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Comment by michaelteter | Hacker News Reader

Unless cities create laws against loud lawn equipment, the cheaper (louder) option will always be chosen first.

I'm also not even convinced that, all things being equal except noise, that some people would choose the quieter option. After all, people spend $$$ making their vehicles LOUDER, even when it doesn't always add performance.

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> the cheaper (louder) option will always be chosen first.

Not if the quieter versions are cheaper. Electric leaf blowers are already mostly cheaper than gas powered ones, it is just that for large scale commercial purposes, gas powered ones still have an edge in cost and more importantly in terms of "how long can I work without swapping/refueling." I suspect the line will continue to drift toward electrics given that there is a lot of yearly advances in battery tech and not much development in gas powered engines.

For home use if you don't have a large area to cover, it's even cheaper to get an AC leaf blower. Just need an extension cord that can reach to the extent of your yard. Obviously less universally practical for professional landscapers, battery technology is critical for them.

AC wall power just doesn't have the watts to run a powerful motor. A battery can do this because it can charge longer than it runs if you want. Leaf blowers might be okay, but a lot of AC powered stuff lacks power to be good.

It would help if the US switched to 240V mains power (for everything, not just dryers and stoves) instead of the wimpy 120V it uses now.

Technically speaking we do have 240V in all of our walls, you just have to use 2 of the hot wires instead of 1 hot wire and the ground-referenced neutral. 240V 30A+ outlets accessible from the garage/driveway should be becoming a lot more commonplace in the EV era, if they become common enough companies might start designing heavy duty lawncare equipment that can take advantage of it.

>Technically speaking we do have 240V in all of our walls, you just have to use 2 of the hot wires instead of 1 hot wire and the ground-referenced neutral.

No, you don't. Have you done any house wiring? The only place you can get 240V is at the panel; from there, there are branch circuits that go through the walls. Each branch circuit uses a (probably 14-gauge) Romex cable that has 3 conductors: hot (black), neutral (white), and ground (which has no insulation). There's no way you can just open the wall and get access to 240V.

>240V 30A+ outlets accessible from the garage/driveway should be becoming a lot more commonplace in the EV era

That's only happening because people are paying a lot of money for an electrician to pull a heavy-gauge cable through the walls and wire it to the panel. It's not normally a DIY project. It might be easier in many garages though since the panel is frequently located there, and some garages are unfinished.

Technically, you could rewire one of your branch circuits to be 240V by connecting the neutral to a hot, and using a different circuit breaker, but this would be totally illegal since it's not to code.

You only need heavy gauge wire for a high amperage circuit. There are NEMA receptacles for 240V 15/20A circuits, you could absolutely wire one up with the normal 15/20A wire and have it be up to code as long as you use the correct receptacle on the circuit. It might not be exceedingly useful in the short term, but with an adapter you could use imported European equipment at least.

For a few things, mostly things don't need that much power and lower voltage is safer.

It is much more convenient to recharge a battery than to get out a huge extension cord, even for non-professionals. The battery ones are cheap enough for most, even if you just have a small driveway but a neighbor's very large tree to worry about.

Yep, unfortunately this is why people will happily spend 5x as much for a vacuum cleaner that's much less powerful (and basically a dustbuster), just because it's cordless.

You can tear my Dyson V10 away from my cold dead body. The best vacuum cleaner is the one you actually use all the time.

There's also a market-based reason why it could work: my HOA needs to choose between two competing landscapers, one that blasts the sound of a two-stroke engine for a couple hours a week, and one that doesn't. This does not seem like an unrealistic scenario!

I believe CA has tried to ban gas based leaf blowers: https://www.cnet.com/home/yard-and-outdoors/loud-gas-belchin...

> More and more communities have enacted usage restrictions on leaf blowers due to the noise

There's nothing like the sound of a healthy V8.

There is one thing better, though. Stand near a P-51 Mustang when its engine starts. Wow.

There's even a book written about it - "Sigh of a Merlin". (The P-51 engine is a Merlin V12.)

Please keep this attitude on the track, and away from where people live.

Ripping your engine in loud cities, no matter how great you think it sounds, is like urinating on the toilet seat or throwing your trash out the window. Might make your life a little easier or better, but it's just flagrantly inconsiderate.

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