Are leaf blowers noisy?
Leaf blowers are an incredibly convenient tool for clearing out all the leaves that fall on your property. Are there any drawbacks when using this kind of equipment? For example, are leaf blowers obnoxiously loud? They absolutely are!
Notorious noisemakers
As anyone who has ever used one can tell you, a leaf blower is not just loud. They are insanely loud. You can easily, and clearly hear a leaf blower from several blocks away because of how loud they are. The higher pitch tone that they produce allows the sound to carry through nearby windows with little dampening.
Exactly how loud are leaf blowers?
Sound is often measured in decibels (dB). If you are at least 50 feet away, you will hear the leaf blower at roughly 64 to 78 dB. For the operator, who is right next to the noise, a leaf blower clocks in at anywhere from 95 to 115 dB. That is almost as loud as a live concert! Extended exposure to sound at that amount of dB is going to cause permanent hearing loss for the operator.
That’s crazy! Why is a leaf blower so loud anyway?
The reason a leaf blower is so loud is because of how it is designed. In general, there are two sources for the noise that a leaf blower makes. The first one is the air that is blowing through the leaf blower. That air is moving with such a high velocity that it is making a lot of noise as it passes through.
The other reason for the noise is due to how the gas-powered engine in the leaf blower works. As the fuel combustion occurs, it causes the engine to vibrate which adds in the higher pitch part of the annoying loud noise that a leaf blower produces.
