This is the sort of guff we get posted through our door in the ‘local printer sponsored’ free mag…

Highlights of absolute scientific truth include:
“Nearly 70 percent of chimney smoke re-enters nearby buildings”
“wood burners lead to greater A+E attendances”
“woodburners increase our susceptibility to cold and flus”

Closing statement…woodburning is unethical and should be illegal…

I’m tempted to waste some time by contacting professor Matt to ask for the detailed scientific sources of his information.

Or is the key here in the final sentence…”in my personal opinion…”

!!

DrP

To be fair, many wood-burners contravene the Clean Air acts which make our cities benign places to live. My area can stink like a bonfire on cold windless evenings with all the woodsmaoke in the air.

I’ve just picked myself up from the floor from laughing. What a pile of twaddle.

There was a programme on radio 4 a while back saying stoves in homes were real pollution problems, and really needed more control ie banning

Lancashire CC can’t even afford measures to stop people racing down our street so I reckon a bit of wood smoke is going to be low on the list of priorities.

Is it only me that likes passing through some towns where wood smoke or a burning tyre is all you can smell.
It has a nostalgic feel about it.

Does that so called Prof. realise in a village whilst being snowed in/snappy nights, that it’s vital part of countryside living.

I suppose he probably thinks showers are no good for the planet but that if he stopped to think realistically what would happen if we didn’t wash…

Damn, I am going to start smoking again 🙁

He’s confusing the SMUG problem with woodburnerists for a SMOG problem, surely?

😆 I just made that up, I’m dead funny me 😀

Snap me too, that tickled me somewhat 🙂

Particles both remain airborne for weeks and re-enter nearby houses…

Matt strikes me as the sort to REALLY hate cyclists. Imagine the hand wringing if he discovered we al like bikes AND woodburners? 😯

Luckily he is from Worthing, so he’ll never make it into actual countryside due to lack of artisan deli’s.

Genuine Windows XP? I wouldn’t be calling Matt for a laptop.

yeah, laugh it up you bastards – one of these days you’ll pollute a child’s face right off

*unt

Oh and it’ll burn a baby robins face right off

Fire up your scientifically calculated washing machine burner, it’s guaranteed* to actually improve air quality.

Matt needs to show his workings

He’s got a point, most wood-burners aren’t really necessary. And they DO cause pollution – it’s not butterflies and rainbows that flow out of the chimney…

especially as most people tend to get one that’s 3 times the size required, and then choke them off to keep the heat output something sensible, unaware (or uncaring?) that this makes for filthy ‘orrible combustion conditions.

Are they any worse than diesel cars? I don’t know. Do I want one? Yes.

Flame away…

I love our burner, its the sole heating for most of downstairs.

However, it must be polluting to some degree. All that carbon I’m chucking up in the air.

I’d be interested to know how it compares to, say, a car.

Yes it’s polluting but wood will nearly always put its carbon back into the atmosphere as it decays/gets eaten etc. Oil and coal are deep store carbon that’s not really part of the natural carbon cycle.

Stove is carbon neutral as wood decaying gives off the same co2 as burning it. Burn hot and fast in a clean burn stove and emissions are very low.

However, it must be polluting to some degree. All that carbon I’m chucking up in the air.

I’d be interested to know how it compares to, say, a car.

It’s not really a fair comparison, it serves a useful purpose moving you from A to B in a way that (bikes, walking, and public transport aside) doesn’t have many alternatives. But the car will be far far cleaner, the exhaust has ppm (or at least fractions of percent) levels of bad stuff in it, a wood burner produces so much crud they chimney fills with soot and tar (when did you last have a car service that involved sweeping the exhaust?).

A wood burner is just a really crap version of a boiler (which would be even cleaner than a car by some margin).

Stove is carbon neutral as wood decaying gives off the same co2 as burning it.

Not really, a some of the carbon goes into the soil if it’s left to rot. By burning wood it’s still releasing carbon that could have been taken out the atmosphere i.e. carbon positive. And it still got to your house in the back of a lorry/van/car, and if it’s been dried artificially it’s already had a lot of energy used drying it out, the chainsaws used to cut it, all the FC vehicles used to manage the forest and probably a lot of other sources of CO2 so it’s not carbon neutral.

How many burn hot and fast though?

Fine if you are in one of these places that gets cut off every winter, otherwise unnecessary.

You are all also confusing slow release (decay) with quick release (burning), its really not the same thing.

Actually, the car comparison is poor, as you say.

Apparently my stove is 6kw, so the comparison ought to be with a 6kw boiler.

But that complex because the burner encourages me to stay in, when I might otherwise be out burning fossil fuels, and its high on impossible to quantify that.

Only problem I have with woodburners it the smelly crap people put in them, treated wood or painted things and other rubbish.

love the smell of a fire in the countryside, does not really have a place in the city IMO

and there is a saying “with firewood you warm up twice” if you buy yours chopped up you are missing out 😉

The article actually inspired me to have a fire tonight..
If just to play around with my IR thermometer I found in the garage.
I get bored. Numbers interest me..

Interesting how the heat really drops off as you go up only a few cm up the flue.
And by interesting, I actually mean boring.

DrP

Cold and flues surely ?

BN12 has a magazine these days? Was Boring Goring when I lived there, has it gone hipster?

Emissions from domestic wood burning are increasing in the UK. They accounted for 17% of PM2.5 emissions in 2013, only marginally less than the 18% from all road transport.[3]

The UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization recommended phasing out log-burning stoves in developed countries to reduce global warming as well as dangerous air pollution.

http://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h2757/rr-0

I’ve seen some papers somewhere that America is looking to ban stoves and open fires in a lot of states, if it happens there it won’t be long before it comes over here.

they’re a lifestyle/statement thing. We’ve got open fires and a gas boiler, bet most on here have a boiler as well. TBH as it’s pretty much purely vanity in 90% of homes banning them is probably a good thing. Means I wouldn’t have to clean the bastard out too.

That BMJ piece is interesting in a worrying kind of a way.

OP, are you a real Dr, cos it’s your own professional journal which reckons this guy is right 🙂

One thing that’s bad about t’internet is it’s very easy to spread misinformation. One thing that’s good is it’s very easy to debunk it

Today was in fact the first day since about November that we let the woodburner go out over the course of the day. But I felt the need to light it again this evening. But then again, it is our only source of heat and has a back boiler running about 9 radiators so I hope I can be forgiven. And our nearest neighbours are a mile away too 🙂

What a polite thermometer.

even biomass boilers which will generally burn cleaner than wood burning stoves can cause problems, I know of at least one commercial installation that has had the biomass boilers removed & replaced with gas after just 3 years of operation.

If you are responsible at least check the local authority smoke free zones before you install a wood burner, the 1956 clean air act wasn’t just brought into force for the hell of it

Poor professor matt does not seem to have discovered what punctuation is for and has consequently fallen victim to a fairly serious case of run-on sentenceitis in his first paragraph which makes me think that he is a product of the local school system for everyone knows that up to 70% of people who leave school with grades even as high as A* in GCSE English are nowhere near the standard that they should be…..

This is quite a good example of people not wanting to hear something they probably deep down know that a correct.

Ultimately most wood burners are lifestyle items that people don’t actually need and there is no denying they are crude and stinky.

Hmmm, that article seems suspiciously similar to one penned by Sam Harris a while ago… I’ll try to dig it out.

Here it is and it seems whole chunks of it have been lifted verbatim by the lazy Matt.

This is quite a good example of people not wanting to hear something they probably deep down know that a correct.

Ultimately most wood burners are lifestyle items that people don’t actually need and there is no denying they are crude and stinky.

yeah it’s a naughty one!

i don’t really want to hear it because i only bought mine 4 months ago. and yes, my central heating works perfectly well. And i live in a city.

but on the other hand, i live an otherwise pretty green lifestyle. i drive about 5 miles a week, take maybe 1 short-haul flight a year, and all the furniture in my house is 2nd hand. you’ve got to have your vices….. right? 😳 😕

WHO study says millions die due to solid fuel stoves / cooking…http://r4d.dfid.gov.uk/pdf/outputs/GACC/Session1-1_Carlos-Dora_WHO.pdf%5D I think stoves will go the way of the diesel engine.

I was going to mention cook stove deaths but it’s not directly compatible as the problem there is the women and children being indoors with the typical “3 stone” cook stove that just has 3 stone (surprise, surprise) and they feed in lengths of wood. To make matters worse they often use waste plastic to light the fires. There is also a huge problem in Africa with deforestation due to fuel for cooking.

There are more efficient metal stoves built, a good example is one from Uganda which has been adopted in Sierra Leone and other places and bio charcoal made from rise husks and saw dust and provides local industries. But they are still horrendous used indoors. A flue is a luxury that most don’t get the benefit of.

I am helping some students at the local uni with a cleaner burning design based on modifying the current methods. It also makes better use of the waste materials due to being more efficient and designed specifically for them.

The problem here is not direct fumes into homes but the air around our homes and being I haled by those outside, entering other peoples homes and being an inefficient way to use fuel. If everyone had wood burners it would be a major step back in air quality to something resembling the industrial revolution.