California Evil Leaf Blowers

Introduction

I decided to move out of California because I think it is a place completely unsuitable for healthy living and work productivity. The major disasters in California are the noise pollutions from the surrounding people who never care about other people’s feeling, wherever you live. There are many different types of noise pollutions in California, such as neighbor loud music noises, racing car engine noises, motorcycle engine noises, air plane engine noises, etc. The most common one is the leaf blowers.

In this blog post, I would like to condemn California’s hypocrisy and dereliction of duty in environment protection specifically for leaf blower noises.

Cleaning Fallen Leaves are Mandatory

California enforces each property to remove the fallen leaves on the road timely, because they think the fallen leaves, if being blown, will block driver’s vision and cause accidents. So the property managers hire landscaping contractors to do the fallen leaf cleaning work, usually once every week. The landscaping contractors will come routinely regardless whether there are fallen leaves or not because there is a contract.

Most Landscaping Contractors are Unprofessional and Unqualified

Becoming a landscaping contractor or creating a landscaping company is extremely easy in California. Anyone who can afford an Ford truck can do landscaping and pretend to be professional. There is no need for earning a qualification for landscaping.

Doing landscaping is creating the harmony between the human beings and the nature, but not getting the shit done. However, most of the landscaping contractors are not trained so they only know how to get the shit done instead of creating the harmony. Because of this, most of the landscaping contractors use leaf blowers to clean the fallen leaves, no matter how many fallen leaves there is. It’s very common to see that a leaf blower is only blowing one or two fallen leaves, which is completely insane. In fact, the leaf blower might only be useful when there are lots lots fallen leaves and there is no other more advanced equipment for cleaning them. In the rest of the scenarios in California, cleaning the fallen leaves by hand is even much faster and more efficient than by a leaf blower. It’s very common to see that the leaf blower blows for two or three hours only to collect a very small pile of leaves. To do the same amount of the work, most people can finish that in 20 minutes using hand.

I will also mention later that leaf blowers produce heavy air and noise pollution. But the landscaping contractors usually do not care about this and respect nobody living in the neighborhood. In most cases, just switching to the highest power, staying to the property as close as possible, and do the damn job, producing tons of air pollution and house-vibrating and deaf-causing noises to your family. Even the rich people in California can hardly escape from this. I have seen leaf blowers blowing fallen leaves around a 30 million dollar house in a suburban community in California for three hours in the day time and the noise generated almost made me deaf.

Leaf Blower is an Evil Invention

According to the Lichtenberger Engineering Library at University of Iowa, “Although not confirmed, it widely is believed that the leaf blower was invented by Dom Quinto in the late 1950s. It originally was introduced in the United States as an agricultural sprayer, but soon manufacturers saw an opportunity to use the blower as a lawn and garden maintenance tool.”

It turns out to be a completely catastrophic idea from idiots.

According to from Jason Kavanagh, Engineering Editor at Edmunds.com, “The hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor. As ridiculous as it may sound, it is more ‘green’ to ditch your yard equipment and find a way to blow leaves using a Raptor.”

According to the American Green Zone Alliance, an organization that promotes zero-emissions landscape care, the average electric blower produces noise at about 65 dB(A). Compare that to the average noise ratings of common gas backpack blowers: 4-stroke backpack blowers: 70-80 dB(A) 2-stroke backpack blowers: 90+ dB(A). The World Health Organization suggests that healthy daytime indoor noise levels should fall around 55 dB(A). However, leaf blowers typically have operated anywhere between 70 and 90 dB(A).

California’s Environment Protection Hypocrisy

California usually does not care about noise pollution. There is almost no law to prevent noise pollution and it’s rare to see the police guarding a neighborhood or patrolling around. For example, according to San Jose’s code of ordinance, only the sound generated from a few limited number of sources can be considered as noise and there is no formal definition of how many decibel of the sound can be considered as noise. The leaf blower is also an exemption from the code of ordinance. This means if I really want, I can purchase a leaf blower, go outside your home, switch to the max power, and blow for a full day, and it is completely legal. San Jose does have a quiet hours from 10PM to 7AM. But this is almost useless. The leaf blowers are generating air and noise pollutions everywhere in the state during the day time. They work 7 days a week. If it were not due to the quiet hour restrict, they can work 24 hours 7 days a week.

In addition, in many major populated cities California, if you find there are idiots making noises and call the police, it will be de-prioritized and you can be queued in the low-priority issue queue for hours without getting a response.

California considered itself as the pioneer in environment protection. But in my opinion, this is a completely hypocrite. While many other states have already banned the sales of gas-powered leaf blowers, California still permit them to be sold until 2024. Even after that, the gas-powered leaf blower can still be used and maintained. So theoretically, the gas-powered can still last forever in California, despite its huge air and noise pollutions, if no additional laws were made.

Conclusions

To have a better living, the only option is to move out of California.