please point me in the direction of the appropriate thread if so!

I’ve always wanted a stove. Grew up with a stove as the primary heating for the house, lots of happy childhood memories etc. Now, finally, I can afford one.

I don’t need one of course. 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 reckon I have a reasonably low carbon footprint overall. How bad, environmentally speaking, is running a stove for 3 hours, 4/5 times a week, 5 months a year, compared to (say) having 2 cars, or jetting off to the alps every year, or having children, or driving a 3 litre Beemer? (none of which I do, or am likely to…)

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

Where there’s smoke…

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

lol!

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 environmental impact of war, 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.

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.

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 £33,000 per hour 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.

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

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…[/quote]

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