it’s a tool to move the leaves into a pile where they can be collected more efficiently. sure, you could suck them up as you go, but then you’re going to be emptying the collection bin and carrying those bags over to where you want them constantly. riding mowers sometimes have collection bins and are used for leaf cleanup, but here you have a machine carrying a large collection bin around, so it’s more efficient than doing it by hand
Where do you vacuum it to? You’d need a container, which needs to be emptied. Cleaning a house, that’s ideal. Outside, you just need stuff to be a bit over there, so you blow it.
I agree with you – you’re just blowing the leaves and dust somewhere else, and if it’s windy then they can blow straight back again
But I see these used a lot by council and maintenance workers on footpaths and walkways. I guess it’s cheap and clears the public paths and they can tick off ‘paths cleared’ on their checklist without having to dispose of the stuff if they vacuumed it up
Suction as opposed to blowing is a false-force (it’s not pulling anything it’s just the surrounding air flowing in to the empty space. It’s not adding any energy to the area) and more to the point suction only works when up very close to what you are trying to affect and in only a small area around the spot in question. Blowing on the other hand works at long ranges and affects a large area very quickly.
For more eli5 take a suck/blow vacuum (one that can switch) take the hose and try to suck a postcard onto the end of the hose. It only works when you get right up to the card. Now switch the machine to blow and try to blow the card away. You can do so from several feet away and furthermore if there were a bunch of cards you’d blow them all away. With suction you’d only be able to pull just one card.
You can replace cards with dust particles or leaves.
Suck= small amount and have to get very close
Blow= very large amount and can reach further without moving much.
If you were to suck up the leaves you’d have to meticulously move the sucking device over every spot. (This is actually what the street sweeper does to the leaves you’ve blown into the road. Picture it as a giant floor-vacuum (so not the hose part)
Leaf blowers are for getting the leaves pushed into a smaller area where another machine can suck them up easier.
I have a 1 acre property and I remove around 3500-4500 lbs of leaves every year. I have a vacuum that goes behind my lawn tractor, but I use leaf blowers to remove leaves from my deck and patio that are elevated (so I can’t drive the tractor up there). I also use it to get leaves out of flower gardens and tight spaces. 90% vacuum, 10% blower.
You can vacuum leaves, just they’re enormous and you need a huge vacuum bag, and a way to stop the leaves from clogging it.
This premise is how municipal leaf collection works, where they have a giant vacuum attached to a truck that they use to clear piles up leaves off roads.
This kind of device is much larger, heavier, more complex and expensive than a leaf blower, so for regular household use it’s more practical to blow the leaves into one area and then bag them up.
My leaf blower also has a vacuum option. It sucks up the leaves and mulches them into a bag. It works well for small areas or to get leaves out of cracks and stuff but it takes a while. I mostly use it so that I can fit a larger amount of leaves in my trash can once they’re mulched up
Leaf vacuums exist and a lot of blowers can work in both modes. It’s just they’re not all that great unless the leaves are already in a pile.
A vacuum doesn’t really have “reach”. You have to put the entrance directly over leaves and form a pretty good seal with the ground. If the leaves are tangled up in grass or wet, they tend to stay stuck on the ground unless you really work it.
A blower has “reach”. The stream of pushed air is way more powerful than the short-range vacuum effect. It blasts leaves loose from whatever they were holding on to and forces them to move somewhere else.
Once you have the leaves in a pile, you’ve got options. Leaf vacuums are actually pretty decent at sucking up a pile of leaves, since most of them are stuck to “other leaves”. You can bag the leaves without a vacuum, but usually the vacuum has a mulcher attached and you’ll use significantly fewer bags that way. There are also mulchers you can just dump scoops of leaves into.
I’ve got to deal with leaves 2-3 times every fall. I tried using a leaf vacuum once. It’s 10x easier and more effective for me to rake the leaves into a pile before using the vacuum/mulcher.
It’s not one or the other, a blower replaces a rake, if you want to pick up the debris you still need another tool for that. Vacuums for leaves are gigantic, if you tried to use something like a shop vac it would clog immediately and even if it didn’t you’d have to empty it every 2 minutes. Vacuums do exist but they’re usually attached to a truck and expel the leaves directly into a trailer so you still need to get the leaves to wherever you can park.
This winter I discovered that my leaf blower is also an excellent snow blower (when the snow is light and fluffy and the temp is closer to 20 than to 32). I have a long gravel driveway, and I’m growing too old to be out in the cold shoveling snow.
Aside from that, I specifically bought my leaf blower because I have a gingko tree that hangs over my gravel driveway. Now I can blow the gingko leaves into the yard without also raking a bunch of loose limestone gravel into the yard. I put the leaves on a tarp so I can haul them to my yard waste pile. All that loose gravel used to make the tarp a lot heavier.
Toro makes a combination blower/vacuum. The vacuum sucks up the leaves, mulches them, and you unzip the attached bag and empty it in your bin or wherever. I always use the vacuum, my husband always uses the blower because ‘it’s easier’. Maybe it is at the moment, but you end up dealing with those wind-blown leaves again.
Leaf blowers are emblematic of modern society. They push the problem somewhere else, so someone else can deal with it. A vacuum would leave you with having to deal with the results and having to dispose of the mess yourself.
My leaves fall on a zeroscape lawn, meaning I have rocks covering the ground. I bought a leaf blower that could also vacuum them up into a shredder that deposits them into a bag. Turned it on in vacuum mode, and it promptly sucked up rocks too, right into the shredder. Nope, nope, nope. Have to blow the leaves to the driveway or sidewalk first, then pick up leaves from there and sweep any rocks at the bottom back into the yard.
It’s much easier and cheaper to create a handheld blower. A vacuum that would be equally as efficient would be at least 10x costlier/bigger/heavier. Actually, a mower is a very effective vacuum (they create a vacuum to pull the grass straight while cutting it, then eject the clippings) and even the largest riding mowers (not talking big industrial mowers) can only work on a 60-70 inch section at a time. At that point you’re probably talking about a motor with at least 30x the power of a handheld blower and a blower would still beat a riding mower if you’re just clearing leaves.
Lead blowers remove topsoil from the soil. This would be bad as it increases damage caused by water runoff and reduces the soil ability to retain water and nutrients.
But it is good news for lawn care companies because now you can buy fertilizer and mulch and reseeding and watering supplies which make them a lot of money.
I have a leaf blower/vacuum. For leaves all over the yard, the blower can hit them and blast them to one place, then you can scoop them up with a rake, and then vacuum/rake what you miss. The vacuum is good for leaves up against a fence.
The Vacuum gets only the leaves directly under the nozzle, so you have to walk around to every part of the lawn to pick up every leaf. The blower on the other hand is so easy to just sweep left and right and any leaves in a large arc in front of you can be blown. If you are good with it, then you can direct them mostly into a pile then finish with a rake or the vacuum attachment. But when you vacuum them … you have to vacuum them int a bag, and the bags are usually small and need emptying.
So the bottom line is that with the blower you can cover a large area very fast and concentrate the leaves into an area where you can deal with them in a pile. With the vacuum, you have to walk the entire yard and target leaves specifically, and empty the bag all the time. But again, the vacuum has it’s place, in corners and hard to blast places.
Some leaf blowers (I have the Toro) is just the fan unit and you either attach the nozzle to the front to act as a blower, or you attach a bag to the front and a nozzle underneath which is the vacuum.
Mine is electric, a bit less annoying than a gas blower, and great for a normal sized lawn if you have extension cord access to the whole lawn.
I have one that can do both. It also shreds the stuff it sucks in.
Usually I use the blower mode to “herd” the leaves and maple seeds together into a loose pile. After that I usually chuck what I can grab easily from the pile into the bin. After that it’s sucking time and the leaves get shredded down nicely.
As a retired retired old man, I love using the leaf blower. It’s as satisfying as painting without any of the hard work, hassle and expense. I just blow dust off the driveway into the street every week. In this day and age you gotta find a fun activity you can afford.
Comments
it’s a tool to move the leaves into a pile where they can be collected more efficiently. sure, you could suck them up as you go, but then you’re going to be emptying the collection bin and carrying those bags over to where you want them constantly. riding mowers sometimes have collection bins and are used for leaf cleanup, but here you have a machine carrying a large collection bin around, so it’s more efficient than doing it by hand
Where do you vacuum it to? You’d need a container, which needs to be emptied. Cleaning a house, that’s ideal. Outside, you just need stuff to be a bit over there, so you blow it.
Blowers work at a much longer range than vacuums. Plus you have to carry whatever you are vacuuming.
Time mostly. A leaf blower can clear an area much faster than a vacuum can.
I agree with you – you’re just blowing the leaves and dust somewhere else, and if it’s windy then they can blow straight back again
But I see these used a lot by council and maintenance workers on footpaths and walkways. I guess it’s cheap and clears the public paths and they can tick off ‘paths cleared’ on their checklist without having to dispose of the stuff if they vacuumed it up
Suction as opposed to blowing is a false-force (it’s not pulling anything it’s just the surrounding air flowing in to the empty space. It’s not adding any energy to the area) and more to the point suction only works when up very close to what you are trying to affect and in only a small area around the spot in question. Blowing on the other hand works at long ranges and affects a large area very quickly.
For more eli5 take a suck/blow vacuum (one that can switch) take the hose and try to suck a postcard onto the end of the hose. It only works when you get right up to the card. Now switch the machine to blow and try to blow the card away. You can do so from several feet away and furthermore if there were a bunch of cards you’d blow them all away. With suction you’d only be able to pull just one card.
You can replace cards with dust particles or leaves.
Suck= small amount and have to get very close
Blow= very large amount and can reach further without moving much.
If you were to suck up the leaves you’d have to meticulously move the sucking device over every spot. (This is actually what the street sweeper does to the leaves you’ve blown into the road. Picture it as a giant floor-vacuum (so not the hose part)
Leaf blowers are for getting the leaves pushed into a smaller area where another machine can suck them up easier.
It’s just easier to make their leaves somebody else’s problem
I have a 1 acre property and I remove around 3500-4500 lbs of leaves every year. I have a vacuum that goes behind my lawn tractor, but I use leaf blowers to remove leaves from my deck and patio that are elevated (so I can’t drive the tractor up there). I also use it to get leaves out of flower gardens and tight spaces. 90% vacuum, 10% blower.
You can vacuum leaves, just they’re enormous and you need a huge vacuum bag, and a way to stop the leaves from clogging it.
This premise is how municipal leaf collection works, where they have a giant vacuum attached to a truck that they use to clear piles up leaves off roads.
This kind of device is much larger, heavier, more complex and expensive than a leaf blower, so for regular household use it’s more practical to blow the leaves into one area and then bag them up.
My leaf blower also has a vacuum option. It sucks up the leaves and mulches them into a bag. It works well for small areas or to get leaves out of cracks and stuff but it takes a while. I mostly use it so that I can fit a larger amount of leaves in my trash can once they’re mulched up
Leaf vacuums exist and a lot of blowers can work in both modes. It’s just they’re not all that great unless the leaves are already in a pile.
A vacuum doesn’t really have “reach”. You have to put the entrance directly over leaves and form a pretty good seal with the ground. If the leaves are tangled up in grass or wet, they tend to stay stuck on the ground unless you really work it.
A blower has “reach”. The stream of pushed air is way more powerful than the short-range vacuum effect. It blasts leaves loose from whatever they were holding on to and forces them to move somewhere else.
Once you have the leaves in a pile, you’ve got options. Leaf vacuums are actually pretty decent at sucking up a pile of leaves, since most of them are stuck to “other leaves”. You can bag the leaves without a vacuum, but usually the vacuum has a mulcher attached and you’ll use significantly fewer bags that way. There are also mulchers you can just dump scoops of leaves into.
I’ve got to deal with leaves 2-3 times every fall. I tried using a leaf vacuum once. It’s 10x easier and more effective for me to rake the leaves into a pile before using the vacuum/mulcher.
It’s not one or the other, a blower replaces a rake, if you want to pick up the debris you still need another tool for that. Vacuums for leaves are gigantic, if you tried to use something like a shop vac it would clog immediately and even if it didn’t you’d have to empty it every 2 minutes. Vacuums do exist but they’re usually attached to a truck and expel the leaves directly into a trailer so you still need to get the leaves to wherever you can park.
Scene1: you suck the leaves via vaccum, but vacuum storage gets filled easily, so you take the leaves out and pile them up somewhere.
Scene2: you blow the leaves and pile em up already
I use mine to blow dry the car after it’s washed. No water spots!!
This winter I discovered that my leaf blower is also an excellent snow blower (when the snow is light and fluffy and the temp is closer to 20 than to 32). I have a long gravel driveway, and I’m growing too old to be out in the cold shoveling snow.
Aside from that, I specifically bought my leaf blower because I have a gingko tree that hangs over my gravel driveway. Now I can blow the gingko leaves into the yard without also raking a bunch of loose limestone gravel into the yard. I put the leaves on a tarp so I can haul them to my yard waste pile. All that loose gravel used to make the tarp a lot heavier.
Toro makes a combination blower/vacuum. The vacuum sucks up the leaves, mulches them, and you unzip the attached bag and empty it in your bin or wherever. I always use the vacuum, my husband always uses the blower because ‘it’s easier’. Maybe it is at the moment, but you end up dealing with those wind-blown leaves again.
Leaf blowers are emblematic of modern society. They push the problem somewhere else, so someone else can deal with it. A vacuum would leave you with having to deal with the results and having to dispose of the mess yourself.
Nothing says ‘not my problem’ like a leaf blower.
My leaves fall on a zeroscape lawn, meaning I have rocks covering the ground. I bought a leaf blower that could also vacuum them up into a shredder that deposits them into a bag. Turned it on in vacuum mode, and it promptly sucked up rocks too, right into the shredder. Nope, nope, nope. Have to blow the leaves to the driveway or sidewalk first, then pick up leaves from there and sweep any rocks at the bottom back into the yard.
It takes forever to vacuum my vegetable garden.
It’s much easier and cheaper to create a handheld blower. A vacuum that would be equally as efficient would be at least 10x costlier/bigger/heavier. Actually, a mower is a very effective vacuum (they create a vacuum to pull the grass straight while cutting it, then eject the clippings) and even the largest riding mowers (not talking big industrial mowers) can only work on a 60-70 inch section at a time. At that point you’re probably talking about a motor with at least 30x the power of a handheld blower and a blower would still beat a riding mower if you’re just clearing leaves.
Lead blowers remove topsoil from the soil. This would be bad as it increases damage caused by water runoff and reduces the soil ability to retain water and nutrients.
But it is good news for lawn care companies because now you can buy fertilizer and mulch and reseeding and watering supplies which make them a lot of money.
Oh man i wanted to ask literally the same question here already …
I have a leaf blower/vacuum. For leaves all over the yard, the blower can hit them and blast them to one place, then you can scoop them up with a rake, and then vacuum/rake what you miss. The vacuum is good for leaves up against a fence.
The Vacuum gets only the leaves directly under the nozzle, so you have to walk around to every part of the lawn to pick up every leaf. The blower on the other hand is so easy to just sweep left and right and any leaves in a large arc in front of you can be blown. If you are good with it, then you can direct them mostly into a pile then finish with a rake or the vacuum attachment. But when you vacuum them … you have to vacuum them int a bag, and the bags are usually small and need emptying.
So the bottom line is that with the blower you can cover a large area very fast and concentrate the leaves into an area where you can deal with them in a pile. With the vacuum, you have to walk the entire yard and target leaves specifically, and empty the bag all the time. But again, the vacuum has it’s place, in corners and hard to blast places.
Some leaf blowers (I have the Toro) is just the fan unit and you either attach the nozzle to the front to act as a blower, or you attach a bag to the front and a nozzle underneath which is the vacuum.
Mine is electric, a bit less annoying than a gas blower, and great for a normal sized lawn if you have extension cord access to the whole lawn.
I have one that can do both. It also shreds the stuff it sucks in.
Usually I use the blower mode to “herd” the leaves and maple seeds together into a loose pile. After that I usually chuck what I can grab easily from the pile into the bin. After that it’s sucking time and the leaves get shredded down nicely.
It’s actually super satisfying to suck them up.
Off my property off my thoughts…. jerks everywhere
Nothing says it’s someone else’s problem like a leaf blower
As a retired retired old man, I love using the leaf blower. It’s as satisfying as painting without any of the hard work, hassle and expense. I just blow dust off the driveway into the street every week. In this day and age you gotta find a fun activity you can afford.
Blowing moves more volume in shorter time. There is no bag to empty every 30 seconds