NPR has an extremely funny news piece about Newton, Mass., a pleasant suburban town in which the residents enjoy their neatly manicured laws… but at what cost to their sanity?
Some residents of a leafy suburb of Boston are fighting over what to do with all the leaves. Residents of Newton, Mass., say they are being tormented by the noise coming from the gas-powered leaf blowers that are now everywhere.
Oh no!
“We’re surrounded by these horrible deafening sounds,” one resident moans during a debate over gas-powered leaf blowers at Newton’s City Hall.
“It sounds like there is a jet stalled over my home,” says another.
“My fury at feeling trapped lasts… is this the day when they are coming? Can I get out?”
We especially enjoyed the part when “Landscaper Joe” tells NPR about the magical leaf blowers he uses to blow a tornado of debris three stories into the air. He is unable to contain his excitement as he describes them:
“We almost never touch a rake anymore. We don’t have to sweep stairs…nothing! You just blow everything clean after you cut. You know. The doormat goes flying! We’ve set off the car alarms! Oh yeah…[laughter].”
Joe says he can’t imagine going back to raking, and doesn’t think homeowners would pay increased bills for quieter landscaping. “Are we going to back to walking? Are we not going to take cars?”
Do these leaf blowers bother you? Newton’s residents are trying to ban them completely.
Town Weighs Ban on Leaf Blowers [NPR]
(Photo:Beat Machine)
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“Surprisingly, no one mentions weedwhackers, snowblowers, edgers, lawnmowers, and chainsaws.”
Well, there are different levels of annoyance. People don’t usually run their weedwhackers or edgers or chainsaws for 40 minutes straight. Snowblowers I loathe but a) having all the windows shut muffles the noise and b) I’m sympathetic to the “need” for snowblowers. Like for my neighbor who had a snow-shovel heart attack.
Lawnmowers and leafblowers, though, make me want to go STRANGLE people. It’s hard to enjoy a quiet Saturday when everybody and their mother is mowing their lawn in sequence all day. Couldn’t they all do it at 10 a.m. or something? The house behind me has a golf-course yard and no matter what time of day or day of the week we’re in our backyard attempting to enjoy some quiet outdoor time, her son drops by to mow the effing yard. And he takes FOREVER. He makes like FOUR PASSES. EVERY TIME. (Probably the lawnmowers down the street wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if it weren’t for this jackass.)
Leaf blowers, tho, are just SO LOUD and in the hands of homeowners make the leaf process take a helluva lot longer than just RAKING them.
“There’s no place for a landscape worker to plug into. Think about it: when you use your electric blower, you plug into your garage.”
Maybe I live in crazy world, but who doesn’t have an outdoor outlet? Where do you plug your Christmas lights into? I’m sure it’s different in other parts of the country, but where I live, EVERY house has an outdoor outlet.
As for why motors are so loud on lawn equipment, they’re almost entirely unregulated and it turns out to be a pretty powerful lobby. They’re super-pollutey, as a rule, and guzzle gas.
We switched to a reel mower (largely because I got sick of paying for gas for the gas mower) and could not be happier. Mowing is actually a PLEASANT chore now. And the damn thing costs a lot less to maintain, and nothing whatever to run.
(BTW, the most annoying sound on MY block is my neighbors who are building a deck to cover their ENTIRE – yes, ENTIRE – backyard. Every summer, 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, with the hammers and saws, on and on and on. They’ve only got about a quarter of it left to cover, though.)
Los Angeles calling in-
Every week, I’ve got a guy who blows clippings and leaves all over the alley next to my building. He does this for maybe an hour and it is LOUD. I’ve often wondered “A broom could sweep that up in 5 minutes and put less chemicals in his face.”
I admit that I have no experience with leaf blowers and alleys but, when I was a kid, rakes were very effective on lawns. And their quiet. I miss those days.
I work at home in a town with lots of trees. The lots are all about one quarter acre. There is a cycle of two weeks of crazy making noise and choking exhaust smell. Then one week off where you can enjoy quiet suburban life. This goes on for four months or until the first snow. The noise is from 7am until dusk and it’s not just leaf blowers. There are the giant vacuums that suck the pile of leaves into the truck. I am not convinced that the blowers are more efficient than rakes. Folks around here used to do their lawns with rakes in a weekend. Now six guys come out with their blowers and take the same amount of time. What do I do? I let the wind blow the leaves into the corners and go out with a bamboo rake to take out the excess.
Oh bajeebus. I live in an apartment complex and there is NO escaping those blasted things. They come like every other day and wake me up in the morning. It’s like they TRY to be the most annoying. Now, ban them? I don’t know about all that. Maybe do like MyCokesBiggerThanYours said, make them only operable between certain hours, so as to limit the amount of people being bothered.
@Eyebrows McGee: Wow… synchronized lawn mowing.
So glad you don’t live near me. You’d really hate my riding mower.
j/k.
It is a funny thought though… “5 4 3 2 1 Start your mowing!” And the whole neighborhood begins mowing at once. Sounds a bit like The Truman Show.
@Televiper:
“There was a guy in Manitoba, Canada who invented a catalytic converter for 2 stroke engines but couldn’t sell it because no manufacturer wanted to justify adding $3 to the cost of a lawnmower or weed-whacker.”
Do you have a citation for this? Because a catalytic converter is a pollution control device and if it does supress noise it would only be as a side effect. Secondly, catalytic converters contain platinum and can be quite costly. Thirdly, I believe that South Coast Air Management District and the California Air Resources Board have looked at converters for 2 stroke engines but the fuel/oil mixture tends to foul them so that they clog and never really reach a temperature where they can properly work. It’s been a while since I’ve been involved in pollution control issues in CA, so my memory is fuzzy.
Also both of these agencies have been looking at ways to control pollution from these engines as well as buldozers, tractors, and other non-road going sources. But as has been stated previously, some very strong lobbys at work there.
I have the solution. Plant trees and wildflowers and other things that don’t require maintenance.
yeah, I know…then you couldn’t make your house look exactly like the one next door and busybody neighborhood organizations couldn’t rules…
Cry me a fucking river, though. Y’all are the dumbasses that moved there in the first place.
RE: SYNERGY AT 12:30 PM
It probably depends on the leaves and if they are damp or not… but I’d say that it’s closer to “4 to 1″, which is still pretty awesome. As usual, I did a lot of research before I bought that particular brand/model (at Lowes btw).
@Eyebrows McGee:
“I’m sympathetic to the “need” for snowblowers.”
How can you be sympathetic to the “need” for snow blowers but not the “need” for leaf blowers?
Just as people can rake the leaves manually, people can shovel their own damn driveways (or hire a neighbour kid to do it).
I’ve got a 3/4 acre lot, and this is the first year (of 3 leaving here) that I’ve finally broken down and bought a leaf blower (though it is electric). Yes, I can rake the leaves myself, but there’s only so much time in the day. I’d rather spend 20 minutes blowing the leaves into a pile (and then sucking them up with the vac and mulching them) than an hour and a half raking and bagging them.
Mulched leaves make better compost anyways.
I live in Newton, in one of the villages called Auburndale. What actually triggered this wasn’t the single user homeowner, it was the landscaping companies that use several of them at once. The opposition grew to include the single user homeowner. There’s stuff in the news about limiting the hours of operation and number of units that can be used simultaneously. I think a total ban is a political ploy to limit use – a compromise of sorts. A single homeowner tends to use it weekends or evenings and may take a long time. Some find that annoying. A landscapers heavy duty version can create a tornado of dust and it annoys me when I have to use the spritzers to clear the neighbors dusty crud off my car. Not so much the about car really, but it makes me think what we breathe. And the volume of several in use at once is a bit much by any standard.
And about being a Jewish area, not in this sector. There was one Jewish student in my kids class of 27. Metco (the racially based program that brings Boston black students to the suburbs) has seven students in the same grade. And our schools are overcrowded and requiring trailer classrooms, but this is a whole different subject. Metco was recently struck down in the court, and they are averting race for income based busing.
I don’t have a solution for the blowers that’d make everyone happy, but there should be a means to limit the noise (several commercial units running at once is a bit much) and dust (some are incredibly powerful wind machines) created by these machines. I’d think that a small gas or electric unit would fulfill that need. And a landscaper that moves in with several at once to be efficient shouldn’t be allowed.
@tph: You don’t NEED to pick up the leaves. They’re not going to prevent you from getting to work or the grocery store. Elderly/disabled/ill people can’t shovel either or they do and end up having a heart attack.
Good old Massachusetts. A friend vacationing in MASS. showed me an article stating that a man threw a heir brush at his wife and was charged with assault with a deadly weapon. What every happen to Live free or die?, or am I thinking of the wrong state? Well gotta go, it’s 6 AM gotta see if the damn leaf blower will start. Can’t be burning daylight.
@tph: “How can you be sympathetic to the “need” for snow blowers but not the “need” for leaf blowers?”
What tph said. I did put “need” in quotes.
Snowblowers aren’t technically NEEDED, but you can’t leave your house if your driveway is snowed in. Leaves just blow around. They don’t impede anything or anyone.
Also, typically older people can manage raking (very lightweight tool, fairly easy work; a leaf blower may actually make it HARDER for some people because of the weight), but shoveling heavy wet (“heart attack”) snow can be difficult even for strong men, let alone frail elderly people.
I live in a similarly upscale neighborhood on the north shore of Boston. I work at home, and I rent. All day, the leafblowers and the lawnmowers roar. They’re all run by landscaping companies, and pretty much every owner on the street, apparently, uses them weekly. This obsession with pristine, unreal lawns is ridiculous. Beyond that, there IS such a thing as noise pollution, and this is it. It’s not about whining, for God’s sake. It’s about cutting into a peaceful quality of life (and for me, work) for what comes down to an entitled people competition to have the most manicured lawn.
Use a blower. Go to Jail.
[www.discovernikkei.org]
i’m just trying to imagine the look on the average neuvoriche suburbanite in my area throw a fit when their weekly lawn maintenance bill goes from $80 to $150. priceless.
Leaf blowers don’t bother me any more or less than lawnmowers, poorly maintained cars, barking dogs or shouting children. All of which we all experience in our neighborhoods. If the city wants to establish a noise ordinance to get rid of leaf blowers, it should apply across the board to all outdoor noise.
Get over it.
To me there is something zen-like about raking leaves on a crisp fall or spring morning and spending the afternoon with a beer in your hand dozing through football games.
You just don’t get that with a blower.
The noise of those 2-stroke engines really is loud. I’m embarassed to use my snowblower, but there are few tasks I loathe more than shovelling snow.
@Huginn: And being Jewish (which certainly does not describe much of Newton anyway) is relevant here just how?
I want to hear you talk your way out of this anti-Semitic comment.
Can someone explain to me what use these things are? I mewan if they were vacums which removed grass clippings and dead leaves I could understand but alll these useless things do is blow your trash into the street or the neighbours yard.
I hate the d**n things.
Bad enough on the leaves — but when bldg maintenance uses them on the sidewalk instead of a broom, where does the crap go? Into the air and street.
Oh, great — your mess, our problem. Plus, the dust-filled air is not exactly heaven for my hard contacts….
you can always burn down all of the trees. no trees, no leaves, no leaf blowers, problem solved.