Please consider cribbing off of Oakland's ordinance and championing it where you live. The more locales where banned, the faster manufacturing of gas powered lawn implements dies off.

Yes. I am a big fan of corded electric lawn gear. Maybe it doesn't work if you have to mow an acerage, but for a normal suburban environment corded blowers, trimmers, and mowers are all totally reasonable to use. No batteries to worry about, powerful enough, never have to fill up gas, often lighter than other options.

There's still plenty of use cases for gas units but if we could get them banned from everywhere but rural areas it would be a good step in the right direction.

Some folks go too far and say "nobody should have a lawn!!!" but they clearly don't understand the zenlike experience of avoiding one's family, drinking cheap lager, listening to a podcast, and working the lawn in the sunshine for a couple hours on a Saturday morning. Kept me sane last year more than anything else did.

Corded electrics are not powerful enough. A 15A, 120VAC circuit at 80% load can supply 1440 Watts of power or just under 2 HP, assuming all the power went to mechanical energy and none was lost to heat.

Commercial leaf blowers are over 3 HP. 1-2 horsepower doesn't seem like a big difference, but it's literally 50-100% more power.

My (small) push mower is 5.1 HP, over 250% of the max power I could get from a corded unit. It can still bog down in heavy, damp grass, especially while mulching. Take away 60% of its power and it's not going to get better.

Battery trimmers are awesome; I'll give you that one.

I don't know how much grass you have to deal with, but before renting, I had a small-to-medium sized lawn to mow, and I just didn't mow in heavy, damp grass. The electric I had supplied way more than enough power to mow everything I had to cover without a hitch.

I can definitely see it becoming in issue on larger areas, with larger weeds or, in less dry weather, if you really _have_ to, like landscaper services, maybe. But for the average suburban lawn maintenance?

My lawn is on the small side (I can mow it all in 40 minutes, even if bagging). But it's a thick Kentucky Bluegrass and needs to be mowed 2-3x a week during the cool, wet spring and mid-fall. If we go away for a week-long vacation somewhere in the spring, that's a thick, high mess of grass that I need to mow when we get back.

Ah, fast growing and thick, yeah. I had to mow every week and could push it to 2-3 in very dry weather.

A sample of leaf blowers sold in the UK [1] shows power ratings of 2500-3000W. They will use the standard 240V power supply.

Don't most American houses have at least one 240V socket in the garage, for use with garden/garage equipment? (Otherwise, where do you plug in an electric car if you're visiting relatives, for example?)

[1] https://www.argos.co.uk/browse/garden-and-diy/lawnmowers-and...

>Don't most American houses have at least one 240V socket in the garage, for use with garden/garage equipment?

Newer ones, depending on location.

>(Otherwise, where do you plug in an electric car if you're visiting relatives, for example?)

You charge on 120v or you don't charge.

No. Most US houses have, at most, a single 240V outlet in the laundry room for an electric dryer. Literally everything else is 120V. There is almost no household equipment other than drying machines that is sold taking a 240V plug.

Electric cars may change this. They haven't yet, at least not much.

You forgot the outlet for the electric range, so 2 outlets for most US homes.

Ah, you're right. Doubled! :D

(The important thing to note for non-US-dwelling folks is that your average American simply never deals with plugs other than 120V except for rare circumstance, like appliance replacement or adding a car charging portal.)

Corded can be kind of a pain if your yard is at all odd-shaped. They also really aren't that powerful.

This battery-operated one works well and is also much quieter than the gas-powered ones.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/RYOBI-125-MPH-550-CFM-40-Volt-Li...

You're not wrong, but a mower can fit a 4-stroke engine; the law would make more sense to ban 2-strokes first.

The real solution here is to mow more often, and on dryer days. Never had any issue with my corded units as long as I keep the lawn short. When it's long, you have to move in a few passes to get a nice cut without clogging things up. Mulching long grass is gross anyway, you'll get way too much grass detritus out of it; I know it's good for the lawn, but again, it makes more sense with a weekly mow and fairly short grass, rather than letting it grow into a field and mowing it once a month or something like that. You get out what you put in.

Obviously that makes more sense for homeowners who do their own work as opposed to lawn companies; I'd be okay with exceptions for businesses, with 4-stroke only.

This is probably the best outcome. Home users limited to electric, commercials pushed to 4 stroke where possible, and then set hours of lawn care noise during the day. Though you'd need carve outs for the size of property for homes, which starts getting into confusion territory.

There are high-performing battery electric mowers and trimmers now, that use the standard battery packs from power tool manufacturers, so they are really easy to find and easy to charge. No need to risk running over an extension cord.

If you have a couple unobstructed squares to mow it's great. If you have stuff to go around the cord becomes more of a pain than the ICE equivalent.