UKC

Evening

Can anyone recommend a device that tests the level of carcinogens emitted from your wood burner/multifuel stove please?

Everytime I go on Google I’m getting feeds telling me that burning wood is death on a stick, due to certain levels of a toxin that I can’t recall. P something.

Im burning kiln dried hardwood (< 20% moisture) on a recently  installed Portway stove which has a good draft.

Thanks

Dave

I can't, but air-vents while allow clean(er) air to be drawn in are meant to be helpful. 

It strike me that an air vent and periodically opening a window would be a plan.

Once I have an electrostatic particulate filter to capture what goes out into the atmosphere, that'll be my approach.

Is the Guardian? They seem obsessed. I'm sure breathing smoke isn't great but being told a wood fire is worse than 750 HGVs is obvious nonsense. There are tbe wider benefts too - low carbon, relaxing, aesthetic.

A mass spectrometer will do the job.

Thanks, I'll pop down to Argos this evening and grab one

It's my understanding that the science behind the air quality of a room which has a wood burning stove in it is pretty solid*.

*Where any measures aren't taken to address it.

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/indoor-wood-stoves-release-harmful-emissio...

I've seen that. As above, I'm sure it's not great but equally given we have  been  burning wood for millennia without harm, suspect it is overdone. For.me the other aspects out weigh any risk anyway.

On the list of dangers or things that will kill me it seems a long, long way down the list.

Cheers

Toby

Having grown up in a pit village where we spent our childhood either sitting around an open coal fire ( the only heating miners houses had) or out playing on the pit heap I dread to think the amount of particulates we ingested. Rightly or wrongly it never crossed our minds to worry and we all led happy and I have to say healthy lives. I never knew anyone with asthma then. If you went down the pit....well that was a different story.

Hmm, what was the life expectancy for the last few millenium?

Due to death by woodsmoke??

Anyway, your choice!

To suggest we have been burning wood for millennia without harm is one of the strangest statements ever made on UKC. Quite an achievement.

Hi Timmd,

Yes I give the room a blast of fresh air every time I open the door to refuel. Gets it back up to temperature quicker too.

It mainly seems to be the Express. When you look down some of the replies, some disgruntled folk have bought some emissions tester and proved the article wrong.

I’ve burned coal for years and agree on the aesthetics and relaxing effect of the fire and won’t be changing it.

Yeah me too. Coal fire was going all day. Did a year in a pit in the mid/late 80’s. An eye opener was that! Grandad did it since he was 14 and died at 84. 

I'm intrigued how a functional stove with a good flue, at the right temperature, which is effectively running at a slightly negative pressure to the room is emitting a significant amount of particulates into that room.

Edit:

In terms of fuelling, a lot will depend on how people open the door. If they're just opening it straight away, rather then cracking it slowly open to let the airflow through the door increase, then there will be a large increase of particulates in the immediate vicinity of the door.

What  are you referring to? There were plenty of ways of dying. Woodsmoke historically doesn't feature

Yeah me too. Not sure if it is, it’s just pop up articles that say it is

How do you know if it's been without harm, given the long history of wood burning compared to the recent means of measuring air quality and understanding it's impact on people's health?

Knock of a few years of aome people's lives, who let's be honest you couldn't give a shit about, or burn some carbon recycled wood instead of fossilised fuels.

I bought a PM4 and PM2.5 meter the last time the Guardian did a piece on wood burners are killing you. It's usually about 6-10 µg/m3 for for PM2.5 in the lounge and doesn't go up when the stove is lit. I'm in Nottingham.

The only time I see the levels go up is when we're cooking on the hob with the wock or a frying pan really. I've seen it go up to around 150 when something is burning on the hob.

One thing I've noticed is how quick the levels go down when you open a window: made me realise the Covid/Open Window advice has some merit.

From what I remember, a Swedish study showed that the incidence of respiratory disease goes up statistically significantly with a comparison for those who live in a wood-burner stove house compared to those without a wood-burner. Ditto the correlation for deaths.

It is almost like those with stoves (which undoubtedly are attractive on many fronts, but to some extent there lies the poison trap), are in denial of the risks. It will never harm to reduce the level of usage of the stoves, if not to gradually get rid of them.

I was going to get one, about ten years ago, and saw the Swedish studies, so said forget it, unless others have objective proof otherwise.

Here is a fairly contemporary study of the impact of woodsmoke in the developing world. I think we can reasonably extrapolate from this, the thing that we already know that historically woodsmoke led to significant early death.

https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.9888

I have a feeling it depends on what you're burning, but I would like to see these studies too. The chimney sweep was around the other day and he said it was pretty clean and I haven't have it done for a 3 years. He said he did one the other day and the guy had regularly burned old fence panels from work that was covered it years of creosote, the chimney was disgusting.

Are they using contained stoves in Guatemala or open fires? It was my understanding the closed stoves burned more efficiently, especially when the wood is very dry and you keep it in the 140-240°C range. I also bought a CO meter to tune the heater in my van and couldn't detect any CO coming off the stove even with the meter almost inside the stove which I believe means the combustion is efficient. Happy to be proved wrong tho.

PS. This is from that post you linked to

It's currently 4 μg/m3 in my lounge with the stove on!

Fab you're not killing yourself. Did you measure the levels outside your house coming from your chimney or does the smoke just disappear?

On a still day where I live, like earlier this evening in fact, when I open my front door it smells like the remnants of a forest fire are smouldering right outside. But I guess as long as it's comforting for the 8% with their cosy fires and their measuring machines then it's fine for the rest of us.

Banned in Chamonix.

Source, not the usual one, paywall:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environment/2019/12/23/chamonix-bans-log-fires-...

So where does the open fire stand in this?

How much worse is it?

I have an open fire, which I sometimes don't use at all during a whole year; but other times I use it 3-4 times in the year. So I'm guilty (but the cats like it) too.

Why are people so obsessed about life expectancy?

I was responding to "we have been burning wood for millennia without harm" which is about as wrong a statement as it is possible to make.

Sorry if that wasn't clear.

It's a useful way to measure "harm" as in burning wood for millenia.

Well it's my life so I am reasonably concerned, and I burn wood.

Smog type pollution is clearly an issue in  some places, but that's not what the article the OP linked are discussing 

no need , my mums got one gathering dust in the back of the cupboard under the stairs  I’ll dig it out for you 

So you think we haven't been burning wood for millenia? 

It’s the “without harm” bit of the statement that is bizarre. 

So we agree on two thirds of it so hardly "as wrong a statment as its possible to get".  If you think woodsmoke is going to.kill you, fine, dont use it.

Surely that depends on whether you views on the apparent need to live ever longer Iives?

What article? Thre is no link in the OP. He simply asks about what his stove is emitting, whether it is to his or others detriment is not mentioned.

That's what my cats thought too and they lived to about 20

Ok, discussed,  not linked. See later posts.

We've been burning wood for millennia with substantial harm.  It's well known that wood stoves release a ton of carcinogens and are associated with lung problems.

Maybe you should try and numerically quantify the risk before assuming it is outweighed by other factors?  Like the scientists did.

The UK already had a clean air act to get rid of burning coal in cities, they should ban burning wood in cities too.  

Maybe you should read the paper  before making assertions like that? They explicitly didn't.  You cant quantity such things scientifically anyway

Smog from smoke can  be a problem in some place I agree. However, if look you at say Edinburgh from the Pentlands, you can see woodsmoke isn't the major issue, so its situation dependent.

Steve? Steve Austin?

Tbh you'll want a GC-MS  as you'll never be able to differentiate the individual chemicals from the forest of peaks you'd get from an MS alone.

Survivor bias?  My grandad did it from a similar age and died in his late 50s from Coal Worker's Pneumoconiosis.  Such is life (and death).

Which paper are you talking about? There are several mentioned in the thread and several more in the recent Guardian article.

It seems generally accepted that burning wood produces particulates and also some fairly nasty carcinogens.

I'd agree it doesn't seem to be a big problem in Edinburgh, mostly because I don't think many people burn wood.  Which is good! 

The fact that wood smoke has a relatively pleasant smell doesn't mean it isn't toxic.

One of the worst places I have ever been for unpleasant air pollution was Kinlochleven.  So many houses burning coal and wood and there's a hydro power station just a hundred metres away.

I'd rather that people with wood stoves got electrostatic particulate filters.

Luxuriating in front of the log burner with fuel I cut from my own wood piled against the walls,  I am aware of the pollution it causes externally.  It is disappointing that efforts to apply electronic control systems to maximise efficiency and reduce pollution are not the first port of call when looking for a solution to the problem.

Both of my wood-fired central heating plants have flame-colour sensors, exhaust gas temperature monitoring and lambda sensors which computer control the air flow. Been around for decades and get below the 20ųg/m³ limit. A particle filter would be the next step but unlikely for a modern plant in the foreseeable future as this is lower than the permitted outside air limit.

Exactly, technology can solve the problems.  But most people seem to want things banned or just to complain about them.

A link that can be accessed.

https://www.thelocal.fr/20191223/the-alpine-french-dpartement-banning-tradi...

A lot of woodburners in this village, quite a few from second/holiday homes.  The air outside makes me cough and gives me a sore throat from late autumn onwards so I'm quite sure the smoke is not just a nuisance but actually harmful, particularly as I have ashma which may be why it causes nose/throat chest inflammation.  Keeping windows closed is the only defence which isn't very healthy either

There are just too many people burning wood now

I'm not saying the smoke from coal fires is any better - we get lots of that too

It's nice, though, that they give you a choice of being an extra in The Road to Wigan Pier or Heidi, isn't it?

A particle filter wouldn't deal with the Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon carcinogens.  Maybe a fancy electronic control system which ensured the flame was hot enough could.   But that's presumably also going to get rid of the pretty yellow flame and pleasant smell.

https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/21/17865/2021/

The problem there being higher temperatures promote their production and oxygen starvation being the tipping point, tests with normal air-draught fires show high-burn rates increase the production. Closed, forced-air systems with lambda control should avoid this but as you say don't fit into the UKC country cottage ideal.

Bugger, the space for my wood burner might end up being where my hi-fi goes instead, going on the contents of your link.

I have a woodburner approved for use in smokeless zones. How much less polluting are they, if at all, than ones that aren't?

Seems to be that the wood needs to be burnt at a higher temperature than domestic woodstoves run at for the aromatic carcinogens to not go out into the atmosphere, but what you have is better than nothing, in fewer particulates being emitted.

Ask jimtitt he knows far more about it than me! 

Well past my knowledge base there, I've six woodburners but live in Germany. What the standards are in the UK I haven't a clue!

To take this off on a tangent, what do people think the best fuel choice is for those who have to burn things for warmth: wood (toxic smog problems) or coal (ice cap-melting problems)?

Just stirring the pot, really, but I moved this year to burning wood exclusively on environmental grounds, but as this thread shows the decision isn't clear-cut.

Isn't coal worse for emissions too? 

I think out of the two wood is greener, and greener again with a particulate filter, because of how the particulates may encourage heat to be absorbed from the sun. 

Good question .

I moved away from an open coal fire for cleanliness and efficiency.

My stoves multi fuel and I still use some coal( that I have left) and some smokeless stuff. I Chuck this on before bed and it’s still lit in the morning.

I reason wood is better as I use far less of it and it’s kiln dried so cleaner. Also my gas use is well down.

Better for who? https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/wood-burning-stoves-are-worse-than-cars-... said. 

Ok.  
a) I don’t live in a city

b) I don’t live in athens

c) according to what I can see of the article before it asks me to pay, wood burning caused that same effects as unleaded and 2%less than diesel

Good. 

You probably don't pollute at all then. 

Nobody does, it's a mythical place. 

Aye, probably better off not burning unleaded or diesel on your stove. 

As long as you're happy that's fine, screw other people and screw the environment, as long as you're ok that's fine. I'm not knocking it, I'm carrying on driving, flying etc. so let's all burn together. 

It's free here, without journalists interpretation 

https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/21/17865/2021/

I have calculated that to heat my house for 24 hours I can either use gas (4kWh) or coal (1.5kWh using anthracite pebbles and coke(50/50)). So with coal producing about twice the CO2 as gas, then the coal still produces less CO2 overall. And that is with a 3 year old combi boiler running at about 45C with a smart thermostat that links directly to the boiler giving it the ability to modulate the power level so that my 28kWh boiler is normally running about 50% power.

I attribute the difference in kWh’s to the gas heating only the air within the house but the stove is built into a 30” external stone wall that is now between the lounge and bathroom creating a large (low temp) storage heater. Using an IR thermometer on the bathroom wall directly behind the fire it’s 31C and about 1 meter away it’s is still 22C and 15C at the furthest point. I’m not trying to say coal is good but perhaps thermal inertia using thermal stores may be more efficient than just heating the air.

I remember having a similar discussion last year and am now mostly using the gas and only use coal when the grandson is here. It’s going to be -1C tonight so I will keep it alight but I won’t be putting any more coal on after tonight so it will probably finally go cold sometime Thursday when I switch back to gas and the house won’t be quite as comfortable although I plan on buying an IR panel heater to hopefully fill some of the gap when the fire is out.

With the grandson here I turned the stove up to 2 from its usual 0.4. 2 was giving a CH temperature of about 45C. A complaint about heat pumps is that they run at a low temperature (about 50C) which can be a problem if your CH system was designed for a temperature about 60-70C, but for me a low temperature system is a fact of life and I still haven’t got around to fitting the underfloor heating system I bought two years ago, yet the house is warm enough even with insulation work ongoing.

Perhaps part of the problem is the heat on demand mindset. It has taken retirement for me to work out the best way to heat my 1890’s miner’s cottage. For many years (pre gas main) the best fuel was soft wood. It burned fast and hot which was great if you wanted to heat a cold house but once you got to warm, too hot was on its way. Hard woods were good for weekends when you wanted the fire to stay in, but needed attention about every 4 hours. My stove gets about 7kg of coal once a day, so it may be messier but it is less frequent. I feel that gas boilers are the softwood equivalent. With gas I can maintain the temperature of my house for an average of 4kWh (96kW). Assuming a dumb 28kWh boiler with an on/off thermostat that equates to about 3.5 hours burn time. Which is best? Damned if I know. But I now feel guilty lighting my stove even if it might be better for the environment and think an ASHP would be a possible alternative to the stove (and the stoves piping would easily be adapted to an external ASHP if it wasn’t for the damned 30” of stone wall to make a hole through).

So here’s my back of the fag packet, rule of thumb, finger in the air type calculation from last year.

Working backwards from coal consumed to CO2 to kWh.

Assumptions:

12kg of carbon will make 44kg of CO2.

Coal creates 2.21lbs CO2 per kWh.

Gas creates 0.9lbs CO2 per kWh.

10kg - Bucket of coal (currently lasts about one day) [LAST YEAR’s DATA]

Assuming the coal is only carbon and it’s all converted to carbon dioxide

44/12 = 3.6666kg (CO2 per 1kg coal)

10 X 3.6666 = 36.6666kg CO2 (80.8360 lbs per bucket of coal)

Convert lbs CO2 to kW   80.8360 / 2.21 = 36.5773kW    Per hour 36.5773/24 = 1.524kWh

Calculating the power used to raise the hot water tank temperature when the CH heat goes only to the tank (180L). 1:25 @ 41.75C 7:25 @ 58.75 = 6hr 17C = 593Wh

Leaving about 1kWh to convection, Infra Red and what is lost from the chimney.

Calculating the CO2 equivalent running time of my modern 28kWh boiler running at 50%

Power 14kWh    0.9lbs CO2 per kWh    14 X 0.9 = 12.69lbs CO2 per kWh    80.8360  / 12.69 = 6.37hr

Low temp heating in old buildings isn’t a myth.

I heated my house exclusively with wood for about 15 years (stove with back boiler fed central heating) from around 2002 when there was a big drive to use more renewable fuels and air pollution wasn't such a big concern. I had access to an endless supply of cheap logs so I was happy my heating was as close to CO2 neutral as possible and also saving a few pennies.

In more recent years, as air pollution and it's affects have become better known (and not wanting to annoy the neighbors) I started swapping my fuel depending on the weather and temperature. Mild and windy then wood; cold and still, particularly if it's foggy then smokeless fuel; cold and windy then smokeless fuel and wood for maximum heat output. That keeps smoke/particulate emissions to a minimum whilst still balancing CO2 production. (Although smokeless coal costs more, produces more ash and some plastic waste.)

Although I really can't see how some people manage to make so much smoke with their fires. You see some chimneys belching out smoke like a traction engine going up hill. Why? Standing in the street it's difficult to tell if mines even lit or not, even when burning wood.

I'm sure in the future I'll ditch the stove and swap to something more modern but for now I'll continue with my internal insulation improvements and save my money until it becomes clearer which system(s) are the way forward.

Same here. Home heating (and insulation) is still an evolving technology. There are a lot of snake oil salesmen about.

there seems to have been an increase in wood burners around me recently and it quite be quite stinky when taking the dog out in the evenings and some chimneys chuck out lots of crap.  One guy has all kinds of wooden stuff in his yard. I think people burn any old trash, wet or dry, and think its ok.

I have a wood burner and am increasingly conscious of the neighbours (fortunately I only have one and  there's lots of space between us) but I only burn well seasoned quality logs, yet there is still quite a bit of smoke both when the fire is first lit or when I put on a new log. When it's up to temp there's none.

My lounge is single storey and quite cold plus its nice to have a fire lit at this time of year. I only burn in the evening and one or two logs normally. That said, I'm increasingly aware of the new science and the particulates being released.

How do you lay the fire? The 'upside down' method seems to create far less smoke  than the traditional 'small stuff on the bottom to get the big log on top going' method.

Estate bottled panda dripping, Ocado deliver it by rickshaw

It depends on my mood.

Of equal importance are the temps and wind outside. Yesterday evening was zero degrees and very still so the cold air plug was very dense and tough to shift. If I'd have lit anything the smoke would have filled the room, which I've done many times, much to the wife's disgruntlement.

I bought a plumbers gas burner for these occasions and spend a few minutes priming the flue with it with the windows open to create a little draw before any paper or kindling get added.

This is the crux of it for me. Wood burners are designed for being alight and up to temperature almost permanently, not for using for just a couple of hours in the evening. If I burn dry, well seasoned wood that would otherwise be going to waste/landfill and my DEFRA approved for smokeless zones stove is alight for several days at a time I don't think I'm being any less environmentally friendly than I would be if I was using mains gas and my boiler to heat the house. I use the central heating rather than the stove if I'm only needing to heat the house for a few hours. 

I don't think that's totally true, although a lot depends on the size of the stove and the size of the room it's in. If you have a stove running 24/7, unless it's very cold, the room will start to overheat, so you'll shut the dampers right down giving poor combustion, smoke and tar build up. Imo it's better to light it when it's cold, run it hot and clean for a few hours then let it go out and repeat the following evening. If lit well, a stove should go from cold to optimum operating temperature in less than 15 minutes.

I think Thedrunkenbakers is right, the worst offenders are those that think it's ok to burn old deck boards, bits of furniture and the like.

This was my understanding as explained by the fitters. I use my stove once per day, evenings. It can get up to optimal temps in a few minutes with the choke fully out and by using kindling only.

I then put a log on and gradually over the next few mins close it a little until the temp is maintained with a small amout of airflow and the log is properly combusting. At this point there will be minimal smoke.

I get a tiny amount of soot when I clean the chimney and never get tar build up inside. A quick wipe each time before I make a fire of any dust/ash cleans the glass to spotless and we're off again. (I'm a bit anal about these things and I like to see the fire)

I season logs outside for at least a year - all hardwood, they then get put in the shed from spring until winter after a dry week, then brought into the house for a week or two to get the last % moisture gone. 

Can't say I worry at all about what mine emits into the house, I can't smell it nor can the CO detector and once lit it draughts strongly so there's no leakage when refueling. It burns very clean so what goes up the flue is minimal and dispersed, it's designed for 'smokeless' areas.

Given all the other dust and hazards in my house it's very near the bottom of my list of concerns.

Jk

Not minding being 'only just not chilly' helps.

I'm struggling to see how you can keep a wood burner alight overnight without cutting the airflow down to the extent you're generating a lot of smoke, soot and tar.

If you use a particulate filter, that would help.

There's plenty of burn time/emissions graphs out there since that's a requirement for the standards testing (at least for us in Germany where the standards are higher). About 3 hours full burn is about the limit for a big stove, one of mine achieves this but it's got thermostatically controlled draught and takes a wheelbarrow full of wood. Anything smaller is going to be less.

For this reason any normal woodburner over here is only permitted as temporary room heating and limited to three hours use per day, as the primary heat source no way and the chimney sweep is required to take it out of service. The only way round this is a self-feeder but not really something for in your front room, we've an old one in a barn somewhere which used to munch it's way through 2m long logs!

Sorting through our logstore yesterday and moisture content is around 16%, this is all naturally air dried. We burn a mix of different woods and the choice of fuel (rather than stove vents) to controls the temperature output. If we get too hot simply opening the room door vents excess heat into the rest of the house, so not wasting heat.

I can't claim that woodburners are clean, but by using well seasoned wood and burning hot you minimise pollution and get maximum heat output from your fuel (win win). Your chimney sweep will be able to advise you on if you are buying efficiently, as they will be able to tell a lot from deposits in the chimney

You've mentioned particulate filters a number of times. Are ESPs available for domestic use in the UK? A quick google turns up a number of German companies, with no prices quoted. At a guess £1500 to £2k?

Then it needs installing, maybe scaffolding for a chimney top one, a competent installer, power supply (that will be fun to run), and some way of getting rid of the waste. They do claim to be self cleaning, but where do they dump to? We're getting into a very costly retro fit on to what might be an efficient stove with secondary and tertiary reburning. The money might be better spent on insulation so you run the stove less frequently.

Also, not being snarky, you mentioned getting one installed yourself nearly 5 years ago. I take it not a simple or cheap job?

There are ones for domestic use, but I've not come across ones which talk about being self cleaning, only seeing ones which need cleaning annually, plausibly in Sheffield, the particulate matter could go to the incinerator which powers the tram and other things. 

Being on benefits, and now a student loan. I spoke nicely to my Dad, and he demurred, so I've gradually ended up not using my stove and plan to pay myself for one when I'm working. The climate seems to be gradually warming, subjectively to how I feel at home, which seems to mean I have the gas lower than I have in the past. It may turn out that my need for/use of a stove becomes less and less. Thanks to him, I do own my own my home, so if things turn out as I hope after my degree (circa within a few years of graduating), I'd have some money to use with which might otherwise go on a mortgage. 

In the summer I'm going to have my front room radiator moved from below my window to behind my sofa, which should make a lot of difference.

They self clean by collecting the particulates when they are mostly produced (when the fire is burning colder) and dumping them back into the chimney to burn when it is up to temperature. Same principle as a SCR filter on a diesel which recuperates by briefly raising the exhaust temperature.

Makes sense, but not sure I like the sound of potential dust explosions in my flue.

OK, are you saying once an average burner is up to decent operating temperature,  these Satinic particulates are not as significant as the doomsaying article above suggests?

Once is the operative word, if ever would also be relevant as we are talking pretty hot (constant flue temp ca. 200°C). The filter stops the particulates being emitted if the stove doesn't achieve a high enough temperature and in fact some of them include a fan to ensure better burning. They are primarily only made to upgrade the old BimSchV 1 (the 2010 German standard which allowed 0.09g particulates) to BimSchV 2 which is 0.04g so the stove had to already be of a good standard.

Low carbon? Burning wood produces just as much CO2 as burning fossil fuels, for the energy produced. Also, the "carbon neutrality" of burning wood is a bit of a "smokescreen" because this is only true if the burnt trees are replaced with new trees. Even if this is done, it takes a long time to absorb the CO2 back into the new growth - too slow for the current urgent need to put the brakes on climate change. At the moment, mankind is cutting down far more trees than replacing them, and Europe (that includes us) is burning a lot of wood in power stations and making a big noise about this being carbon neutral. 

Rotting wood produces more greenhouse gas than burning it so we might as well use mature forests for heating and save on oil or gas.

It's steady state if you plant at least as much as you burn. Which I ensure happens with my sources. 

Simplisticly, if you have 101 trees and burn 1 each  year while the others grow by 1/100 tree, carbon is constant.  You don't need to wait for a single tree to grow fully.

Exactly. The issue isn't the carbon cycle from growing, burning and replanting trees, it's the sudden release of carbon trapped for millions of years in coal and oil, over the space of a couple of hundred years.

Yeah, burning wood still produces CO2 but it's carbon that is already in the cycle, it's not releasing fresh carbon that has been locked up underground for millions of years like coal, oil or gas.

I fully agree with you though, this business of buying wood chip from places like America, then shipping it half way round the world to burn for electricity and calling it 'Sustainable' and 'Carbon neutral' is crap. We'd need to plant trees on every available piece of land to make that sustainable.

On the smaller scale of burning wood at home though, many people will be burning wood that was sourced locally, often from their own land. Much of it will be provided by local tree surgeons or land management companies and is simply a by product of maintaining trees and vegetation in urban areas.

Although there is becoming a noticeable decline in both the number and size of trees in urban areas now. With gardens becoming progressively smaller and less inclination to spend time on maintenance means people are gradually shunning trees and hedges in favour of small shrubs and fences.

I was not talking specific sources but the overall balance, which I thought was negative. I'm all for the steady-state; it is the time frame that I am concerned about. Obviously, in the long term burning wood is much more beneficial than burning fossil fuels. 

Have I stumbled across UKConservatives by mistake?

Doesn't one have one's own managed forest? Good God, man!

many people will be burning wood that was sourced locally, often from their own gardens. 

Better?

That sounds better, yes.

I'm following this thread with interest.  We have a small woodburner that's used to supplement our wet underfloor heating (currently gas driven, switching to ASHP soon).  There was a time when we were seriously considering switching to a larger woodburner with a wet heating coil instead of the ASHP, but dropped this idea largely because of the increasing concerns over PM2.5 emission.

In terms of PM2.5 - all the data I have seen seem to lump together all woodburning.  I imagine that my stove - very modern, burns as hot as hell - is at least an order of magnitude better than an older stove being fed with unseasoned wood, or an open fire.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was 100 times better than an open fire burning unseasoned wood.  But I'd be most interested to see data on this.

In terms of CO2 - I think there's a significant difference of scale.  The use of 'sustainable' wood in power stations such as Drax looks to me to be greenwashing at its worst.  Sure, the trees took in CO2 as they grew, and new trees planted in their place (if such trees are indeed being planted) would take in CO2 again, but the timescales are so different.  Pulling in CO2 over the next century or two as the trees mature doesn't help us meet the challenge of the next decade. 

On the other hand, my woodpile is made up of wood that had to be felled anyway, from neighbouring properties.  In fact, what I'm burning right now is from conifers that were felled four years ago to allow the installation of a local hydroelectric plant on the Thames!  My understanding is that it's actually significantly better to dry and then burn this (and return the biomass to CO2) than to allow it to rot (and return some of the biomass as CH4, which has a much higher greenhouse potential).

So, for now, I'm keeping my little 5kW stove and running it in the best way I can.  

If an electrostatic precipitator exists that can be cheaply retrofitted then sign me up.  But I don't think one does exist, and if it does will it take out particles as small as PM2.5?

Same here

I've seen some studies but they tend to be from stove companies so hardly independent. If they are to be believed about 10 times better than an open fire (or one candle?) and 100 times better than burning toast. The measurements Sam got were interesting. My highly unscientific approach has been that Mrs J is a sensitive asthmatic and the stove doesn't bother her, but she can't visit my mum in the winter due to the open fire (although she isn't too keen in the summer 😊) From an external perspective, last week we had the windows in the front of the house replaced, it was cold and foggy. Mrs J had the wood burner all day, I was in the garden chopping wood. I couldn't smell anything from the wood burner, but knew when the lads were having a fag break. 

Storm Arwen has certainly helped my wood pile. 

Mine is even smaller, along with what you burn I think this helps as ours is almost always fully on. Certainly sweeping the chimney is a very different experience to one I rember as a kid. 

It's hard to find definitive values for open fires, partly because they have been effectively banned for decades in Germany and they are so variable, values in the hundreds of times worse than the newest standard can be found though! While there is sceptiscism of the Guardians 750 worse than a truck it's actually easy to believe that is actually based on research, a modern SCR equipped diesel actually cleans the ambient air as it drives along as real-world testing has shown.

Electrostatic filters are more effective the smaller the particle but PM2.5 is no longer the smallest particle, while not yet in the emissions standards the actual reasearch is into reducing PM1, the main stumbling block being the existing standards and measuring system works on the weight of particulates not the number and size though this may change sometime. The current filters on the market reduce the output around 60%-80% from the older 90mg standard to under the newer 40mg standard (for water-heating pellet systems this is 20mg and easily achievable, mine tests at about 12mg and my wood gasifier 15mg).

A filter is around €1000-€1500 plus installation for a normal stove.

Man, guess I’m the big bad boogie man then - I’ve currently got the log burner on in one room and an open fire going in the other room - and this will be repeated tomorrow, and the day after that etc 

See you in the cancer ward, along with your neighbours!!!

Hahahaha - well, it it the season for giving - who would have thought a good old Yule log would give that to tje neighbours 

A good holiday to you as well 

It's inconceivable, isn't it? It's just so damned nice and cosy, like an injection of morphine! 

Happy Xmas!

I have definitely come across a design which is cleaned periodically after the particulates have gathered at the top. Picolet(sp) I think.

I don't find that hard to believe either.  Then again, there are trucks and trucks, just like there are stoves and stoves.  

That's around what I found on a quick google.  A factor of ten more than I'd be prepared to pay, if I'm honest.  

A few days ago a bunch of us from the village gathered for mulled wine around a little portable fire pit.  They were burning damp bits of pallet wood, in light rain, and you could see the plume from several hundred metres away.  I can't quite believe that my incredibly hot stove burning bone dry logs could be significant compared to that!

Easy enough to jerk trucks up to a decent standard, Germany managed it by making the motorway/major road toll emissions-class related. 80% are Euro 5 or 6.

A quick Google would also give you a large number of studies of the cost to health of woodstoves. Denmark $800m per year, Bakersfield (California) $14m per year, Christchurch (NZ) NZ$127m per year, New South Wales AUS$8.1bn over 20 years or $4,270 per stove per year, Thessanoliki (Greece) €130m per year health cost and €2bn in mortality. You are "saving" money at the cost to others.

You seem very knowledgeable on this stuff. What are people where you are switching to if they're removing wood burners as a primary heat source if they're looking for the more environmentally friendly options? Are there any modern systems (ie not gas or oil) emerging as front runners?   

As I said up thread, I'll probably update my multi fuel system within the next 5 years but I'll be looking for something greener than just gas. ASHP are getting a lot of press but nobody seems to know what direction domestic heating is going to take if gas is to be phased out. 

It's not a matter of people stopping using wood ( it's actually increasing) but the standards are raised every few years the same as for cars. Normally the next standard comes every ten years with a rolling five year upgrade period so our last one changes this January forcing the 2010 appliances to be improved by 2025 and eliminating a lot of the older ones. The chimney sweep (they are actually a government appointed inspector) sweeps the chimney twice a year and does a visual control, every two years (or when he needs to) measures the emissions and certifies the stove for further use.

Pellets being the cleanest they are a popular option, in the towns and cities district heating is expanding, a lot of my local villages it's waste heating from bio-gas plants. ASAP isn't a theme my area, German electricity is just too expensive with the low winter temperatures, Ground Source outnumbers Air Source by about 10-1 according to my installer buddy. The rest it's insulation and gas.

I'm certainly not saving any money!  Compared to gas, I'll need to live to a hundred to pay back the cost of installing the stove, never mind the time it takes me to cut and stack my firewood.

I've read the website you pulled those figures from - it has a rather campaigning air to it, and I see that they say that pellet burners are nearly as bad as everything else! 

This is my point, though - these things exist upon a spectrum, with open fires burning crap in a dense urban environment at one end, and high quality pellet systems at the other.  I believe my stove is a reasonably long way towards the latter side.  I've been to Thessaloniki in the autumn, and the smog was bad - because tons of people have open fires, and no-one has any space to season their wood.

Compare to my neighbours having an outdoor meeting every couple of weeks and burning pallets in an open bowl - I doubt they're going to spend £1500 on a precipitator for that...

I think this illustrates the issues we have in the UK. Giving a regulatory role to chimney sweeps would have the current government and their supporters frothing about red tape and government interference.

There will never be investment in district heating or utilising waste heat, that cuts into dividends and profits, or God forbid increased taxes. ASHP, given high electricity costs and abysmal insulation standards, is little more than an expensive bodged retrofit in most cases.

A very small number of people will invest in environmentally better heating systems out of personal ethics, the rest will use whatever is cheaper, be that burning creosote soaked tyres in an open fireplace.

I should gave pointed out that for household heating as the primary source I am talking about central heating installed with a buffer store, just a fire or stove doesn't cut it for the standard nowadays with a few exceptions.