[johnebgd]

I bought a corded electric snow blower this year for my driveway. My neighbor has a gas powered one. I sold mine after two uses because it was so ineffective it mostly just clogged. It is a highly rated unit on Amazon. My neighbor has used his for years.

I hope this kind of environmentalism never comes for winter gear. At least not until we have fuel cell technology that far exceeds what batteries can offer.

[andy99]

I don’t think it’s environmentalism, I think that’s unfortunate just the pretense because it gets traction.

At least what I’ve found, now with more people working from home, there is more attention paid to intolerably noisy stuff that goes on when we used to be at work. I lived near a private school with a big grounds that had these idiots come and rev their leaf blowers for days every fall and spring, and it was basically impossible for me to work. I don’t especially care about the environmental impact and am sort of angry that people use the environment as a pretence when there are certainly more effective ways to be environmentally friendly. But the noise is intolerable, generally very supportive of the bans, though I think it should be about blanket norms on what noise levels are allowed and not about specific technologies.

[Zigurd]

Noise is environmental pollution and detrimental to health.

[BenjiWiebe]

There's good battery powered stuff out there, and there's a lot of bad battery powered stuff out there. Hopefully the good gets more common and the bad gets less common.

I think batteries are good enough for your needs, just that there's too much junk on the market.

[Zigurd]

I know the scale isn't comparable but I much prefer an electric chainsaw to a gas chainsaw. I own both kinds because every couple of years something big falls across my driveway that I can't lift without cutting it up. Mixing two-stroke fuel correctly so I don't foul the spark plug is a hassle, and something I do rarely enough that I always need to look up how to do it. Breathing two-stroke exhaust fumes is no fun at all. My cheap electric chainsaw has better torque, which makes it even easier to use. The only consumable is bar and chain oil, and after a while the chain itself.

[gambiting]

I wonder if you've accidentally purchased an inferior product by buying a corded one - and I guess that's just a problem of American outlets being limited to 110V and generally ~10 amps or so, because yeah, I can't imagine a 1000W blower being very powerful. Battery powered ones like this:

https://www.agrieuro.co.uk/snapper-esxd20s82k-battery-powere...

Are considered pretty much as good as petrol ones over here, but yeah, if you limited it to only 1000W I guess it would struggle too.

[senbrow]

Corded yard tools will always suck because they can only pull <15A on a standard US outlet. They just don't have the juice.

It's always better to go with batteries for electric outdoor stuff for that (and other) reasons.

[jjav]

What kind of batteries are you running that can support the equivalent of 15A AC for hours?

I have both a battery leafblower and a corded one. The corded is far more powerful and of course does not run out. The battery one is quick and convenient for small cleanups but only gets about 10 minutes from a full charge, then it's back to the charger for hours.

Recently I cleaned up a large roof full of leaves, took about an hour with the powerful corded leafblower. That would've taken weeks with the battery one given the small power and the ~10 minute runtime.

I mostly use the battery one since it's easier and most jobs I do are tiny. But it is no substitute for the corded one.

[senbrow]

You cycle multiple packs to run for hours.

Your battery blower sounds like it's just not very good.

I can move piles of wet leaves easily with my makita blower that uses two 18v batteries. It's a pretty old model too.

Batteries can surge power and not risk fire hazard like AC over a long extension cord. Manufacturers know this and have to intentionally limit draw way below the 15A ceiling so a 100ft 14AWG cord doesn't trip breakers or burn houses down.

[bluGill]

You don't normally need that much power continuously, you need surge capacity.

[mynameajeff]

Yeah outside of areas with very light precipitation a pretty hefty snowblower is definitely required. In my experience the weaker models are enough of a waste of energy to where I questioned if I'd save effort just hand shoveling. Everyone I know with a nice gas powered one has had the same one for years and can clear out the entire block with relative ease.

[bluGill]

This is about leaf blowers which do not need nearly as much power to function. I don't think anyone is using a leaf blower in such a way that gas is better (there are tractor mounted ones that might be better for some applications - but tractors are diesel powered)

I had a corded electric snow blower 20 years ago and it was great for light snows, but I needed the gas one for larger snows. Cordless tools often have more power than corded because there is only so much power you can get from a plug - of course the battery discharges fast when doing this.

[jtlisi]

I bought a 500 dollar snowblower and an additional 500 dollars in batteries (about 24A total) and it's totally insufficient.

I've converted to electric for everything but the the snowblower is the only thing Ive considering switching back to gas.

To be fair my driveway is 100+ feet. I think this unit would be fine for a smaller driveway.

[bryanlarsen]

If you're in North America, you can only get 1800 watts from a cord. It's not enough to blow anything but light snow.

OTOH, an 80V battery can easily draw 1000 watts+. A good snow blower has 4 of those. That's more than enough, comparable to a gas engine but with way more torque.

[virgil_disgr4ce]

What is "this kind of environmentalism"?