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Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

“To equal the hydrocarbon emissions of about a half-hour of yard work with this two-stroke leaf blower, you'd have to drive a Ford Raptor for 3,887 miles, or the distance from Northern Texas to Anchorage, Alaska.”

https://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/features/emissions-test-...

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That's totally insane. I switched to Ego yard equipment maybe 5 years ago and it's so much better. I don't have to screw around trying to get the weedwhacker to run, nor the blower vac. No plumes of sooty smoke when I start the lawn mower. It all "just works".

I don't have a big yard, but the Ego stuff handles it well. My only gripe is in the fall (New England, so lots of leaves) I only really get 15-20 mins of runtime on the blower. Having said that, I have several other batteries including the big one for the mower so by cycling through them I can get the cleanup done.

I think that for a landscaping company, it'd be tough to go (battery) electric, at least without having a big library of batteries. Doable, but probably takes some commitment to the environment vs profit.

> takes some commitment to the environment vs profit

What it takes is government regulation.

I'm not generally a big government person, but in some cases (like this!) I totally agree!

I've recently had to switch to the Ego "electric" neon green stuff, and it's a definite step down from the red commercial Maruyamas.

Electric weedwhacker (I'm assured these don't exist on the West Coast, but they do have an alternative called the "weedeater") barely has any strength behind it.

Will it knock down some tall spots in the hard spots of a non-artificially-planned backyard? Yes.

Will it be quick? No.

Can you edge with it? I've tried, but the lack of power means the cut is never clean.

Same with the leafblowers.

Gasoline-powered? That side-walk and driveway are free of leaves in 5 minutes tops.

Electric? I'm slowly walking around like a bozo for a good 15-20 minutes just to get the bigger parts. It's almost impossible to get all the nooks and crannies with the hand-blower.

Same with the trimmers.

Hell. Those small Maruyama trimmers are all you need. Doesn't matter if you need a longer reach: a ladder and one-handing it always does the trick. Admittedly, they're also used as pruners (and they're damn good at it).

I've tried those pole-trimmers, and the lack of power was palpable. You can barely even cut through Rhododendron without slamming that thing into the branches.

Electric? Forget about it. They barely cut through my regular-variety hedge.

Perhaps the "high-powered" stuff has spoiled me forever -- and I do miss them dearly. What I don't miss is my hands going numb, and a persistent ringing in my ears.

I've also grown to be a fan of the "old" New England property landscapes and yards. The ones on the West Coast always seemed so artificial.

A review/comparison of the Ego snow blower:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2GhoDQa6tA

Note that this is true in terms of various pollutants, but importantly not CO2.

Well, importantly, or not so importantly. Focus on CO2 over pollutants that actively harm the health of everyone in the vicinity is the same scam that got us diesel cars.

Sometimes I suspect the obsession with CO2 is encouraged by the most polluting of industries.

In the Raptor's case, the ambient air contained 2.821 ppm of total hydrocarbons, and the amount of total hydrocarbons coming out the Raptor's tailpipe measured 2.639 ppm.

What's the point of comparing small outdoor engines to things that don't emit hydrocarbons?

Keep in mind this is not carbon dioxide (the greenhouse gas). These are other emissions that come from these less cleaner engines.

I find this hard to believe. I remember mowing the lawn for my parents, powering my ridealong lawn mower with a few gallons of gas for an hour or two (or maybe 30 minutes, I don't remember how long it took me). My car, at best, would drive for an hour on a few gallons of gas. So about the same amount of time. What gives?

This is emissions of miscellaneous hydrocarbons, NO, NO₂, and CO. Not CO₂.

If you add a catalytic converter etc. you could cut most of it. But then the engine would be much bulkier and more expensive.

> NO, NO₂, and CO. Not CO₂.

I can't decide if that's a triple negative or a quadruple negative.

The 2 stroke leaf blower is literally burning oil to run, so the emissions are much, much worse. (that's how 2 stroke engines work).

Also note your ride on mower (and other small IC things) don't have catalytic converters or anything at all to manage emissions, so the stuff coming out the exhaust is multiple orders of magnitudes worse - especially for the user who is standing right there breathing it in.

It isn't just about gallons consumed per hour, it's about what comes out the exhaust.

The test is measuring emissions, not efficiency. From the link:

The Results During the FTP 75 test, exhaust gas from the vehicle's tailpipe is captured and analyzed by laboratory-grade equipment that's so expensive it makes the Kentucky Derby look like the Pinewood Derby. This lab equipment measures all kinds of compounds coming out of the tailpipe but the three we will focus on are those with which EPA and CARB are primarily concerned, namely, non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC), oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO).

(then there's a table listing the results...)

Well two-stroke burns the oil as well, so that should be a big difference right there.

The car should also have a more efficient combustion, due to all the electronics, along with a catalytic converter to meet the emission requirements.

Note they talk about hydrocarbon emissions, not just CO2.

Your car has a good engine (mostly because it's regulated). Your lawnmower has the cheapest possible engine that will spin a blade.

The cheap two cycle engine does exhaust and injection in the same cycle. Inevitably a large fraction of the injected fuel is also exhausted. How that tired back to green house gases I'm not totally sure, but it's certainly very bad for your lung health to breathe it!

Cars, among other things that have been mentioned, have catalytic converters.

And four-stroke engines, and a separate oil manifold rather than a fuel-oil mix.

The typical small two-stroke engine has two big problems that cause hilariously bad emissions:

1) The lubricating oil is mixed into the fuel and burned in the combustion cycle. The combustion products of this oil are not clean.

2) They combine exhaust and intake into a single "stroke", i.e. the downstroke after ignition, which can result in unburnt aerosolized fuel escaping with the exhaust.

Additionally, fuel injection systems can typically achieve better emissions than carburetors can. AFAIK small two-strokes (and some four-strokes like small outboard motors, etc.) are largely the last bastion of carburetors in engines manufactured today.

Are they banning solely 2-stroke engines though? It sounds like they are banning everything. Many of these items are available in 4-stroke models.

While not terrible, that doesn't seem favorable for the gas leaf-blower. Most people use yard equipment once a week or more for that long during depending on season.

So using a leaf-blower for 30 mins once a week for 12 weeks has the same emissions as driving a extremely inefficient truck for 45k miles?

What about that is not terrible?

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