On Tue, 20 Oct 2020 10:54:22 -0400, Dan Espen
wrote:

J writes:

I love the idea of electric - I'm a big proponent. The issue I have is
not the power so much as the amount of time you get on a charge. My
yard is not a half-hour job ;-). But maybe things will get better.
We had a Nissan Leaf a few years back - it got a theoretical 100 miles
on a charge, but less in reality (more like 75), and much less in the
winter (you'd be risking it if you had to go 50 miles). Now we have a
Chevy Bolt and it theoretically gets over 250 miles on a charge (and
not much less in the winter) - and that number seems more accurate
(based on estimated mileage and charge remaining - I've never run it
out of charge or below about 1/4 charge). Right now it seems a lot
more expensive for an electric leaf blower that would require several
charges to do our yard - and unlike a gas blower that you can refill
in a minute, recharging the electric will take a while. But I look
forward to the near future where electric is the standard for this
tool. It's tough (and expensive) to be an early-adopter - you often
pay a lot of money for something that doesn't live up to the hype.
For most of us, waiting a few years is the way to go. For electric
cars, we definitely were on the early side, but we leased instead of
bought, knowing that major improvements were likely coming. The
electric car still has some limitations, but for most driving
applications, I think it's there. :-)

Right now, electric leaf blowers can't match the power you get from
a 2 cycle blower. I have a lot of leaf producing trees and I normally
use a high end back pack blower to deal with the leaves.

But this year I got a self propelled battery powered lawn mower.
So far, instead of blowing the leaves I just run the mower over the
leaves and they are gone.
I'm not sure how much more leaf fall I'll be able to handle this way
but it's definitely quicker to just run the mower. I'm able to do
both the front and back on one charge.

I could always buy another battery if I had more lawn to mow and didn't
want to wait.
My new Toro electric blower has more power than my old gas powered
Baracuda blower ever had and it starts every time. I blew my leaves
into a pile and fired up my old toro 194cc mower and chopped them all
up. The pile started out about 15X7 feet and a good foot high and they
were not dry. Made the mower work, but that looked after the maple
leaves in the back yard.(chopped up to about 1/4" square chunks)
In the front yard I just blew the smaller amount of maple leaves and
all the honey locust leaves and "strings" out onto the street for
municipal leaf pickup because the locust doesn't compost down well and
the "strings"are a royal pain to rake and don't mulch. When the red
maple drops the rest I'll mulch them too, and hopefully the boulevard
maples down the side drop before we get snowed under so I can look
after them too. They are still green and hardly starting to drop yet -
the back sugar maple has dropped almost all it's gold coloured
leaves,andthe front Crimson King has dropped better than half.