute you are using your leaf blower,
you're polluting 17 times as much as each minute you drive your car. How
often you use your car, or how often you use the leaf blower is
irrelevant.

So 1 minute of leaf blowing releases same amount of pollution as driving a
car 17 minutes.


Each time I fart I make a horrible stink in the room. Far more than my
car would make. How much I drive my car is irrelevant. My fart still
stinks more than my car. Be thankful that I don't fart as much as I
drive, but don't forgive my fart just because I drive a lot.

As cute as your fart analogy sounds, it's hardly accurate. What percent of
the total air pollution released millions of cars on the road every day, and
compare that to what percent of air pollution comes from the perhaps
thousands of leaf blowers and other two stroke engines being on any given
day.

It also doesn't matter if there are more cars than leaf blowers. If that
were a justification, the oil-fired power plant down the road could
defend it's polution by pointing out that there's only one plant for
every one million cars.

And oil or coal fired power plants are heavily regulated, in the tons of
pollution they are legally allowed to release.


The point is that a leaf blower puts out a disportional amount of
polution for it's size. Comparing it to a typical car is only meant to
emphisize that an engine far to big to strap on your back is 17 times
cleaner for each minute of use.



I agree that 2 strokes are much louder, and release far more pollutants then
a similarly powered 4 stroke. But it does no good to bandage the paper cut
when the patient has also been shot in the chest. What is the marginal
benefit gained reducing air pollution by eliminating 2 stroke engine?
Compare that to the marginal benefit gained by using leaf blowers?

Sameer

Snooze wrote:

Anyone comment on gas-powered blowers? I'm thinking about getting one
for leaf pickup, and more importantly, to clean driveways and streets
from grass clippings. Any comments on Stihl blowers?

I have had a Stihl string trimmer for over 10 yrs, and it's
continued to run reliably with no repairs and only basic
maintenance. If that's any indication, they make good,
reliable products.

Everyone has an opinion about leaf blowers. Mine is that when
used to clean up grass clippings, they are not objectionable
if you don't try to get the streets and walks absolutely
immaculate. (It's a street, not an operating room. So make it
decent, not spotless!) Then, the total time in use should be
only a few minutes. I've tried to do it with a broom or a
rake, and it can take 10 or 20 times as long, and still not
give very good results.

For gathering leaves, I suggest you find another way if
possible. The blower would be running for a long time to do
that, and the noise is really unkind to your neighbors.

The blowers do pollute, but so do many other things. I figure
in the absence of legislation it's up to everyone to make
their own choices.

I suggest wearing ear and eye protection when you use a leaf
blower.


Mike Prager
Beaufort, NC (on the coast in zone 8a)
(Remove spam traps from email address to reply.)

Snooze wrote:

So 1 minute of leaf blowing releases same amount of pollution as drivin=
g a
car 17 minutes.

Anyway, try to put your head at 1 foot from the exhaust of your car and l=
ook how
you feel. Persons operating these blowers are standing too close from the=

exhaust to not have serious effects on their health after awhile. A minut=
e may
even be too long.

When I see these young workers working for some contractors and they use =
them
all day long, I am sad for them. Lost of hearing and bad effect on their =
lungs
may both be irreversible.

Fran=E7oise.

Sameer

What is wrong with an electric aspirator? I think they are OK espciallywh=
en
they chew the leaves.

Fran=E7oise.

Mike Prager wrote:

Snooze wrote:

Anyone comment on gas-powered blowers? I'm thinking about getting on=
e
for leaf pickup, and more importantly, to clean driveways and streets=

from grass clippings. Any comments on Stihl blowers?

I have had a Stihl string trimmer for over 10 yrs, and it's
continued to run reliably with no repairs and only basic
maintenance. If that's any indication, they make good,
reliable products.

Everyone has an opinion about leaf blowers. Mine is that when
used to clean up grass clippings, they are not objectionable
if you don't try to get the streets and walks absolutely
immaculate. (It's a street, not an operating room. So make it
decent, not spotless!) Then, the total time in use should be
only a few minutes. I've tried to do it with a broom or a
rake, and it can take 10 or 20 times as long, and still not
give very good results.

For gathering leaves, I suggest you find another way if
possible. The blower would be running for a long time to do
that, and the noise is really unkind to your neighbors.

The blowers do pollute, but so do many other things. I figure
in the absence of legislation it's up to everyone to make
their own choices.

I suggest wearing ear and eye protection when you use a leaf
blower.

Mike Prager
Beaufort, NC (on the coast in zone 8a)
(Remove spam traps from email address to reply.)

"Warren" wrote in message
news:3VEtb.165408$ao4.538609@attbi_s51...
Phisherman wrote:
Anyone comment on gas-powered blowers? I'm thinking about getting one
for leaf pickup, and more importantly, to clean driveways and streets
from grass clippings. Any comments on Stihl blowers?

For leaf pick-up, a yard vac with a pick-up tube will work much better
than a blower-vac that's light enough to carry. And if you're not going
to vac them up, a rake is twice as fast as blowing them. For cleaning
grass clippings off of the pavement, what's the matter with a broom? A
broom is faster, too.

--
Warren H.

==========
Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my
employer, my friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife.
Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is
coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this
response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants
to go outside now.
Blatant Plug: Celebrate Christmas with The Simpsons
http://www.holzemville.com/mall/simpsons.html


Spoken just like a pre-teen, urban, apartment dweller.
A dumb one too.

Shepherd

Shepherd wrote:

"Warren" wrote in message
news:3VEtb.165408$ao4.538609@attbi_s51...
Phisherman wrote:
Anyone comment on gas-powered blowers? I'm thinking about getting
one
for leaf pickup, and more importantly, to clean driveways and
streets
from grass clippings. Any comments on Stihl blowers?

For leaf pick-up, a yard vac with a pick-up tube will work much
better
than a blower-vac that's light enough to carry. And if you're not
going
to vac them up, a rake is twice as fast as blowing them. For
cleaning
grass clippings off of the pavement, what's the matter with a broom?
A
broom is faster, too.



Spoken just like a pre-teen, urban, apartment dweller.
A dumb one too.


No. Spoken like a suburban homeowner with 7,000 square feet of lawn, and
a dozen deciduous trees, including a 60' sweatgum tree that dumps quite
a few leaves on the front lawn. (Most of the other deciduous trees are
back in a little wooded area where I leave the leaves where they fall.)

A number of times I've wanted to be like the neighbors, and get a
blower, but when I stop and think about how I can already do everything
a blower does, do it better, and take less time than with a blower, I
save my money and use it to buy some DVD's to watch after I've finished
my work, and my neighbors are still out there trying to use their
blowers.

Whether it's cleaning up after mowing, or raking leaves in the fall, I
find I have no use for a blower.

Revoke my membership in the macho home owner's club if you must, But I
really don't have the need for a penis extender... er.. a... leaf
blower.

--
Warren H.

==========
Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my
employer, my friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife.
Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is
coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this
response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants
to go outside now.
Blatant Plug: Celebrate Christmas with The Simpsons
http://www.holzemville.com/mall/simpsons.html

"Warren" wrote in message
news:W9zvb.205310$9E1.1098933@attbi_s52...
Shepherd wrote:

"Warren" wrote in message
news:3VEtb.165408$ao4.538609@attbi_s51...
Phisherman wrote:
Anyone comment on gas-powered blowers? I'm thinking
about getting
one
for leaf pickup, and more importantly, to clean driveways
and
streets
from grass clippings.

Of course you _should_ be mixing your leaves and grass clippings
and putting them in a compost pile, or at least using them as a
nice, heavy mulch under those trees.

Gas-powered blowers add to air pollution, create noise pollution,
move debris from your yard to someone else's, and increase our
trade deficit in a couple of ways -- by making us buy more
foreign oil, and by buying equipment which was at least in part
manufactured out of the country.

Raking leaves is excellent aerobic exercise and by doing so you
need to spend fewer non-productive hours in the health club on
exercise machines.

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - VEGETARIAN:
An Indian word meaning "lousy hunter."

Jim Lewis wrote:

Of course you _should_ be mixing your leaves and grass clippings
and putting them in a compost pile, or at least using them as a
nice, heavy mulch under those trees.

Grass clippings get mulched back into the lawn. The leaves are moved to
the vegetable garden. The shreaded leaves are tilled into the soil this
fall, and in the spring I test (among other things) the nitrogen level
(along with visual inspection) to make sure they have incorporated well.

Gas-powered blowers add to air pollution, create noise pollution,
move debris from your yard to someone else's, and increase our
trade deficit in a couple of ways -- by making us buy more
foreign oil, and by buying equipment which was at least in part
manufactured out of the country.

Raking leaves is excellent aerobic exercise and by doing so you
need to spend fewer non-productive hours in the health club on
exercise machines.

When I rake, I use a big rake, and a large tarp. Dragging the loaded
tarp through the gate and to the backyard is more of a workout than the
raking itself. As long as you're not trying to get every little leaf
fragment, raking is no big deal.

--
Warren H.

==========
Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my
employer, my friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife.
Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is
coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this
response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants
to go outside now.
Blatant Plug: Celebrate Christmas with The Simpsons
http://www.holzemville.com/mall/simpsons.html

"Warren" wrote in message
news:ZEBvb.272579$Fm2.286443@attbi_s04...
Jim Lewis wrote:

Of course you _should_ be mixing your leaves and grass clippings
and putting them in a compost pile, or at least using them as a
nice, heavy mulch under those trees.

Grass clippings get mulched back into the lawn. The leaves are moved to
the vegetable garden. The shreaded leaves are tilled into the soil this
fall, and in the spring I test (among other things) the nitrogen level
(along with visual inspection) to make sure they have incorporated well.

Gas-powered blowers add to air pollution, create noise pollution,
move debris from your yard to someone else's, and increase our
trade deficit in a couple of ways -- by making us buy more
foreign oil, and by buying equipment which was at least in part
manufactured out of the country.

Raking leaves is excellent aerobic exercise and by doing so you
need to spend fewer non-productive hours in the health club on
exercise machines.

When I rake, I use a big rake, and a large tarp. Dragging the loaded
tarp through the gate and to the backyard is more of a workout than the
raking itself. As long as you're not trying to get every little leaf
fragment, raking is no big deal.

--
Warren H.

On a yard as small as yours with only one tree, raking is no problem at all.
On the lawns around here that measure from 20,000 to 25,000 sq. ft. or more,
with half a dozen large mature oak trees, it is a very big deal indeed.

Shepherd

Electric leaf blowers, people, electric leaf blowers and a 100 ft extension
cord......Even if that wouldn't work on a country estate, it would be a
satisfactory solution for 98% of America's homeowners......
"Snooze" wrote in message
om...
"Warren" wrote in message
news:up_ub.190057$mZ5.1410569@attbi_s54...

But the point is that for each minute you are using your leaf blower,
you're polluting 17 times as much as each minute you drive your car. How
often you use your car, or how often you use the leaf blower is
irrelevant.

So 1 minute of leaf blowing releases same amount of pollution as driving a
car 17 minutes.


Each time I fart I make a horrible stink in the room. Far more than my
car would make. How much I drive my car is irrelevant. My fart still
stinks more than my car. Be thankful that I don't fart as much as I
drive, but don't forgive my fart just because I drive a lot.

As cute as your fart analogy sounds, it's hardly accurate. What percent of
the total air pollution released millions of cars on the road every day,
and
compare that to what percent of air pollution comes from the perhaps
thousands of leaf blowers and other two stroke engines being on any given
day.

It also doesn't matter if there are more cars than leaf blowers. If that
were a justification, the oil-fired power plant down the road could
defend it's polution by pointing out that there's only one plant for
every one million cars.

And oil or coal fired power plants are heavily regulated, in the tons of
pollution they are legally allowed to release.


The point is that a leaf blower puts out a disportional amount of
polution for it's size. Comparing it to a typical car is only meant to
emphisize that an engine far to big to strap on your back is 17 times
cleaner for each minute of use.



I agree that 2 strokes are much louder, and release far more pollutants
then
a similarly powered 4 stroke. But it does no good to bandage the paper cut
when the patient has also been shot in the chest. What is the marginal
benefit gained reducing air pollution by eliminating 2 stroke engine?
Compare that to the marginal benefit gained by using leaf blowers?

Sameer

"Shepherd" expounded:

On a yard as small as yours with only one tree, raking is no problem at all.
On the lawns around here that measure from 20,000 to 25,000 sq. ft. or more,
with half a dozen large mature oak trees, it is a very big deal indeed.

Very true. I've got a yard that big, with many oaks and pines, and
use both rakes and electric leaf blowers. The electric ones need
cords, true, but they're much quieter and less polluting than the gas
ones.

--
Ann, Gardening in zone 6a
Just south of Boston, MA
********************************

Xref: kermit rec.gardens:257001

Shepherd wrote:

On a yard as small as yours with only one tree, raking is no problem
at all.
On the lawns around here that measure from 20,000 to 25,000 sq. ft. or
more,
with half a dozen large mature oak trees, it is a very big deal
indeed.

If raking up one tree is faster than blowing the leaves, why would it be
faster to blow the leaves of 12 trees than rake 12 trees.

Or to put it into numbers:
Time it takes to rake up one tree: 30 minutes. Time to rake up 12
trees: 12x30=360 minutes.
Time to blow the leaves of one tree: 60 minutes. Time to blow the
leaves of 12 trees: 12x60=720 minutes.

The difference? When I swing the rake, it doesn't matter if there is
just the natural layer of leaves under it, or up to 5 or 6 times that
depth. Takes the same effort. With the blower, it may blow that single
layer just as fast as the rake, but as the pile builds up, the blower
becomes less efficient.

And if those leaves are wet, add 50% more time to raking; double -- or
may be triple, depending on the size of the engine -- the time for
blowing.

It's also more difficult to blow onto a tarp than it is to rake onto a
tarp. With the rake, all you have to do is lift the rake high enough to
miss the tarp. With the blower, you have to aim pretty darn high to miss
the tarp, and when you do that, you miss the leaves, too.

I'll grant you that my arms would be falling off if I raked-up under 12
trees, but I'd be bored to death, and my arms would still be sore after
spending 12 hours with a blower hanging from them. At least if I raked,
my pain would be accompanied by a muscle and aerobic workout, not simply
cramps from stretching my arms out, and carpal tunnel syndrome from the
vibration of the blower.

If I had a dozen trees, I wouldn't have the time to rake or blow the
leaves. But I would have the time to use a yard vac. A dozen trees in
about 180 minutes. The leaves are already shredded, and if they're wet,
there's hardly an increase in the time it takes.

But if you want to carry around your blower, that's fine with me. It's
not my time, and it's not my arms.

BTW... 20,000 to 25,000 square feet of lawn is far too much work to
begin with. Unless you need that size of a lawn for kids to play
football, you could save yourself a lot of work, and have a much more
aesthetically pleasing landscape, by converting some of it to perennial
beds. There's nothing attractive about 20,000 square feet of nothing but
grass.

--
Warren H.

==========
Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my
employer, my friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife.
Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is
coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this
response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants
to go outside now.
Blatant Plug: Do your Christmas Shopping Online
http://www.holzemville.com/mall/associateshop.com

Snooze wrote:
"According to the Lung Association, a leaf blower causes as much
smog as
17
cars . "

This reminds of the quote, "there are lies, damn lies and statistics."
17
times more pollution sounds really bad, but consider this. If you use
your
gas powered leaf blower for 10 minutes every week, that translates to
170
minutes of driving time a week, about 24.2 minutes a day.

If you are a 2 car household that's only 12.1 minutes per car.
Considering
that US average commute time to work is about 20 minutes, or 40
minutes
round trip. Cars pollute far more then a leaf blower.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/...cb02cn117.html

But the point is that for each minute you are using your leaf blower,
you're polluting 17 times as much as each minute you drive your car. How
often you use your car, or how often you use the leaf blower is
irrelevant.

Each time I fart I make a horrible stink in the room. Far more than my
car would make. How much I drive my car is irrelevant. My fart still
stinks more than my car. Be thankful that I don't fart as much as I
drive, but don't forgive my fart just because I drive a lot.

It also doesn't matter if there are more cars than leaf blowers. If that
were a justification, the oil-fired power plant down the road could
defend it's polution by pointing out that there's only one plant for
every one million cars.

The point is that a leaf blower puts out a disportional amount of
polution for it's size. Comparing it to a typical car is only meant to
emphisize that an engine far to big to strap on your back is 17 times
cleaner for each minute of use.

--
Warren H.

==========
Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my
employer, my friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife.
Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is
coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this
response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants
to go outside now.
Blatant Plug: Celebrate Christmas with The Simpsons
http://www.holzemville.com/mall/simpsons.html