California bans the SALE of gas lawn mowers and leaf blowers after 2024

[Ronald Blue]

We have wild woods 20 feet from one side of our house and on the other side of a shop. Plenty of wildlife thriving. We have two herds of deer, some of everything, and just last week a Mama red fox was sitting out beside my shop watching four half grown kits playing. When clipping one of the trails yesterday, I gave a turtle laying eggs a wide berth in the middle of one of the wide trails. I don't think it would work out too good in cities.

Sorry, too late to right a phone picture:

This is really boils down to someone thousands of miles away believing they know best for you. 98% of lawns grow great here without watering required. Very few people water here. Unless it's a new lawn. Yes we typically have the mid-summer die down when we don't get a lot of rain and we have the summer heat. By then everyone is happy to have the break in mowing anyway. I know it's boring to some but so is the rock lawns they have out west where nothing will grow without help. My lawn blends well with the corn next to it this year and the soybeans that will be there next year.

[Edward Weber]

I don't think people think flowers etc are bad.. i assume they think flowers and other perennials are hard to maintain.

Every year since I've owned me house (8 years) I've torn out more and more lawn to replace with flowers and plants.

I get all kinds of compliments. And it's super fun to watch the bees gather pollen. It's fun to see the changes season to season. And my oldest plants basically out compete all the weeds at this point so in my strip between the road and the sidewalk I don't hardly have to weed!

Weeding my cactus garden however is literally painful.

Lawns are nice for dogs and laying around in, but even then you can use clover etc and let it look a lot more natural.

I can't imagine having a turfed out lawn. It would be so boring.

However I can't imagine the money it would cost to landscape an acre. But it would be fun to nip away at year after year.
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My property is 3 acres and if I total it all up, about 3/4-1 acre is landscaped. It takes time, effort and a lot of wood chips/bark, lots.
20231107_124710 (600 x 450).jpg

Like you, every year I've also been reclaiming lawn/grass and replacing it with other types of plants and bark. Uses less water, less maintenance, and looks more interesting IMO

[Brian Elfert]

And I remember why. People forget what smog looked like and how the brown clouds over most cities, especially LA, had us choking. No telling how many people had disease and early death from that air pollution, and those numbers not included in auto-makers cost/benefit analysis. Costs just passed on to the public.

My father got transferred to Anaheim, California in 1978. The elementary school was a block away from our house. I recall a few days walking through what looked like fog, but was horrible smog.

[Brian Elfert]

I don't think people think flowers etc are bad.. i assume they think flowers and other perennials are hard to maintain.

My mother has flower gardens plus a 40x50 vegetable garden. She probably averages eight hours a day tending to her garden from late April until mid to late October. My father also helps her a little bit. I don't grow anything in my yard besides weedy grass. The most I do is mow the grass. No weed killer, fertilizer, or irrigation. I have let about an acre of grass just grow wild. The property was a foreclosure and the bank didn't want to spend the money to mow that acre and I just left it that way. I still mow close to two acres.

[Tom M King]

Here it will be grown up with Blackberries, Sweet Gums and Pine trees in two years if you don't mow it. If you mow it Bermuda will take it over without planting anything, and just mowing it leaving the cut grass on top of it will enrich the soil enough for the Bermuda to thrive. It turns brown in Winter, but is green the rest of the time and will just go dormant and wait for rain in a drought. There will be Crabgrass mixed in with the volunteer Bermuda but not usually that much. 80% of the grass we have is all volunteer that has never been fertilized.

[andrew whicker]

Yeah, it's a hobby you can take as seriously as you want. I personally don't grow food unless it's really simple and forgiving. My strawberries have taken over an entire garden box on their own. I weed it a few times a year.

All my plants are perennials. They grow themselves. There's a big weeding push at the beginning of spring and then maintenance weeding throughout the year. It's truly not a lot of work unless you get into perfecting which plants spread, trimming back roses for example, etc. But you don't have to do that or you can minimize that amount of work.

I definitely don't put a LOT of time into my plants. I put time in at moments when it is something I want to put time into. If I want to do something in the mountains that day, I go do something in the mountains. If I feel like slowing down and doing a relaxed activity then I tend to my plants. My lawn has to be mowed more often than my garden has to be worked on.

[Tom M King]

Here's what volunteer Bermuda looks like here. Now and Winter in the same spot. All it's ever had applied to it is a sharp blade. Winter picture was taken when I cleaned out an airless sprayer on that grass. Green picture taken this morning. You can see the big bushes in both pictures from the same side. The grass is the same grass in both pictures.

Winter used to be from Thanksgiving until Easter. These days, with climate changing warmer, it's getting closer to Christmas to Valentines Day. The amount of time we have to feed horses when the grass is dormant has gone down significantly.

[andrew whicker]

I don't understand why there is a gap in 10 to 25 hp motors other than I guess a market? There's a famous sportscar w/ a 300 mile range. There are companies making electric boat motors for commercial and private use. If you can make enough power and charge per trip for a commercial boat... I think we can handle a mower?

The repair cycle for electric motors are way longer than internal combustion engines (ICE) which adds another benefit.

Anyway, the idea that some HUGE gap exists that won't be filled by 100 different companies with investment dollars (esp in California of all places where the green investment capital resides) is an odd take IMO. I can see people being upset they are forced to pay more for something so I would agree to subsidizing the first few years of the transition, but as far as this being some sort of unbridgeable gap seems like a thin argument to me. How complicated is a mower?

I found a commercial rated riding mower (zero turn, 96") that can run 8 hours (Mean Green mowers). It looks like it is around 80k! The gas versions look to be around 50k! I had no idea mowers were so expensive.

I learned the other day that current batteries are Lithium Graphite and they are currently max'd out capacity (by physics), however, there are companies working on Lithium batteries that use Silicon and they have a potential (according to physics) of increasing the capacity by up to 40%. But as is, it sounds like current Li batteries are maxxed out.

Edit: I just have to ask what the point of blowers are? To blow grass clippings and leaves around? Of all the things to perform "less well" than their gas counterpart.... I mean, who cares?

[andrew whicker]

Also, can I just say something is obvious, since we are mainly discussing private ownership (not commercial) in this thread?

We're debating / squabbling about an future (if you want a brand new mower) cost increase for maintaining private land of an acre or more. A chunk of land that most people don't have the fortune, good luck, etc of owning and being able to keep a lawn (a very economically low value thing to do).

In the background, we have this huge impending crisis that is only getting closer day to day. This new law will help mitigate that disaster in small way. Not a lot, but it's a fight of eating the elephant one bite at a time. I just don't see how people born today are going to look back at us for getting upset about transitioning to electric mowers for big private properties when they could be sitting in a (and not fictional, but very much reality) ruin of a once stable society. I can share a hundred links to articles, to science journals, etc. But when home insurance companies stop insuring homes (happening already in the Midwest, East Coast, gulf states and California!) or when entire sections of land become too hot (temp and humidity passing human wet bulb temperature limits, already happening in gulf states!) or when power grids can't keep up with air conditioning (already happening!) and people have to move north en masse, what is the future? There's no stability in that future.

If you are fortunate enough to be living on undeveloped land to the point of needing to mow one or more acres.. then sure, the future might be more expensive. Well, you know, we've been kicking this can down the road for decades now and the fix is going to cost inconvenience and money. But the cost for our decades of ignorance and inaction was going to come due at some point down the road. It isn't fair, but here we are. And this is a MINOR cost. We will all WISH this was all it costed.

Sorry for sounding preachy, but selfishness and easy consumerism got us here and those things aren't going to fix the problem.

Links:

Insurance dropping homes across the country

Extreme heat stress cases doubled over past 40 years

Electric Grid stresses

[Edward Weber]

I don't understand why there is a gap in 10 to 25 hp motors other than I guess a market? There's a famous sportscar w/ a 300 mile range. There are companies making electric boat motors for commercial and private use. If you can make enough power and charge per trip for a commercial boat... I think we can handle a mower?

The repair cycle for electric motors are way longer than internal combustion engines (ICE) which adds another benefit.

Anyway, the idea that some HUGE gap exists that won't be filled by 100 different companies with investment dollars (esp in California of all places where the green investment capital resides) is an odd take IMO. I can see people being upset they are forced to pay more for something so I would agree to subsidizing the first few years of the transition, but as far as this being some sort of unbridgeable gap seems like a thin argument to me. How complicated is a mower?

I found a commercial rated riding mower (zero turn, 96") that can run 8 hours (Mean Green mowers). It looks like it is around 80k! The gas versions look to be around 50k! I had no idea mowers were so expensive.

I learned the other day that current batteries are Lithium Graphite and they are currently max'd out capacity (by physics), however, there are companies working on Lithium batteries that use Silicon and they have a potential (according to physics) of increasing the capacity by up to 40%. But as is, it sounds like current Li batteries are maxxed out.

Edit: I just have to ask what the point of blowers are? To blow grass clippings and leaves around? Of all the things to perform "less well" than their gas counterpart.... I mean, who cares?

My opinion only,
The reason I said there is a gap is that many small engines, NOT lawn care, will be effected by the law that have little, if any measurable effect on the problem. Yes they use gas and emit exhaust but out of the 16.7 million small engines, how many lawn mowers compared to how many log splitters and pressure washers, it's not even close. i will also say that out here in CA, small engines have all been CARB complient for years.



Mowers, blowers and trimmers are low torque motors and benefit from a fast running battery powered motor that has little resistance when running. Battery run time is high, tools work efficiently.

Other machines that require a larger motor (between 10 to 25 hp) Often require more torque or load on the motor. This will use power more quickly, draining batteries faster. This makes them less efficient and also less consumer friendly. IMO.
Zero emission equipment (ZEE) is great but only if it works as a direct, or close to direct replacement, like mowers and blowers.
Transitioning to something that is less powerful, has lower run times and is more costly, is a bit hard to swallow for many people.

[Doug Garson]

Transitioning to something that is less powerful, has lower run times and is more costly, is a bit hard to swallow for many people.

If people are having a hard time swallowing a relatively small inconvenience perhaps they should read Andrew's post.
PS, we need a like button on this forum.

[Edward Weber]

If people are having a hard time swallowing a relatively small inconvenience perhaps they should read Andrew's post.
PS, we need a like button on this forum.

https://www.protoolreviews.com/best-...mower-reviews/

New Cub Cadet (24hp ICE) $2799
New Ryobi (battery, est 21hp) $4499

If you require a lawn tractor to maintain your property, I find the price difference of $1700 a little bit more than a "relatively small inconvenience". And for that price you get 1 hr of run time, less power and 2.5 hours of charge time.
Where does your electricity come from? Unless it's renewable, you're still burning fuel to charge all those batteries mined from lithium. Also watch the time of day electric rates, you don't want to charge your batteries then.

Just curious, so I have a point of reference, what type/size of lawn do you guys have? I find it difficult to deduce from your posts. Any generators or other SORE equipment?
Other states will follow with similar legislation and it's something people need to consider.

I am all for the transition to battery tech of some kind but I live in the real world where nothing is as rosy as it seems.

Have a nice holiday weekend

[Mike Soaper]

FWIW I came across a similar graph showing the rise in Co2 when looking into the new HVAC refrigerants being introduced because R410 also adds to global warming.

note that the chart is in "Billions" of metric tons of Co2, yr 1850 apx 0 tons, now 2024 apx 10 billion tons


Global_Carbon_Emissions.svg_image.png


source Climate Change, an Evening in Paris, and a Calculator from IISc to See into Our Future – Connect with IISc

[Doug Garson]

$1700 on something that should last at least 5 years, maybe 10 years? ($340 to $170/year) to maintain a property probably worth a few million dollars doesn't sound like a big inconvenience.
My electricity is over 98% renewable. The only SORE equipment I own is a chainsaw I haven't used for years, I also have an electric chain saw that has been idle for about the same time. I live in a urban area with a typical city lot. We took out our front lawn about a decade ago and replaced it with ornamental grasses, shrubs, perennials like ferns, lilies, groundcover and mulch. Most of our backyard is patio, Koi pond and raised garden beds for veggies, with just a 100 sq ft of lawn we cut with a push hand mower.
I realize I couldn't maintain a country property with the tools I have but I don't think an extra few thousand dollars every 5 to 10 years to buy battery powered equipment over gas powered is unreasonable.

[Mike Soaper]

My father got transferred to Anaheim, California in 1978. The elementary school was a block away from our house. I recall a few days walking through what looked like fog, but was horrible smog.

I was at the El Toro marine base a little south of Anaheim for a bit in the early 70's and recall seeing the hills east of the base in the morning but not seeing them in the afternoon because of the smog.

If you watch reruns of the 70's tv show "Emergency" you might notice how smog hazy some of the scenes are