Gas Stove Pollution

Same.

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I’m sure the “lawn” you are talking about is just a field, not the meticulously manicured, evenly green, golf course worthy lawn decorating front yard of a house in a development where the HOA gets their panties in a wad over a couple of dandelions in the grass. :laughing: We are in the PNW, where it rains a lot, so you would think no sprinklers needed, but no… grass would go yellow if not watered in the summer. Developers put grass down because it is so much cheaper than planting shrubs and trees… folks assume that is for aesthetics. Lush greenery!

And your lawnmower… it was already manufactured so that ship has sailed. No need to throw out something that works fine. When it dies for good… that will be a different story.

Much of my “lawn” is in fact a field. The portion directly around.my.house is in fact nice grass though, of course there is some clover, etc mixed in. I have never felt the need to water the grass near the house or in the “field”. It’s growth slows in the heat of summer but it hasn’t died as of yet. I’m shocked the moisture in the PNW wouldn’t actually support a lawn without assistance. It doesn’t actually kill the grass if it goes dormant for a bit.

As for my lawnmower, I plan on purchasing another gas lawnmower when the time comes. There is currently no restriction in my state regarding the sale of gas powered lawn equipment.

Who knows what happens in several years. :slight_smile:

I personally hope all yard machinery will be quiet (ie electric). Leaf blowers are the worst!

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It is quite surprising! However, if the grass is not native, which most front lawns here aren’t, it doesn’t do well without constant TLC. Another problem is that developers put very little soil under the sod they use to instantly create those manicured lawns.

I wouldn’t.let my builder take away any soil. All the top soil that came from the house location got spread on top of the topsoil already present around the house build. They then just planted grass seed appropriate for the area. Seems like the builders out there are setting people up for failure.

We are almost 100% organic on our farm, including our lawn. The only exception I make is using Roundup where I find Poison Ivy as I’ve yet to find anything else that kills it. It seems birds bring it in or it would be long gone (sigh).

If anyone has anything organic that kills it, I’m open to trying it, but continual mowing or cutting seems to just make it spread more and it’s next to impossible to take boiling water to the farther reaches of our farm.

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When ours dies we’re going electric, ride on, zero turn. Our oldest son got one for his (also organic) lawn in Ohio and said it works great.

It does tend to be the young who lead with changes I think. Us “old dogs” take a bit to learn new tricks, but it’s easier once I’ve seen things in action. :wink:

We were the first to get an electric chainsaw though (battery, not plug in) and it works well for what we need, so we did get one “first” in our family!

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I absolutely love my battery powered hedge trimmer. I use it to beat back the wilderness occasionally. Anything that fits between it’s teeth is easily chopped up. I’m pretty impressed with the battery life too.

I currently have a sweet Stihl chainsaw, gas powered. It has been through so many trees on this property. I don’t see me ditching that anytime soon. Usually when I’m using it I’m tackling an entire tree and usually I’m going through multiple “gap ups” on it to get the job done. The largest I’ve done is a 36" diameter poplar tree. It took two of us all day to dismantle and deal with that one, with the help of diesel powered heavy equipment to move parts of it around.

It doesn’t rain at all in Portland from July 4th to Labor day. We let our lawn go dormant. So there are only a few month of the spring and the fall when it needs to be mowed.

We have reduced our backyard lawn area with lots of plants, a veggie garden, and a deck. Still thinking about what to do with the front.

Seems like a good plan.

In national news today, the Bay Area will phase out gas furnaces and water heaters, but gas stoves were spared.

I find the new rule about the banning of gas water heaters and furnaces to be infuriating. 2/3 of homes in the Bay Area, including mine, currently use a gas water heater and/or furnace, and many of those homes don’t have electrical systems that can handle the installation of electric water heaters and furnaces. If the water heater or furnace goes out, homeowners will have to spend thousands of extra dollars, and possibly wait days or weeks, retrofitting their electrical systems before they can be replaced. California’s politicians seem unable to do anything except make people’s lives more expensive and more of a hassle.

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This is so stupid.

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Go south. Pickup gas water heater. return to SF. install new one yourself or hire someone - for cash - who can do it for you. Bring it in after dark in a truck you can park in the garage so no one snitches.

Or get one now and keep a spare.

Seriously. WTH.

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This is what I’m thinking of doing when it comes to the water heater. Had it replaced five or six years ago, so it’ll probably last another six or seven years. My concern is lots of others will be doing the same thing, so the prices will jump as panic-driven demand goes up - like toilet paper at the start of Covid. I’m not too worried about my gas furnace, as it was replaced just a few years and and will probably outlast me. My old one was 60 years old, and I only need to turn it on about 20 nights a year.

I wouldn’t be so angry if they stretched the mandate out to 10 years. The issue with having such a short time before gas water heaters and furnaces stop being sold is that it will result in supply vs demand mismatches that will drive the price of those items up, as well as the cost for upgrading electrical systems. Almost every electrician I’ve seen commenting on this said there’s a shortage of electricians who can upgrade systems, so people will be waiting a long time to get electrical upgrades. Shortages of electricians also means higher prices for their services. They also say that PG&E’s electrical infrastructure in a lot of neighborhoods can’t handle the increased electricity use, and realistically PG&E won’t be able to upgrade those areas by the time it’s needed.

My guess is this same kind of ban will happen throughout the state. The people who passed the rule were saying outright that the Bay Area is merely the first area of the state doing this.

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Exactly. A lot of older BA homes still have 60 amp service.

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And a lot of Bay Area homes have very frequent power cuts. We’ve been without power for 3-4 days both last year and the year before. Ironically, many of our neighbors have now installed generators connected to the natural gas lines to power their appliances. I hope that this deadline is ultimately delayed, since I have no confidence in PG&E’s ability to deliver a reliable electricity supply, or we’ll be buying a generator too.

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We only have a small lawn, so much easier. We have lots of native plants, as well as some non-native ones and the yard looks very lush and quite green. If you have a lawn in our neighborhood, you are required to keep it mowed per the HOA.