I live in a very leafy area with a lot of deciduous forest cover, so we're no stranger to leaves. I have never understood leafblowing. It seems like such busy work. It's not hugely common here but I have seen people carefully shepherding leaves into little piles on pathways, battling against the entropy of a light breeze. I'm sure there's a good reason but it always just seems like the ultimate expression of man trying to conquer nature in every way
I live in an neighborhood with a lot of retired people, and I agree with the "busy work" sentiment. As soon as some leaves have fallen, you can hear them firing up their leafblowers.
Why? Why not wait until there is a decent amount of leaves and ... use a rake? I really think it's because they don't have anything else to do and it gives them a sense of purpose.
I basically live in the forest and get an unreasonable amount of leaves each autumn. Most of these leaves are also from oak and do not decompose well, leaving the lawn a mess in the spring. Using a rake is unreasonable for me, and a leaf blower saves me many, many hours each year that I can spend better elsewhere.
My main use case for a leaf blower is to blow lawn clippings off the sidewalks, paths, and roads back on to my lawn after mowing and trimming. Rakes aren't effective for such small trimmed parts.
My leaf blower is battery electric though so its a good bit quieter than the gas ones others use, although I do agree its still one of the loudest parts of my yard maintenance.
Same here, it is crazy around Autum in Germany, I never seen anyone bothering with leaves back in Portugal, and worse many of those leaf blowers are diesel powered, so much for being eco-friendly.
Are many HN members in Zürich? I was suprised to see this type of news with so many points, though it's quite amusing to see the mixture of different topics in the front page.
Yes and I am also surprised to see this news here. (I voted yes to the restriction) We also approved an initiative for cheaper public transport which is cool.
Thank you - it'll be years before I can vote in Zurich, but the neighbourly weekly leaf blower parade kept me closing my windows or working somewhere else
Not cool. It's not like a vote makes it actually cheaper to run public transport. It just means the city will tax the sort of tech workers who post on HN a lot more in order to give the money to other people (who already get subsidized rent and other privileges), driving ever more out to Zug, and that the currently well functioning public transport system will decay due to underfunding and lack of capital investment.
Zurich is an important city for IT in Europe, and a city I personally like as a visitor.
But that's not it - I find this restriction interesting, and I wanted to learn more. I contrast this with the unrestricted American "freedom to" that I usually see in HN.
The leafblower is one of those partisan issues where one camp likes to score internet points by joining the chorus against Unpopular Thing even though they have never been impacted by it, and the other camp defending it because their area really gets a lot of leaves compared to the rest, leaves kill their lawns, and brooms/rakes are seemingly ineffective or they don't exist.
I moved to a neighborhood where a surprising majority of the residents do not outsource their lawn care and I think this makes the biggest difference. The noise reduction of simply not having beaten up landscaper trucks with muffler deletes driving through the streets every day is a massive help.
Letting your landscapers blow nutrients off your property is insane when it's difficult to find good quality top soil. The stuff you buy at Home Depot is essentially trash and rocks now. What comes out of the mower bag each spring can yield an incredible amount of dirt after it's had a full summer to cook in the pile.
In Washington, DC, gasoline-powered leaf blowers are forbidden. But less than an hour ago, I passed a powerful-looking one ready for use on a lawn nearby.
We finally bought a battery-powered leaf blower. This is really not for the lawn, which is relatively small and easily raked. Rather, my wife likes to remove the leaves from the garden beds. These are difficult to rake, what with shrubs etc., and one generally brings a good deal of mulch along with the leaves. We also have a strip of gravel to one side of the garage, and the blower makes it possible to remove leaves without gravel coming along.
And since you asked, the leaves end up at the curb. The city has a couple of collections every fall.
I live in the Netherlands. Moved right next to a cycling path that connects my district with the rest of the city. Big mistake - the sound of mopeds is unbearable. On top of that, there are kids who enjoy revving their engines. The sound drives me mad, but for reasons out of scope of this comment I can't move out. Fortunately, the city scheduled a ban on combustion engine mopeds. The problem is that it'll take a few years for the ban to come into force.
Funnily, previously I lived next to a railway and also under fly path of airplanes and these sounds never bothered me. It's the tiny combustion engines that make high-pitched noises that are the worst.
Maybe it’s just me but I wonder why western countries don’t implement noise limits for vehicles with sirens in residential areas (fire trucks, police, ambulance etc.).
It always felt to me unnecessarily loud.
I don't now where you live, but there seam to be drastic differences between countries. These vehicle do have an in-city and out-city loudness. Also here they tend to have the siren off most of the time and only turn them on immediately before an intersection.
Funnily enough, I got into trouble in Korea (Jeju to be specific) because of this. I had just stopped at a red light (huge intersection), and I saw a police car get behind me, they had their lights on and put on the sirens.
In my home country (France), lights mean emergency, sound means "MOVE ITS URGENT" (and they generally ONLY use sirens when it is REALLY urgent). So when they started the siren, I put my warning lights on and moved slowly through the red light and to the outside of the road (I did not continue moving).
The guy ripped me a new one in Korean, but then I explained that I thought it was urgent because we were all stopped and they put the sound on so I moved out of the way in the safest way I could and even stopped. He calmed down eventually.
Apparently, it's normal in Korea for police cars to 1) always have the lights on and 2) just randomly blast the sirens going about their day.
I live in Paris, France and it’s so loud (but people here don’t really respect emergency vehicle so it could be part of why it’s so loud). In contrast, I spent a month in Tokyo Japan; and even though I was near a police station, it was nowhere near the sound level of what we have here. Curious what other countries you have in mind?
They’ve made them louder and louder over the years. That’s because cars have improved soundproofing to keep out the road noise of the tires against asphalt. But that also means it’s harder for drivers to hear sirens. Plus sound systems have gotten louder (in some cases almost drowning out sirens for people outside the vehicle as well as inside!)
TLDR: arms race against audibility for drivers, with residents’ sanity as the casualties.
Your points make sense, I didn’t think about it that way. I wish there was a standard to override nearby vehicles with radio / audio to signal the presence of the emergency ones, but probably not happening anytime soon…
Maybe another future win for self driving cars that can be more aware of those things and smooth out traffic
Seems like one compromise would be that they can only be used during a few-hour period every other week or so. So you'd only get the noise in a predictable window.
In Zürich, the worst offender is the outdated two cycle moped. Sadly, not much is being done about it because of the cult and retro status of these things.
You have to compromise on something to get change through. Realistically this problem will fix itself when electric blowers take over that can be used at any time and realistically work better now.
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But some people seem to get obsessed with it and do it almost every day instead of the minimum number of times required to accomplish the purpose.
Around here if you simply let the leaves stay on your lawn you’re going to have a moldy mess and dead grass the next spring.
Why though?
It's generally a lot quicker unless you're a very old person
It's however infinitely more fun with the leave blower, I admit to that!
My leaf blower is battery electric though so its a good bit quieter than the gas ones others use, although I do agree its still one of the loudest parts of my yard maintenance.
Well, yeah, they have such big gaps because leaves are big. Have you tried a push-broom? That would be the first thing I'd reach for.
Leaf blower is still pretty useful for keeping things tidy, but I’m still embarrassed to use my battery one.
But that's not it - I find this restriction interesting, and I wanted to learn more. I contrast this with the unrestricted American "freedom to" that I usually see in HN.
Dead Comment
Letting your landscapers blow nutrients off your property is insane when it's difficult to find good quality top soil. The stuff you buy at Home Depot is essentially trash and rocks now. What comes out of the mower bag each spring can yield an incredible amount of dirt after it's had a full summer to cook in the pile.
We finally bought a battery-powered leaf blower. This is really not for the lawn, which is relatively small and easily raked. Rather, my wife likes to remove the leaves from the garden beds. These are difficult to rake, what with shrubs etc., and one generally brings a good deal of mulch along with the leaves. We also have a strip of gravel to one side of the garage, and the blower makes it possible to remove leaves without gravel coming along.
And since you asked, the leaves end up at the curb. The city has a couple of collections every fall.
Is there a reason why your wife wants them removed from the beds? Unless we're talking about an amount of leaves that's endangering the plants there?
Funnily, previously I lived next to a railway and also under fly path of airplanes and these sounds never bothered me. It's the tiny combustion engines that make high-pitched noises that are the worst.
In my home country (France), lights mean emergency, sound means "MOVE ITS URGENT" (and they generally ONLY use sirens when it is REALLY urgent). So when they started the siren, I put my warning lights on and moved slowly through the red light and to the outside of the road (I did not continue moving).
The guy ripped me a new one in Korean, but then I explained that I thought it was urgent because we were all stopped and they put the sound on so I moved out of the way in the safest way I could and even stopped. He calmed down eventually.
Apparently, it's normal in Korea for police cars to 1) always have the lights on and 2) just randomly blast the sirens going about their day.
Deleted Comment
TLDR: arms race against audibility for drivers, with residents’ sanity as the casualties.
Those leaf blowers put more garbage into the air than a car or pickup truck. They're that bad.
https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/de/stadtleben/veranstaltungen-u...