[Closed] have we done Stoves: The Environmental Cost?

3 litre Beemer

The stove will kiil more people than a petrol Beemer but less than a diesel. 8)

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/home-fires-the-worlds-most-lethal-pollution-2192000.html

I guess you didnt read the article then kimbers.

or having children

your child could change the world an invent a new form of fuel/heating

thanks for screwing humanity by caring about your carbon footprint

If you are worried about CO2 and climatic change the stove is carbon neutral apart from making it and the transport of the wood.

From a health point of view, the fine particles are considered a health risk.

Unlike gas and coal, wood fires don't release CO2 from carbon that's best left in the ground. Or possibly used carefully as a chemical feedstock.

So long as you aren't burning mangrove wood that's been shipped across the world from a devastated shoreline, now vulnerable to storms, rising sealevel and worse.

A friend of mine wrote this a while ago on the subject
http://www.isonomia.co.uk/?p=1558

Unlike gas and coal, wood fires don't release CO2 from carbon that's best left in the ground.

Edukator has it I feel.

We probably do a lot of things far worse but it's not without a cost.

Nothing funny there Kona, that's an accurate statement. All of my wood has reached my house in a wheel barrow.

To ease your conscience, it's worth bearing in mind that even the VW scandal is likely to pale in comparison to the [url= http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/06/whats-the-environmental-impact-of-modern-war ]environmental impact of war[/url], though for some reason, Aircraft carriers, fighter jets, tanks, bombs, missiles and depleted uranium munitions don't seem to have the same degree of regulation as civilian toys.

Ah well, at least someone must be making a pretty penny...

Good link, Jive.

My employer is in the planning stages of building a biomass turbine, to the tune of 120 million of our English pounds.

It'll burn 24 lorry loads per day of wood.

Which apparently makes us carbon neutral.

My wee fire is therefor fine, as it'll take me about 80 years to burn 24 lorry loads.

Aircraft carriers, fighter jets, tanks, bombs, missiles and depleted uranium munitions don't seem to have the same degree of regulation as civilian toys.

UK vehicle fleet - 30 million? UK fighter jets - a couple of hundred. In the big picture not really worth worrying about. Anyway I'd rather our fighter jets were designed with performance in mind than to be eco friendly.

It is what they do with them that make them un-eco-friendly...

UK vehicle fleet - 30 million? UK fighter jets - a couple of hundred. In the big picture not really worth worrying about.

I take it you didn't read the link?

The maintenance of standing armies just to counter the threat of war exerts enormous strain on environmental resources.

[b]The US Department of Defence is the country’s largest consumer of fossil fuels.[/b] Research from 2007 showed the military used 20.9bn litres of fuel each year. This results in similar CO2 emissions to a mid-sized European country such as Denmark.

And that’s before they go to war. The carbon footprint of a deployed modern army is typically enormous. One report suggested the US military, with its tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, used 190.8m litres of oil every month during the invasion of Iraq. An estimated two thirds of this fuel is used delivering more fuel to the vehicles at the battlefront.

I appreciate that is US rather than UK, but when all is said and done, we all share the same planet...

even in UK terms, how much of the [b]£33,000 per hour[/b] it costs to run a Tornado is fuel?

(And what is the combined environmental impact of all armies of which the Queen is commander in chief?)

Anyway I'd rather our fighter jets were designed with performance in mind than to be eco friendly.

Who's going to invade us, and why?

Will it be because of our log piles?

Definitely less efficient than gas, and will produce more particulates. Theoretically carbon neutral in operation so long as the wood comes from a managed forest. Gas can be carbon neutral too, but I don't think much/any of our piped gas is at the moment, although hopefully it will be at some point in the future.

Of the STW lifestyle essentials it probably ranks somewhere in the middle for environmental friendliness, worse than the shed and the Orange 5, considerably better than the dog and the Audi.

thanks for the input!

i apologise that i haven't sired a world-saving offspring. But you never know. Ask me again in 20 years...

Nothing funny there Kona, that's an accurate statement. All of my wood has reached my house in a wheel barrow.

Considering how popular stoves are becoming, when do we expect to see a hike in wood prices? At the moment I can get a ton bag for £40-£50 (sold as seasoned, but the moisture meter says otherwise) I've also seen ton bags go for £70-80.

I'm guessing most these companies are supplied from tree surgeons, but how many forests have we across the UK which are set aside for harvesting, how many years of wood supply, with increasing demand does the UK have, any stats?

That biomass post about using 24 lorry loads a day, thats mind boggling.

massive problem the other way actually cruzcampo - I was at a recent conference where the FC discussed the fact that one of their biggest challenges at the moment was under harvesting, a large proportion of UK woodlands (especially in the south) are not currently being actively managed.

In Surrey (Englands most wooded county) they reckoned that only 20% of woodland is being managed for forestry production, turning out about 20,000m3 of timber, the FC reckon that if it was more actively managed, they could sustainably harvesting many times that - at the moment theres shed loads of saleable timber simply being felled and left to rot, its easy to see if you look around, for example, nature reserves and railway corridors.

Cheers ninfan, thats rather good news for the stove market and wood supply, hopefully FC get their act together.

double post

any stoveists here live in a terraced house? what do you do about firewood delivery? looks like it might be a bit of a pain to carry a ton of firewood through the house and into the back yard 😕

Buy your wood in the form of an acorn. Easy enough to carry through the house - just a little longer to season (and grow).

convert - Member
Buy your wood in the form of an acorn. Easy enough to carry through the house - just a little longer to season (and grow).

Genius idea!

In the meantime, insulate your house thoroughly to cut down on other heating costs, and by the time the acorn is ready to be harvested you'll have saved enough to pay for the wood stove. 🙂

Better make it a bag of acorns though...

I was laughing at the kinda homeopathic suggestion that there is bad CO2 and good CO2

Isn't the point that the CO2 in the wood will (likely) be released by the wood when it dies and rots, so burning it accelerates the release somewhat but doesn't add to it? Whereas the CO2 in a coal deposit has been sequestered out of the atmosphere for millennia - digging the coal up and setting fire to it releases CO2 that was otherwise not "in play". Dunno, but that sounds vaguely convincing...

And that’s before they go to war. The carbon footprint of a deployed modern army is typically enormous. One report suggested the US military, with its tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, used 190.8m litres of oil every month during the invasion of Iraq. An estimated two thirds of this fuel is used delivering more fuel to the vehicles at the battlefront.

Yup. Some environmental horrors committed in the name of freedom. I spent nearly 4 years helping the military reduce it's dependency on fossil fuels. Fascinating work, occasionally frustrating, occasionally groundbreaking.

Shame you never managed to convince the RAF to flap their arms instead 😉

Think of all the extra social care that could be provided at £33,000 per hour times the number of Tornado jets we have 😯

I was laughing at the kinda homeopathic suggestion that there is bad CO2 and good CO2 released by stoves depending on whether the fuel should have been left in the ground or not

CO2 released from burning wood is considered to be carbon neutral because that CO2 was until recently part of the atmosphere anyway before it was fixed by the growing tree and made part of its living tissues. The CO2 released from burning fossil fuels is considered not to be carbon neutral because it has been trapped in the ground for hundreds of millions of years and it is the current sudden release of it that is changing the global climate at such an alarming rate.

In answer to the question that is probably already forming in your mind 'wouldn't it be better to leave the trees alone as well and therefore have no CO2 released at all?' the answer is yes, it would, but we have a massive, energy hungry population thats needs to be supplied from somewhere, so it's a question of how we go about it in the least damaging way possible.

slackalice - Member
Shame you never managed to convince the RAF to flap their arms instead

Think of all the extra social care that could be provided at £33,000 per hour times the number of Tornado jets we have

If we didn't have loads of tornado jets , the tornado pilots would get terribly bored.....

The neutral carbon footprint argument is a bit of a red herring. By this analysis oil and gas is also carbon neutral. A tree takes decades to grow and absorb CO2, but minutes to burn and release decades worth of CO2 into the atmosphere. The issue is not the overall amount of CO2 you pump into the atmosphere, it is about the rate of CO2 release, and by burning anything you are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere at a much higher rate than nature took to capture it. So we're potentially looking at a situation where we're releasing CO2 that nature took billions of years to capture over a handful of centuries.

But I suspect the amount of CO2 release due to stove use is a drop in the ocean compared with oil and gas use, so if you really want to ease your concience then you're better of reducing the use of your car snd Gas/oil Central Heating to offset your stove usage.

In the big picture not really worth worrying about.

And therein lies one of the biggest issues in tackling climate change. Someone else is always worse so why should we change?

I live in an inner-city area

Then burning wood is bad news. Wood smoke has lots of nasties in it - more than your average VW. If it's a sizeable city then you probably aren't even allowed to burn wood. See Clean Air Act - and why it was introduced.

The neutral carbon footprint argument is a bit of a red herring. By this analysis oil and gas is also carbon neutral.

Not really. There used to be loads and loads of CO2 in the air, in the Carboniferous period about 300m years ago. That was sequestered by trees and ended up in the ground over a long time, so it's considered a write-off, to use an accounting analogy. Whilst it did technically come from the atmosphere, that was before the time of dinosaurs so is not relevant. You're right, but it's not a red herring 🙂

But I suspect the amount of CO2 release due to stove use is a drop in the ocean

Again, right but not right 🙂 He'd be saving CO2 if he did this because he'd be burning recently sequestered CO2 rather than digging it out of the ground to power his central heating.

Edukator - Troll
If you are worried about CO2 and climatic change the stove is carbon neutral apart from making it and the transport of the wood.

From a health point of view, the fine particles are considered a health risk.

Probably have to hunt out my face/dust mask/buff for this weeks commute through town. Cold mornings and the "blue haze" cast by smokey wood/coal burners and my auld asthmatic lungs are not a good mix.
My dad lives in a small village where most houses use wood/coal. He needs to close his windows to stop the smoke drifting in and turn up hi oxygen supply!! At 85 he is not a well person!!

To me its a bit like alcohol. You abstained for 20 years but continued to buy the stuff every week and stash it in the cellar. Then one day you decided that drinking was for you. Now you could just continue to buy it every week and drink it and whilst it won't be doing you any good your drinking would be at a manageable level. But then you look longingly down in the cellar at all the booze stashed away. You binge your way through 20years worth in a couple of months and end up with a terrible headache, bloated, fat and with the mother of all addictions. If only you can crept down into the cellar and taken just a little bit every week and you could have made it last decades without such a harmful effect.

I was laughing at the kinda homeopathic suggestion that there is bad CO2 and good CO2

Isn't the point that the CO2 in the wood will (likely) be released by the wood when it dies and rots, so burning it accelerates the release somewhat but doesn't add to it? Whereas the CO2 in a coal deposit has been sequestered out of the atmosphere for millennia - digging the coal up and setting fire to it releases CO2 that was otherwise not "in play". Dunno, but that sounds vaguely convincing...

A few thoughts:

If you leave the tree to fall over and rot, methane will be produced, which is worse than CO2.

Most wood comes from managed forests, so the older tree you're burning has probably been replaced by a new tree; and younger trees (IIRC) absorb CO2 faster than old ones.

On the flip side, harvesting/processing the trees and transporting the wood uses fossil fuels, so not carbon neutral.

It'd be less efficient than my gas boiler, and would put more pollutive nasties into the air.

Are you sure about that? A modern Gas boiler is 5-10% better than a wood burner in terms of energy efficiency, but a wood burner heats the house more intelligently ie heast one room and not 5+ rooms that are unoccupied most of the time. CH is normally set to heat a house and ends up heating lots of rooms no one occupies more most of the time.

If it's a sizeable city then you probably aren't even allowed to burn wood. See Clean Air Act - and why it was introduced.

Modern wood burners are petty clean and you're allowed to use them in Smoke controlled areas under the Clean Air Act. E.g. all these are fine to use:
http://www.stovesonline.co.uk/smoke-control-areas-clean-air-act.html

Are you sure about that? A modern Gas boiler is 5-10% better than a wood burner in terms of energy efficiency, but a wood burner heats the house more intelligently ie heast one room and not 5+ rooms that are unoccupied most of the time. CH is normally set to heat a house and ends up heating lots of rooms no one occupies more most of the time.

that's interesting, i hadn't realised they were so close in efficiency. and yes, as to heating the house, that's a good point - i quite like the idea of evening heating being done mostly via a stove and an electric blanket upstairs...

"Probably have to hunt out my face/dust mask/buff for this weeks commute through town"

Or the cold dense air is keeping the diesel fumes hanging in the air at face level longer.

Im experiancing similar locally and its not stoves at 6am in the areas im riding my bike through.

And if you think a buff is doing you any good its the filter equivalent of holding a collander to your face.

If you leave the tree to fall over and rot, methane will be produced, which is worse than CO2.

Only if you've built a reservoir on top of it, methane is a product of anaerobic decomposition, one of the many reasons large scale hydro is the most damaging of the renewables and landfill generates power.

Aerobic decomposition, conversely, produces CO2 albeit at a much reduced rate.

Central heating can very easily be zoned so that argument doesn't hold.

If you want to go neutral coppicing is where you should be heading. Is there enough for everyone? Probably not. You then need to factor in just how the wood is being seasoned (natural or forced) and transported.

As for the nasties, it's not just smoke but creosote and such getting produced, smokeless only means it's burnt hot enough for complete combustion, the gases still need to condense somewhere (from memory California was a perfect example of this back in Ye Olden Days due to the relatively benign weather conditions that allowed smog to build up from the quantity of campfires being burnt).

Central heating can very easily be zoned so that argument doesn't hold.

Except that virtually no one does, whereas a log burner is, by design, localised.

So the argument stands.

Interestingly by definition, Central Heating heats more than one room

A central heating system provides warmth to the whole interior of a building (or portion of a building) from one point to multiple rooms.

22°C inside, no central heating, wood burner not lit yet this Autumn. If you insulate the outer shell of the house well enough zoning almost disappears.

22°C inside, no central heating, wood burner not lit yet this Autumn. If you insulate the outer shell of the house well enough zoning almost disappears.

You don't live in the North of England though...

You don't live in the North of England though...

Or in a 16th century house with glass the thickness of Rizla+.

Except that virtually no one does, whereas a log burner is, by design, localised.

So the argument stands.

Virtually no one? Got anything to back that up with? I'm sure plumbers merchants and the like wouldn'tstock all that equipment if there wasn't a decent turnover involved.

Interestingly by definition, Central Heating heats more than one room

A central heating system provides warmth to the whole interior of a building (or portion of a building) from one point to multiple rooms.

By your own definition it can also heat a single room (last I checked 1 was still a multiple). So what exactly is your point other than confirming what I already said? Central simply refers to a single source (boiler) rather than having individual sources (fires) in each area you want heated.

You don't live in the North of England though...

Continental weather variations aside, he's right. Go look up Passivhaus.

I should probably mention I studied all this as part of my degree (Sustainable Energy course) and the underlying argument is very basic. Yes wood burning is better but only if sustainably managed from source to consumption. Better doesn't equate to good though, don't confuse the two. There are better ways you could be spending your money on insulating such that you wouldn't need a burner in the first place (Passivhaus amped up to 1 liter haus - basically requires 1 litre of heating oil per sq m per annum)

When we bought the house every room had a radiator including the toilet. Turning any radiator off resulted in the room going cold. After insulating the walls, under the floor and the roof, and triple glazing the difference in temperature between rooms is small.

As pointed out on another thread, February here is colder than many places in the UK including western Scotland.

have you got your zoned and controled from a central point then dave ?

or the standard "TRVs" that no one runs round the house adjusting every 20 minutes.....

What was your outside temperature at 5am this morning edukator - western scotland isnt a particularly cold part of scotland..... its the warm(er) wet side.

Oh and then theres the frequent multi day power cuts we get (overhead lines to a country location) where the boilers rendered useless.

No I don't, mainly because zoning would be a PITA in our circumstances (unless you can find me a 5 week programmer to cater for my shift pattern). We do have TRVs and I can't remember the last time we had to adjust them.

I'm not saying that stoves are useless for everyone but what I am saying is that they are not the be all and end all of 'sustainable' heating. (read my edit)

Virtually no one? Got anything to back that up with? I'm sure plumbers merchants and the like wouldn'tstock all that equipment if there wasn't a decent turnover involved.

Do you have any to back up your argument?

Plumbers merchants don't just rely on zoning kit for business....

Continental weather variations aside, he's right. Go look up Passivhaus.

That's a tangental argument to whether or not CH is more efficient than a wood burner.

Yes wood burning is better but only if sustainably managed from source to consumption.

Given that gas/oil CH is completely unsustainable and is the main competitor to wood burners, from a sustainability point of view wood burning can only be as bad as or better than fossil fuels (regardless of how it is sourced).

I didn't look this morning, Trailrat, it felt mild, say 13, after a couple of chilly mornings. The forecast minimums for the days to come are 13,13,7,5,0,-1 then a week between 0 and 3.

There's also the point that woodburners are a lot better for the environment than open fires.

If you like to burn things indoors for for warmth and aesthetics, doing that in a woodburner is going to be a big step up (or rather down) in terms of wood burnt for any amount of heat, and both the amount and proportion of other nasties released.

The whole Passivhaus is a distraction, we have something like 25 million homes in the UK and build about 120k a year, so even if all new homes were Passivhaus (which they're not) and we didn't need any new houses (which we do), then it would take 200 years until we were all in Passivhaus homes....

So CH and wood burners are relevant for a long time yet.....

Given that gas/oil CH is completely unsustainable and is the main competitor to wood burners, from a sustainability point of view wood burning can only be as bad as or better than fossil fuels (regardless of how it is sourced).

But not everyone is using a stove are they? If they were then it would quickly become unsustainable.

Do you have any to back up your argument?

Beyond the argument that a good business is unlikely to stock low turnover products, no. But you opened the argument so the burden of proof is on you.

That's a tangental argument to whether or not CH is more efficient than a wood burner.

I never said it wasn't, I was simply pointing out that living in the North of England (as you retorted) didn't necessarily have any bearing on his heating needs.

Given that gas/oil CH is completely unsustainable and is the main competitor to wood burners, from a sustainability point of view wood burning can only be as bad as or better than fossil fuels (regardless of how it is sourced).

I never said otherwise, what I did say was that whilst better that doesn't necessarily equate to good if it's not done in a sustainable way.

The whole Passivhaus is a distraction, we have something like 25 million homes in the UK and build about 120k a year, so even if all new homes were Passivhaus (which they're not) and we didn't need any new houses (which we do), then it would take 200 years until we were all in Passivhaus homes....

So CH and wood burners are relevant for a long time yet.....

It's not really, existing stock CAN be upgraded as proven in German experiments. Really though we should be building to the Passivhaus standard if we want to seriously reduce our energy consumption as a nation. I do agree that it's a side argument, I suppose my argument was that if you spent the £3k or so that a woodburners costs (if you don't have an actual need for one as a primary heating source) then you could insulate your house a lot better. Really though, central heating IS more efficient than a single source no matter what way you look at it since your whole house will need heated at some point.

I'm not on one side of the fence or the other here, sustainability is as much about individual circumstances as the big picture. As with anything milage varies according to your needs and what you are replacing in order to achieve your 'gains'.

The US Department of Defence is the country’s largest consumer of fossil fuels. Research from 2007 showed the military used 20.9bn litres of fuel each year. This results in similar CO2 emissions to a mid-sized European country such as Denmark

I sense some selective use of data - Denmark might be "mid-sized" but it has a population of 5.6 million (i.e. whole country population is much less than that of a major city). They generate most (all?) of their electrical energy from wind power and they have very little heavy industry (it is mostly agricultural). So I'd imagine they have quite a low level of CO2 emissions (measured in relation to country size).

Really though, central heating IS more efficient than a single source no matter what way you look at it since your whole house will need heated at some point.

Based on what?

You don't need to heat all your house at all, the Victorians managed quite easily with open fires in some rooms (not all) and a large chunk of their housing stock is still standing and highly desirable in many locations.

I never said it wasn't, I was simply pointing out that living in the North of England (as you retorted) didn't necessarily have any bearing on his heating needs.

Why would it, he lives in the South of France IIRC...

If you define passivhaus as 44kwh/m2/year then insulating the current housing stock you can get very close. We consume 1700kWh of electricity (general use, not heating) and 2.5 steres (say 2m3)of mainly pine so about 5000kWh. That's only 50% over passivhaus despite heating to 20°C+ rather than 18°C.

Most British people consider their houses well insulated but have no underfloor insulation, consider cavity wall insulation adequate for the walls when it really isn't, have thermal bridges around all the windows and doors, barely insulated doors and only double glazing. All of that can be remedied without knocking houses down.

It's not really, existing stock CAN be upgraded as proven in German experiments. Really though we should be building to the Passivhaus standard if we want to seriously reduce our energy consumption as a nation.

If the UK wants to seriously reduce energy consumption it needs to retrofit existing buildings. Some 90% of current buildings will still be standing in 50 years time, so new Passivhaus would make a tiny impact on that. Passive is part of the answer, but retrofit is the big hitter in buildings. Decarbonizing transport is currently a bigger issue (before VW as well).

Are you sure about that? A modern Gas boiler is 5-10% better than a wood burner in terms of energy efficiency, but a wood burner heats the house more intelligently ie heast one room and not 5+ rooms that are unoccupied most of the time. CH is normally set to heat a house and ends up heating lots of rooms no one occupies more most of the time.

You can just turn off the radiator in a room that is not being used. Most of us live in houses where most of the rooms will be in regular use anyway, so I don't see a wood burner in one room as particularly "intelligent" heating. How does it cope with people eating a meal in one room and then dispersing to different rooms to watch TV, do their homework, play with friends etc?
In practice, I'd guess most people using wood burners are running CH as well, unless they genuinely live in one room, which is another reason that I suspect the effectiveness and efficiency of wood burning is not really so great.

I think most people have wood burners simply because they like the look of a real fire. I'm not convinced they are a "greener" solution to heating and I doubt it would be practical to have a wholesale switch to wood burning, with the issues of cultivation, distribution, storage and air quality that would entail.

The real solution to the financial and environmental costs of heating must be reducing consumption, whatever type of heating you use.

You don't need to heat all your house at all, the Victorians managed quite easily with open fires in some rooms (not all) and a large chunk of their housing stock is still standing and highly desirable in many locations.

Okay, seriously, you're showing your ignorance now. One reason why you need to keep your house warm: dampness.

As for what else my point was based on, see KCR's post above.

Most British people consider their houses well insulated but have no underfloor insulation, consider cavity wall insulation adequate for the walls when it really isn't, have thermal bridges around all the windows and doors, barely insulated doors and only double glazing. All of that can be remedied without knocking houses down.

If the UK wants to seriously reduce energy consumption it needs to retrofit existing buildings. Some 90% of current buildings will still be standing in 50 years time, so new Passivhaus would make a tiny impact on that. Passive is part of the answer, but retrofit is the big hitter in buildings.

Absolutely agree!

"In practice, I'd guess most people using wood burners are running CH as well, unless they genuinely live in one room, which is another reason that I suspect the effectiveness and efficiency of wood burning is not really so great."

Most but not all .

I can assure you ours are never on together infact the CH is only there to warm the house for getting up at stupid oclock -we did our first year in this house with no heating or mains hot water- we just boiled as we needed and had an electric shower

Okay, seriously, you're showing your ignorance now. One reason why you need to keep your house warm: dampness.

guess what the fires very good at removing. - damp air.

- but then i can heat the whole house from the stove without much issue so it wasnt really missed until about feb when the real cold came and it was -10 or so at night on a regular basis.

Absolutely agree!

I don't think anyone disagrees with this, the original question (snipped for briefness) was:

I live in an inner-city area and have central heating. It'd be less efficient than my gas boiler, and would put more pollutive nasties into the air.

But how bad are they really?

I still contend than running a wood burner is more efficient than using CH in this scenario. Mainly because you heat less of the house so reduce heat losses without making a big difference to overall comfort.

I still contend than running a wood burner is more efficient than using CH in this scenario. Mainly because you heat less of the house so reduce heat losses without making a big difference to overall comfort.

That assumes you have insulated between rooms, in reality the heat loss will be the same but the localised demand is reduced. Again, simple zoning controls could do the same thing. Also, what happens if you want to move into another part of the house?

Efficiencies will vary but at best guess a stove could well come close to a boiler if you use a convection fan. If you're relying on radiation alone then no, it's not. Out of interest can you get a stove with a back boiler? Because that presents a whole new argument in favour of them.

guess what the fires very good at removing. - damp air.

Hands up, I misread that, I missed the 'all' so fair enough. Next problem though is that convection will draw the cold air from unheated rooms thus putting more strain on the fire.

Having seen the smog having over every New Zealand city over the winters, it'd have to be a very clean, modern wood burning stove I'd ever install in a house.

I mean, everyone looks back on the air quality of the 70's with such fondness.

When I stripped out the central heating I put one of the old radiators behind the stove and connected it to a new vertical radiator mounted high on the wall in our bedroom. It circulates by thermo-syphon and reaches 40-45°C at the warmest point in the circuit with the stove going at 5kW or so.

I lived in an old farm with a range that had a back boiler for hot water. That would boil the primary circuit if we didn't run baths.

Out of interest can you get a stove with a back boiler? Because that presents a whole new argument in favour of them.

What argument is that then?

What argument is that then?

Presumably that the CH wouldn't need to be switched on to heat water.

Don't think this has been mentioned:

[url= https://www.aecb.net/publications/biomass-a-burning-issue/ ]Biomass - a burning issue[/url]

The argument of wood burning stoves being environmentally benign is utter tosh, whilst it may be possible to argue some degree of carbon neutrality they are far from pollution free

What argument is that then?

That, as suggested, they could be used in place of central heating or in tandem. With modern under floor systems a Rayburn or such could warm the whole house using low grade heat (of course the problem with extracting too much heat is condensing of exhaust gasses and accumulation of creosote deposits). Then you at least get your money's worth so to speak.

The problem is polluting your neighbours

As with any thermal system involving combustion. Whats your solution?

Jivehoneyjive:

I appreciate that is US rather than UK, but when all is said and done, we all share the same planet...

even in UK terms, how much of the £33,000 per hour it costs to run a Tornado is fuel?

Since you asked, a Tornado burns about 4 tons of Avtur per hour on a typical sortie. That's about 5000 litres. At 70p/litre, that's £3500/hr. Those figures you see bandied around for per hour operating costs are usually quite dodgy and include the purchase price and through-life maintenance of the aircraft, the salaries of the crew and all the maintainers, the operating costs of the base.....

Speaking as an air traffic controller, I'm pretty confident that UK military aviation emissions are a flea on the flank of UK civil aviation emissions. I personally think the security of the UK is more important than holidays, but then I guess you don't think that the military enhances your security.

If you've got to burn something burn the least polluting possible, wood certainly isn't

Are you happy to damage people's health?

You can fit particle filters and cats:

[img] [/img]

But I'm not aware of anywhere that they are a legal obligation apart from Switzerland. I suspect that the filters remove only the large particles and the smallest most harmful stuff gets through.

On 'commercial' biomass plant (in Scotland) Building control want a six page form filled in specifically about particulates being emitted (helps if you select a boiler from one of the UK tested list). Way too technical for me, I stick it to the manufacturers agent...

Pretty sure they insist on air scrubbers/filtration on larger sized plant (or maybe just a carry over from the Austrians/Germans whose kit it is...).

Biomass is *big* due to the huge carbon reduction in comparison with oil and gas (based on the government approved calc methods). Helps make compliance with the regs easier for new build. So it's sustainability rather than anti-pollution.

However, having been involved in (and seen other installations of) I'm not convinced we're headed in the right direction. It's supposed to save money (my calculations says so... 🙂 ) but it's certainly problematic.

Re. Underfloor heating, I'm not convinced either. Because of the thermal mass you kinda have to keep it fed/topped up. Long reaction times also don't help. I went from a 'breezy' 1960s 2 storey house with gas CH to 1 storey cottage renovated in the last 5 years (I.e. To fairly modern standards and ironically so well I rarely use the stove as it gets too hot within an hour) with UFH (fed from pellet boiler) and my bills are 1/3 higher (and I pay per kWh, no standing charge and 5% vat).

"we" were all cooking on wood way before petrol. I'll listen to any anti wood burner person when they have removed all petro chemical influences from their life.

Just cause you used to do something doesn't make it right, in fact if you now know it's wrong that makes it worse