Gas vs electric leaf blowers, cordless, corded, 2-stroke or 4-cycle

Everyone knows the best way to maintain our lawns and garden landscapes starts with the proper gardening tools. Which brings us to the question, how many times have you struggled with a decision on which lawn and garden tools you absolutely must have? When mowing the grass, that is an easy one, we use a lawnmower. Trimming the boxwoods, privets and yews, another easy one, we use a set of trimmers. Then there is the fall of the year, when all the trees lose their leaves, and they all make a mess of things we must clean-up.

Electric leaf blowers

For homeowners electric leaf blowers are primarily hand-held lawn and garden cleaning tools. There are two ways of powering an electric blower; one is by a cord plugged into your homes electrical outlet, which limits their range to the length of the power cord. The second is a cordless blower that operates using a rechargeable battery, which increases their maneuverability and reach by not requiring an extension cord for their source of electricity, but they are limited to the life of the battery and its capacity. Making a cordless blower a handy garden tool for the small jobs, but they lack the battery life for the medium to large jobs.

Electric leaf blower and blower vac

Electric power is clean, quiet and reliable. No fuel mix ratios to remember, no running out of gas in the middle of a cleaning project and best of all no ropes to pull to get the thing started. You simply plug your blower Vac, into your homes electrical outlet and turn on the switch and you are ready to clean. An electric blower works great around the house and garage. Corded electric blowers have plenty of power for blowing dirt and debris off the garage floor, driveway, patio, deck and blowing leaves from a small lawn into piles to be picked-up.

There are a couple of attachments available for a leaf blower one of which, makes cleaning leaves and debris from the gutters easier, so called a gutter attachment. The second handy attachment is a vacuum attachment that allows you to vacuum leaves out of your flower garden, landscape beds, and piles of leaves from your lawn. Electric blowers also work well on those sweeping jobs, the patio, deck and driveway no more using a broom or dust mop.

Cordless leaf blower

There are many great choices available in cordless leaf blowers from companies like, Makita, Black and Decker or Toro. The cordless leaf blowers use rechargeable batteries, like the 18-volt Lithium Ion batteries used in the Makita BUB 182Z, to the 18-volt ni-cad rechargeable batteries used in less expensive models.

The Lithium Ion batteries are smaller and lighter than the old ni-cad batteries, however, they do seem to last a bit longer between charges. Nevertheless, require a little getting use to. Anyone who has one of the old cordless drills that uses the old ni-cad battery technology has experienced the drill slowing down when the battery starts to lose its charge. When the Lithium Ion batteries run down they quit, no warning, no slowing down, the motor just quits without any warning. I just wanted to share that little tid bit with you, the first time it happened to me I thought there was something wrong with the cordless tool I was using.

When you are looking for the ultimate in power, versatility and portability hand held and backpack gas, leaf blowers are by far your best choice. All of the major manufactures of gas leaf blowers have hand held models, and backpack models, with the backpack models being the largest and most powerful. Both configurations are available in either two stroke or (two-cycle) and four stroke or (four-cycle) gas engines.

Handheld gas leaf blowers are available in both four stroke gas engine models and the more popular two stroke gas models. For most of us who use gas powered lawn and garden equipment, either we already have a weed-eater or chainsaw that runs on a two-cycle fuel mix, making a blower with a two cycle engine no big deal. All we need worry about is matching the fuel mix ratio with what we already have around the house. Buying a new leaf blower from the same lawn and garden equipment manufacture is the best bet, unless you are dissatisfied with what you have now and want to make a change.

Gas powered backpack leaf blowers advantages;

Backpack blowers are like their little brothers the hand held blower they both are a heavy-duty lawn and garden tool. The major difference being with two-hundred mph air speeds and seven-hundred and twenty cfm of air produced by the powerful engines of the backpack blowers. Compare that to their little brothers the hand held blowers with air speeds of one-hundred and fifty mph and three-hundred and twenty cfm, both gas-powered blowers will get the job done. The backpack leaf blowers are just too big and powerful to hold in your hand, however they will finish a large job quicker and more efficiently than the smaller and lighter hand held blower will.

A little more than ten years ago now, Honda came out with a small overhead valve four-stroke gas engine, “no fuel and oil mix required”. The little power plant was perfectly suited for use on a heavy-duty straight shaft string trimmer. A trimmer designed for the professional landscaper and the commercial market. The little four-stroke engine was able to run in any position, on its side, upside down and any thing in between. Small and lightweight, lower fuel emissions than a two-stroke engine of comparable size. Lots of power making it perfectly suited for a market that required a greener small engine option.

Once the folks in the lawns and garden industry got use to not mixing oil in the gas, which caused the little four-stroke engine to smoke like a tar kettle, foul spark plugs and generally run like crap, they fell in love with the power of the engine, and the money savings on no fuel mix to buy.

After proving it in the most demanding jobs preformed by the most demanding and skeptical people in the business, the little compact four-stroke engine are here to stay. Working hard as a mini cultivator tiller, leaf blower, water pump, and let us not forget string trimmer’s everyday all over the world.

The author of this publication, Mike Teddleton owns the copyright to Gas vs electric leaf blowers, cordless, corded, 2-stroke or 4-cycle. The rights to publish this article in print or online can only be granted by contacting me the author in writing. You may use the intro and link back to the article directing the reader back to my post here at HubPages where they may find the story in its entirety