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Does this have any merit, or is it poorly-researched, or something...?
This has been kicking around for a while. Cue a whole heap of posts loaded with cognitive dissonance in which those with wood burners attempt to make themselves feel OK about reducing air quality.
I only use mine when its windy and I live on top of a hill.
There, I do feel better.
I guess I could feel better about burning copious amounts more oil.
It's long been known they are bad in an urban setting ...... Since about the 1970s.
Recently got a leaflet through the door from Manchester City council explaining the various anti-pollution acts, the permitted fuels for burning, and that they were taking action against polluters where necessary.
I do have a new gas boiler, but I don’t have a wood burner or open fire.
I have one, I've had it for 10 years, if it becomes law that we have to get rid, then I'll go with it, no probs. I love it but if it's for the greater good, then so be it.
You only have to go to any small middle/upper class village on a Misty or foggy day to see this is true, I remember riding through one such village above Hebden Bridge one morning and you could barely breathe because of it.
In the mid nineties at uni studying air pollution the professor teaching us was very scathing about their indoor and outdoor pollution contributions.
It’s the ultimate “I’m alright Jack” heating source.
We have one, we live in the middle of nowhere, and it's that or fire up the oil boiler when it's cold in an afternoon.
If someone can point me in the direction of more efficient and cost effective ways of heating and insulating a two hundred year old stone house that's not on the gas main, I'm all ears.
My wood's drier than your wood.
My stove's hotter than your stove.
My wood leaves no ash in the pan.
Etc.
I can't criticise as I've got an open fire, but it doesn't get much use. Every spring I tell myself I won't use it again but then the idea of a cosy evening in front of the fire is too appealing to resist.
Love mine but yes they’ve become very fashionable, we use ours to heat the house most of the time. We have discussed that we’ll be taking it out and possibly not replacing it for various reasons.
Are they technically allowed in urban areas anyway? Not sure what urban means exactly but as mentioned above it was horrendous sometimes in Calderdale on a cold temperature inversion type winter day.
Cue a whole heap of posts loaded with cognitive dissonance in which those with wood burners attempt to make themselves feel OK about reducing air quality.
This, sadly. Unless you have to use it for some reason its time to get rid, really.
It’s the ultimate “I’m alright Jack” heating source
Probably much of a muchness, but you'd think open fires would edge that title, way less efficient, energy used to mine coal etc.
If someone can point me in the direction of more efficient and cost effective ways of heating and insulating a two hundred year old stone house that’s not on the gas main, I’m all ears.
My point exactly. All about the cost and not the cripplingly bad air quality that affects the people around them.
We were about to fit wood burners in the house we live in when I bought/renovated it. We can get free wood as we back onto a forest. But we decided to stick with the central heating on its own.
Cue a whole heap of posts loaded with cognitive dissonance in which those with wood burners attempt to make themselves feel OK about reducing air quality.
On this point, looking back at it, my previous post may have come across snippier than it was intended.
Genuinely, if anyone has any suggestions as to how I can heat my old, cold, house in a less environmental and wallet-shredding way, I'm listening...
Been done many times on here already, looking worse and worse for wood burners now.
Pretty much stopped using ours this year as a result.
This, sadly. Unless you have to use it for some reason its time to get rid, really
TBH it was pretty good during the three days of power cuts following storm Arwen... I know of a couple of houses locally still not reconnected and they have wood fires
It is my only source of heat though, bar a little fan heater in the bathroom.
We have no mains gas anywhere near, and I have no room for an oil tank (yes, I know it takes up the same space as a wood store but a wood store doesn't have to be anywhere near the house) The same is true of an GSHP
Solar would be tricky on a shared, sheltered roof and electricity prices have rocketed whereas my free firewood hasn't.
Rural area backing onto open hills.
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Cue a whole heap of posts loaded with cognitive dissonance in which those with wood burners attempt to make themselves feel OK
How did I do?
I guess I could feel better about burning copious amounts more oil.
I'm not clued up enough to say for sure but this might actually be the better option.
Genuinely, if anyone has any suggestions as to how I can heat my old, cold, house in a less environmental and wallet-shredding way, I’m listening…
There will always be exceptions but the fact is that for most people it's unnecessary.
Genuinely, if anyone has any suggestions as to how I can heat my old, cold, house in a less environmental and wallet-shredding way, I’m listening…
FWIW, I didn't think it was snippy. I live in the same style of old house, and though I've boarded out many of the internal walls with insulation (there isn't any due to 9" solid walls) it's still a bloody draughty fridge in winter. We have a log-burner, and probably use it too much, but sometimes you just need to be warm. It's that or burn more oil, both have their issues. So I'm also genuinely interested in realistic methods of heating this draughty old box.
It'll need to be cost-effective though, otherwise I'll have to sell one of the Range Rovers/Landcruisers/X5s, etc etc...[Insert current target of STW wrath here]
Not sure what urban means exactly
There's a whole heap of legislation on this from back when people heated their houses with coal, the 50s I think, that everyone has forgotten about since central heating. There are designated smokeless fuel zones in every town.
https://www.gov.uk/smoke-control-area-rules
How did I do?
Good! A-
You only have to go to any small middle/upper class village on a Misty or foggy day to see this is true, I remember riding through one such village above Hebden Bridge one morning and you could barely breathe because of it.
It can indeed be very grim in those steep sided valleys. Hebden Bridge has a few issues around this, the smoke control zone doesn't extend very far up the valley sides so many of those hill top villages aren't covered. There is zero enforcement of the smoke control zone anyway. I had a neighbour (in the smoke control zone) with a liking of peat fires, it used to coat our windows in soot. The canal is particularly bad on an inversion day as many of the long boats seem to like burning coal and obviously have very low chimney heights. Middle class lifestyle stoves also very prevalent.
Genuinely, if anyone has any suggestions as to how I can heat my old, cold, house in a less environmental and wallet-shredding way, I’m listening…
Old, cold houses are wallet-shredding no matter what you do. Complete refit with proper insulation.
Like with everything is not the edge cases where change is needed most so:
If someone can point me in the direction of more efficient and cost effective ways of heating and insulating a two hundred year old stone house that’s not on the gas main, I’m all ears.
Isn't really the issue, the issue is all the surbanites with gas central heating that install wood burners because they look nice.
Difficult really, i use wood/ multi-fuel burner, and i get free wood, but live in a rural area not deemed worthy of getting mains gas, so it is wood or heating oil for us, house is not really suitable for Air source either as we have just done the costings.
@andrewh that sounds mostly fair enough tbh. I don't have the figures but the massive recent uptake of them must be driven by fashion essentially. Don't get me wrong I love a real fire and had intended to replace our silly gas faux one in the house we moved into - but then I started reading all these reports...
If it was in the regs that Particulate filters were to be fitted to all (I mean all, old and new) Wodd Burners/open fires I'd be happier with them:
https://oekosolve.com/en/products/esp-for-lounge-wood-heating/oekotube/
Something like this was the first result I hit - I read somewhere that they're common/mandatory in places like Switzerland.
*it could even be limited to burners/fires within clean-air zones initially, as a house in the middle of nowhere running one doesn't affect anyone else.
**our family cottage in Ireland is heated by a single open fire, probably one of the last ones in the town, to the point where we feel bad firing it up!
If it was in the regs that Particulate filters were to be fitted to al
Partciulate filters for sub 10 micron particles are going to kill any draw from the flue on a small domestic fire, so I can't see that working without adding a fan etc.
Isn’t really the issue, the issue is all the surbanites with gas central heating that install wood burners because they look nice.
This is actually why my house has a wood burner, fitted by the previous owners. Bearing in mind who they are and there fairly well known in Scottish activism circles I imagine they thought it was a good thing at the time.
Ours is due for removal and not being replaced, haven't quite got SWMBO on the same page but it isnt far off. Although it will free up quite a bit of garden storage space.
Partciulate filters for sub 10 micron particles are going to kill any draw from the flue on a small domestic fire, so I can’t see that working without adding a fan etc.
Ok. So they need those as well - if you're gonig to run an inherantly "dirty" source of heating, then the responsible thing to do is to make it as clean as possible.
Quick search for particulate filters for domestic wood burners seems to mostly point to mostly to the same few sources in the UK - exodraft. Which suggests not on the market until later next year and no clues as to prices.
Does anyone know any more about them?
If they're feasible, efficient and affordable (relative) then maybe there's life in wood burners yet..
it could even be limited to burners/fires within clean-air zones initially, as a house in the middle of nowhere running one doesn’t affect anyone else.
The definition of middle of nowhere is very elastic though. I used to live at about 250m altitude in a rural setting, out of the smoke control zone. It felt remote, but it really wasn't. Less than 1 Km from the nearest village in the valley bottom. All the surrounding rural properties burning like there is no tomorrow. Fine on a breezy day, but on those cold clear days you can just see it collect in the valley.
I was going to fit one. Researched it and fitted a gas fire instead. (we have central heating as well)
We do have one in the Scottish house but that has no gas, to be honest we only got electricity 20years ago and still adjusting to this new fangled technology stuff.
@andrewh that sounds mostly fair enough tbh. I don’t have the figures but the massive recent uptake of them must be driven by fashion essentially.
For me the only practical choices are wood burner/back boiler or electricity.
The only financially viable choice is wood.
As the grid moves towards being more renewable the case for switching from wood to electricity becomes stronger but the costs may be prohibitive, certainly in terms of capital costs, electric boiler or maybe ASHP.
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I'm in a large village (pop 711 at the last count) so we have a fairly robust power supply, took just under three days to get us back up after Arwen. There are lots of isolated farms in the surrounding areas with shonky supplies at the best of times, one tree in a much smaller storm can bring them down and be a PITA to fix, some of whom are still off (although I think more are without phones at the moment) They will all be heating with wood, but then the local air quality is a non issue for them. I know a couple have diesel generators because they know they often get shorter outages (and a ready supply of red diesel)
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The financial arguement is also interesting. Probably the same middle-class urbanites who thought stoves fashionable not long ago can afford something else. Personally, I could not afford the £3k+ for an electric boiler and installation, and this would significantly increase my (currently nil) heating cost. I suspect I I not alone
Are they technically allowed in urban areas anyway?
Yes, if it's a DEFRA approved appliance using an approved fuel. Trouble is, those approvals don't do a great deal.
FWIW my house is old and solid wall. We've insulated the loft, the internal walls and the floor. It's insulated well enough that the boiler can keep the house warm at 50 degrees or so, which I'm hoping will make us a good candidate for a heat pump when the boiler wears out.
There’s a whole heap of legislation on this from back when people heated their houses with coal, the 50s I think, that everyone has forgotten about since central heating. There are designated smokeless fuel zones in every town.
https://www.gov.uk/smoke-control-area-rules/blockquote >
I was thinking that.
But then (in a Scottish centric way) I looked at the map of smoke control areas. https://data.spatialhub.scot/dataset/smoke_control_areas-is/resource/1137b71c-9fe9-4588-ba4a-4a5160e9ee55
Clearly thats a lot of urban areas but far from every urban area. My local towns are 9000 and 13000 people and Inverness (46000) all appear to have no smoke control legislation.
I live very rural and burn a lot of wood (10 cubic metres a season probably) and to be honest I'm not sure how we'd cope both financially and welfare without. It's proper cold here and the house needs some serious work to make it more insulated. Even burning that much timber the LPG bill was £2400 and no room is ever about 18degs and that's the living room with big stove in it. The bedrooms and bathroom are only on when needed and then only to 16 degs. But as a 300 year old stone building 'modernised' in the early 80s it's going to be a big project. My nearest neighbour is a quarter of a mile away and everything I burn is felled locally so feel no reason to self flagellate for environmental reasons. As for internal air pollution in the house...."la la la, can't hear you".
Selfishly if you urban types stopped burning it the price of logs might drop a bit! I do process some my own (and burn whiskey staves - serious value for money) burn there is not enough time in my life to be self sufficient at those quantities.
I’m not clued up enough to say for sure but this might actually be the better option.
Depends which side of the coin you're looking at. From a global/climate perspective, burning sustainably sourced wood is a no-brainer - infinitely better than Oil/Gas/Coal.
However, if we're talking about 'local' pollution, and health effects on lungs, asthma etc then clearly wood burners in the wrong environment (steep sided valleys, urban environments etc) are much worse than burning gas or oil.
From this you could then make the logical leap that for the utilitarian good of man, more people should be burning sustainable wood and not fossil fuels, acknowledging that some individual's health would suffer, and there would be additional deaths. Whether more deaths than from climate change effects, I genuinely don't know, but the planet would be better off. But that would be a whole philosophical debate in itself (and potentially crazy talk.) Biomass burners might be a better option here, but again, I don't know enough about the cradle-to-grave impact of that heating source to offer proof one way or another.
Wood burners in their current form are (mainly) a faintly ridiculous middle class bling tickbox item to fit these days. And I say that whilst owning and using one, because, 200yr old house with no mains gas ever coming out nearby. Not even oil. We'd love oil. It would be miles better than manually shoveling on lumps of timber or bags of coal.
Like with everything is not the edge cases where change is needed most so …the issue is all the surbanites with gas central heating that install wood burners because they look nice.
So much this. I walked to the local shop last night and as soon as I left the house I could smell someone burning wood, I live in terraced streets in SW London, it would be a major chore to just get fire wood, obvs if you’re burning kebab wrappers and fox turds no problems, so wtf does anyone need a wood burner here?
I live very rural and burn a lot of wood (10 cubic metres a season probably) and to be honest I’m not sure how we’d cope both financially and welfare without.
But, correct me if I'm wrong, you chose to move there (fairly recently?), so effectively a lifestyle choice, no?.
From a global/climate perspective, burning sustainably sourced wood is a no-brainer – infinitely better than Oil/Gas/Coal.
Depends what you mean by "sustainable". The atmosphere doesn't care where its carbon comes from, and new trees will take decades to reabsorb the carbon released by burning.
Depends what you mean by “sustainable”. The atmosphere doesn’t care where its carbon comes from, and new trees will take decades to reabsorb the carbon released by burning.
That's exactly what I mean by sustainable, more carbon being layed down (ie. more planted/growth) than burned. I take your point on the timescale, there will be a lag if starting now, so needs a soft ramp up.
The other problem with filters is you'd need to clean / change it regularly as it will just block up with soot. You've got a fire spewing out all sorts of large soot particles when being lit with that soot going straight into a sub 10 micron filter - never going to work well.
Its not like an industrial incinerator where the burn temp is controlled and the soot level minimised.
But, correct me if I’m wrong, you chose to move there (fairly recently?), so effectively a lifestyle choice, no?.
A bit more complicated than that but broadly, yep. Not sure the relevance of that though. A lifestyle choice which floats some cancer causing particulate filled air (when it enters the lungs of people) over a forest of exactly zero people rather than burning fossil fuels. If a tree falls in the wood, does it make a sound and all that. ie. if we burnt only lpg because legislation made that my only option, I don't see a broader benefit to the wider population but lots of downs to me. I'm still to be convinced that burning locally sourced timber is environmentally a worse choice that burning fossil fuels if the particulate filled air local pollution is a non problem.
we recently bought a house with a log burner, we have used it a bit recently, but quite disappointed with the heat from it....might be time to retiring it. we're about 1/2 way through a cubic metre of wood. so will stretch that out to last, and probably not get any more. It felt like it was a better option to heat one room , than use Central heating to heat the whole house, might be wrong way to think....
already added more insulation to the loft, only half the house has cavity wall insulation, so that might be the next thing to get sorted.
Sounded judgy convert, didnae mean to tbh, just wondering out loud really.