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There's nothing quite like coming home from a day in the city ripping people off, parking up the Range Rover in front of someone else's dropped kerb and firing up the woodburner with some kiln dried imported hardwood from some virgin Russian forest. It creates a warm feeling like nothing else...
😆 😆
More time to ride bikes innit.
And not [i]working[/i] from home anymore means I don't have as much time.
Already sold the truck 🙁 I'm more sad about that than anything else.
The new place does have a flue - lets see how things look in 12 months 😉
Apols for doing what I hate in others and not reading the thread.
The particulate/pollution thing is all about population density and the problems of having many burners in a small area. Over any distance, the particles drop out of the atmosphere (and get rained out) and cause no significant harm. It's not fossil fuels, so keep on burning.
At least, that's my excuse.
I just thought of a way (not the only way, just a way) to balance the affects of local pollution vs global warming benefits of sustainable heat.
a quick google gets the figures of 9500 early deaths each year from london air pollution. It also gives me figures between 300 000 and 500 000 deaths a year from global warming around the globe. Obviously we also need to consider how much each burner affects each, but I put it out there to show there is a balance to be considered
Crackers. You are doing the traditional, default, almost natural thing. Man had used wood for thousands of years. Later forms of pollution thus should be reduced first. No idea how you live but maybe fly less, drive to MTB ing less, go to the pictures less, or electrical goods less. Don't up grades the bike so often. All of these are modern pollution creators, they story first. Buy a coffee out? Don't. UK food before imported. I bet you could negate your wood burning "pollution" easily and hold the moral high ground by avoiding modern rubbish.
http://woodheat.org/emissions-testing.html
https://www.des.nh.gov › ard › ard-36
http://www.hetas.co.uk/sia-update-sep16/
A few, more scientific papers, to help determine just how bad it is.
Look, wood is short cycle carbon capture, fossil fuels are long cycle. That is all that matters. Stay on wood; if you want to clean up your urban air reduce car use.
You are doing the traditional, default, almost natural thing
I don't understand the idea of "good, old fashioned, natural" pollution and "modern, bad" pollution. Everything we do has an environmental impact and you can't negate the pollution and other effects of wood burning, no matter how much discretionary consumerism you forego. There's no moral high ground here, just a lot of hard choices about how we try to manage the long term impact of how we live.
There was an interesting paper referenced on here a while back, which demonstrated how gas could be carbon negative compared to renewable timber, because you get roughly twice as much energy output for the same carbon emission. So instead of burning and replacing timber (carbon neutral at best) you burn gas, capture the carbon emitted with half of the timber growth you were previously burning, and sequester the carbon by using the timber for building and other products. Then you can take out some extra carbon with the other half of the timber growth that you were previously burning. That paper was written by a couple of guys who admitted they were keen log burners as well!
There are people who are sustainably hand harvesting and drying their own wood in rural areas and using nothing else to heat their homes, but the fact there is a market for kiln dried logs in neat plastic bags suggests a lot of people don't use log burners that way. I think most people use them because they like the cosy effect of burning wood.
I can't see how log burners could be a sustainable, energy efficient heat source on any major scale in modern society. The harvesting, storage and distribution of timber would be impractical, and there would surely be a major negative effect on air quality in urban areas.
The only sustainable energy source that's capable of supplying a significant proportion of the uk's energy demand is solar. That doesn't mean that other things can't make a useful contribution in some areas.
The industry thinks it could contribute 10% of the Ukcarbon reduction. http://www.stoveindustryalliance.com/newsarticle.aspx?LatestNews_ID=10000&pPK=618f83d6-c438-4b35-9515-8c3b1aa76bf9
Exactly, 10% of sfa isn't much 🙂
Have any of the people posting here with x£000 p.a. Heating bills considered improving their insulationa and airtightness?
Poss refers to my post above? You'll note that was the first winter in a house where we'd lived in a completely different type of property.
In reality, you're absolutely right: better to reduce overall heat requirements first. The house is having an extensive renovation this year, and lots of insulation is high up the list..!
Of course the wood stove industry claim 10%, its a typical bit of marketing guff... selective quoting an attribute that fits their marketing narrative
I find it distressing when people intelligent enough to write as well as kcr write stuff so obviously flawed.
In the first year I owned this house I burned though about 1000e of gas at current prices. All that CO2 went up with no sequestration of carbon by me or the gas company.
The last year I was on gas we burned 300e of gas (mostly hot water), because as Simon Nicolai notes the first thing to do is sort out the insulation, sealing and ventilation of your house.
We cut off the gas and replaced the CH with a wood burner and thermal solar panel and fitted PV which produce nearly double the energy we consume.
Wood comes from trees felled locally and I transport it in a barrow. There are just as many trees that need felling as when people first knew I take wood away for free (you get billed extra to have wood taken away when you have a tree felled around here). More than enough wood is produced in the area I live to fuel all the wood burners in the area - the proof being that the wooded area is constantly increasing and unwanted wood is transported away to be turned into pellets or fire wood elsewhere. Previously it was burned in the incinerator as nobody wanted it.
I fail to see how me burning the wood with zero transport is causing anymore pollution than taking it away to be incinerated.
Wood rotting on the forest floor produces exactly the same amount of CO2 as burning it. It's perfect. The downside is the labour, and the fact wood rotting on the forest floor supports lots of life.
I've got 12m^3 of hardwood and 2m^3 of softwood in the shed at the moment.
Climate change is real; we've all got to get away from burning fossil fuels. It's fundamental. Do it whatever way you want; insulation, renewables, just reducing consumption of anything and everything. Particulates and air pollution are important but less so.
My heating bill isn't nuts, but 1930s solid wall house so not the best. I have however added 6" insulation in the loft, adding 2*3"studs to the joists to to it and board after. I've replaced all the windows and doors and just last week pulled down some more ceiling that i knew had no insulation, and added 100mm Kingspan beneath the tiles. Ventilation wise I've put back some airbricks that had previously been blocked up, to improve Ventilation and air for the stove, i don't get condensation anymore.
Climate change and air pollution are both real, what we need to remember is there is no silver bullet, no single answer. A combination of things, with different answers in different scenarios, having balanced the pros and cons is better.
Oh and wood in the pile supports life too, judging by the wasps I've found and the wood pecker I've seen feasting in my shed!
Here's the original article from the Association for Environment Conscious Building:
http://www.aecb.net/publications/biomass-a-burning-issue/
It's an interesting read.
As I said in my original post some people do harvest, burn and replace local wood sustainably, just as you describe, and if the wood was going to be burned anyway, that makes sense. That can only be an option for a relatively small amount of the total population, however, and if everyone was using log burners in a more densely populated community, there would surely be an impact on local air quality.
I have a log burner in the house myself. It can't heat the whole house or water, so it can't serve as a primary heat source, and there is no practical source of sustainable local wood. I think it is just impractical and ornamental.
A 5kW wood burner heats our whole house for the day with a four-hour burn when the outside temperature is around zero. That's in a house with retro-fitted insulation. A passive house would do better.
You can buy a stove with a water heating circuit.
If there is no local supply of wood or you live in a city with air pollution issues then I agree that a wood burner is not the best option.
Where I strongly disagree is with the pseudo science that says burning wood or pellets is worse in terms of CO2 than burning gas. Because burning sustainable wood in the country it is grown produces less CO2 than any fossil fuel and people that claim otherwise are using grossly misleading calculation methods.
Removing the wood burner you say? You'll have to leave STW.
Just to leap to the defence of heat pumps - they absolutely make economic sense off the gas grid, iirc that includes boreholes. And as far as only viable source goes, GSHP is just as good, there is a long standing district heating proposal in Glasgow that uses the heat from flooded mine workings in the same way as those in Southampton.
The important thing to consider is sustainability, which in the big picture goes hand in hand with diversity. There is no single solution, anyone who says otherwise hasn't done their homework.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39115829
This article was really interesting. Nice town in the French Alps with chronic air pollution problems (as in the kids can't play outside at school for part of the year bad).
The cause? Industry in the Rheine-Ruhr region of Germany? Nope. Truck traffic transversing the alps? Nope. Deforestation in Indonesia? Nope.
Wood burners.
We need to do up our living room in the next year or so. We thought about a woodburner but not doing it now. We have mains gas so it'd be purely a lifestyle accessory but 4 of our immediate neighbours have and the air quality is already suffering. Wood burners will be clamped down on at some point.
Reading the equivalent report in French the problem in Sallanches is that wood is being burned in open hearths. A 1000e grant is available to anyone who wants to change to an efficient closed wood burner. The France 3 report quotes nearly half the fine particles coming from wood. Most of the pollution coming from diesel vehicles on the way up to the Mont Blanc tunnel.
In terms of health I suspect benzine ring chemicals in diesel soot are more likely to cause health issues than wood ash. Yes, there's a problem but banning burning wood isn't the answer as the authorities recognise with incentives to update equiplent. The answer is to burn it efficiently. Nox levels are definitely diesels and that's the main killer in Paris.
Where I strongly disagree is with the pseudo science that says burning wood or pellets is worse in terms of CO2 than burning gas.
I don't think there is any pseudo science in the article I linked to, and it makes an interesting case for alternative ways of using wood to capture carbon emissions. Which parts of the authors' argument would you disagree with?
The paper is right, if you draw the system around the boiler/stove then wood emits carbon approaching coal levels. It is, i agree, wrong to always draw the system around the imaginary field growing trees to feed the stove, but sometimes it is. The UK has a greater area under forest than for a long time, and other then the last few years we've also been planting at high rates. Are these trees fuel? No, they aren't, IF there is a higher monetary value in another use. This gets really screwed up when we do things like convert Drax to biomass. Now you've got such a huge demand for wood fuel there is value in wood where there wasn't before and it can drive some really bad and unsustainable practices.... Felling unmanaged forests in the US and shipping it across the Atlantic.
Logs for stoves come from so many sources, and some aren't sustainable, but since there are so many 1 man band log producers using perfectly sustainable sources that would probably be ruined if some kind of fsc like scheme for log fuel were enforced I'm not sure I'd favour that approach. While those guys can't supply a huge demand, the current demand they supply, often with logs from arb waste probably can consider the fuel zero carbon. I even wonder if it is sometimes carbon positive. If a waste material being processed and dispose of another way would release more carbon then local processing to fuel logs is it carbon positive to burn it? Confusing. What this shows is, agreeing a carbon accounting mechanism is not easy, and I'm not surprised that the DECC carbon calculator is often chritisised.
neilnevill - RHI, as far as I'm aware, now requires the fuel to come from BSL registered sources. The chain of custody is easier to prove if the raw material comes from an FSC registered holding. This means that where I work we have no issue selling chip for good money as we are FSC accredited. Something that as an organisation we complete, but having had an inspection a couple of years ago, would be an utter pain for smaller or private woodlands considering the benefit.
Chip prices are keeping the market up, so good for industry, even if not the best use of timber. Certainly encouraging the management of more blocks. Felling licence comes with a condition to restock. Whether the right thing is restocked is another discussion.
Waiting for the OPs next post, "I'm selling my VW Transporter/Cotic/On One/Pashley and shaving my moustached".
Life's too short to try and have the absolute calculated minimum environmental impact possible.
OP, Just get a Kachelofen if you don't want to use a log burner. I put 3 logs in mine in the morning and it will keep my kitchen and living room warm all day. If I'm cooking, I'll use a bit another 2 logs.
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Exactly timber, the government are trying to do a good thing with rhi but some of its implementation has distorted the market and encouraged/created some odd practices that weren't intended and may not help,. Running a pellet boiler to kiln dry logs and making more on the rhi than the sale of the logs for example. I'm not saying kiln drying doesn't have it's place, but the rhi distorts the market and the small guys that aren't big enough to invest in a boiler and kiln, that are producing a more carbon neutral air dried log, make less money, odd. However there have to be guidelines for people to meet/be assessed against for any incentive, which then means they are frequently too simple to account for all scenarios.
Anyways, I'm just a householder who has found a local and very friendly small tree surgeon business that don't have the space to dry logs themselves and just want to dispose of the arb waste cheaply and usefully if they can, so with just an ms180, stihl pro cleaving hammer, fiskars x27, sledge, 4 wedges and a hookaroon I can process as much wood as i can store/have time for/sweat for for free. Then burn it safe in the knowledge that is dry and is as carbon neutral as possible, possibly even lower carbon than the alternative which would be local recycling centre-transport to Drax-process to chip and burn. I burn as hot as i can to keep pollution down, keep my flue clean, and to reduce my gas consumption as much as possible.
it's still releasing a lot of nasty particulates, far more than from hundreds of diesel cars...
Really? I have never looked into the science, but I can't help but wonder if this isn't one of those things where we will discover next decade that everything we thought in this one was wrong. Kind of like we've just done with diesel cars, and margarine as opposed to butter in the 70s/80s...
As an auld asthmatic I can confirm that the "fashion" to install or resurrect old fire places is having an adverse on my health when out cycling, especially at night. I have a short 4ml commute through town, on a frosty morning there is the "blue haze" of death i.e. Coal/log smoke(smog). I alleviate this by covering my mouth with a Buff or other necker.
Gave up night riding for this reason...