I hate these things too. Especially now that my office is my poorly insulated condo. 6 hours of leaf blowing every Wednesday.

I live in south king county and these things are the bane of existence as well. I have to live with highway noise and jet noise and my neighbors ATVs— fine. At least those serve a purpose. The leaf blowers are such a waste of time and energy and fuel and the remaining hearing of all of us who are regularly assaulted w the constant noise of modern life anyway. Funny thing about leaves too, nature has built them to decompose and deliver nutrients into the soil. Rake them, yard waste them if you will, but for the love of god stop the leaf blowing

seconded

thirded

Fourthded.

Fifthed

The other day I witnessed what may be the ultimate leaf-blower absurdity: a guy using one in a driving rainstorm! (My guess is he was a landscaping company employee just doing what he was told.)

I absolutely use a gas powered leaf blower, but I can't say I'm proud of it. I'm about to pick up an electric one to complement the gas version to reduce the noise polution. I use a rake when possible, but my yard requires a leaf blower, especially my roof.

It would be nice to have a perfect postage stamp yard with some maples you need to clean up with a rake a couple times per year, but in the PNW, that's often not the case. Many of us have huge Doug Firs, Cedars and Hemlocks that shit all over our house 365 days per year! :)

Leaf blowers are not great, but they are not the source of our climate and health issues. They are similar to pressure washers .... You've got to fire that bitch up a few times per year to clean your decks and sidewalks. It's just part of the PNW. And I must not be in the norm, but I do pick those bastard leaves, needles, cones and twigs up.

Word.

@8: "they are not the source of our climate and health issues"

Tell that to the people who have health issues from inhaling all the dust and other matter blown around by blowers.

Fourteenth.

@14: In all seriousness, I agree with I, Anon and others. Leaf blowers really are excessively noisy, disruptive, and, by being gasoline fueled, another source of fossil fuels being needlessly overused. With the brutal reality of climate change exacerbated by human-caused CO2 emissions, leaf blowers need to be banned.

this gotta be the third or fourth griping about leaf lowers here recently.
here's an idea, why don't y'all just start a raking club and do some civic good by getting out there and raking shit for everyone. free us all of the noise and air pollution and free our screens of redundancy. be the change!

In the immortal words of William Shatner and Henry Rollins “Is there anything more futile.”

…a pad of wet leaves on wet pavement is a recipe for slipping and falling on your ass. And it’s good they don’t bag them BECAUSE they’re supposed to be decomposed. Most people blow leaves off sidewalks and into dirt patches under trees. If you prefer rakes, fine, but it’s a lot more work and I don’t think our puny gas-powered leaf blowers are all that responsible for global warming (that would be all the cheap plastic clothes and internationally-produced widgets we buy).

Gotta say, all the anti-leaf blower vitriol seems kinda poorly thought out here. Before you winge too much suggest a legit alternative that is a time-effective measure against slimy-ass sidewalks mid-November

people complaining about people complaining about leaf blowers and they truly don't see the irony of their bullshit lmao. Shut up and let us hate the leaf blowing.

Why is it okay to make a sexist generalization like "(always men—don't get me started about that)" but if the OP put a "wo" in front of men, there would be rioting in the streets? Shitty comments hurt. Everyone deserves respect. If you try reeeeeal hard, could you make your very valid point about leaf-blowers without being hunty?