Why does everyone install wood burners knowing how terrible they are for the environment?

[Don'tcallthepolice]

Just this

I live out in t'Dales village and I have an anthracite coal stove. I can also get the brickettes for it. If I look after it properly, clean it out and bank it up, it stays alight on embers all night, then I just wake it up in the morning. I live in a smokeless zone and conservation area, and there is no discharge into the atmosphere. I can smell the woodburners though, and not happy when the washing's out!

@pattihews heat source needs electricity to work. Plus the costs for the wood burner won't include fitting every year. And many people are like me and don't pay for wood.

Yes we re the same re daylight through all the holes. My dh seems to think a bit of scrunched up foil will do the job, and he’s an architect😫😫
The room for the open fire is the only one without ill fitting metal windows so I guess the conservation officer was ok because of that.

Were the same with floor boards. The only thing between us and our jettied windows in the bedrooms is a few pieces on wood in the floor, rugs are so amazing tho

No idea about the hydrogen mix, we just had a new boiler and our first ever radiators installed, but didn’t look into that …. Have we missed something after all we ve spent.

current internal temperature without the wood burners after a few hours of central heating is 9.5 . So we really need those wood burners. Either that or get rid of all our amazing, breathing, historical buildings.

It's important to get a good quality stove. There are a lot of poor quality stoves manufactured in China which aren't great but get installed because of the low cost (to the supplier, not to you).

Lots of naiive people on here, who don’t understand the concept of living rurally and being reliant on oil for fuel. People have had log burners and used their own waste wood in them for decades before it became trendy etc. if you have an old property then you have far fewer heating options im afraid.

I have an open fire now, but when I lived with my ILs they were in the middle of nowhere and power cuts weren't unheard of in the winter, so the stove kept us warm as well as allowing us to boil water.

We live in an old farmhouse in a remote area and installed a wood burning stove instead of having an open fireplace.

We are not on the gas grid and previously relied on oil to heat the house which is much worse environmentally.

Our wood burner complies with all H&S regulations. It is extremely efficient and clean burning, producing minimal smoke and ash. We fuel it with a mix of well seasoned wood which a local farmer gives us in return for providing sheep-grazing, and eco-friendly briquettes made from waste sawdust. I have a moisture meter and check each new batch of wood we get. Sometimes we have our own logs if we lose branches or a tree in the storms.

I think it is a great solution that meets our needs just fine and does not have a negative impact on anyone else.

12 years ago, downsized to small open plan bungalow. Gas boiler 25 years old,no spares available. Dodgy gas fire in lounge,flu straight out of the wall. Got quotes for log burner. Can't remember how much, expensive because w have no chimney,it was very major building work, plus planning permission required for external metal pipe. We had new gas boiler installation in loft, kitchen is tiny,at the end of the lounge, boiler took up so much space,and settled for a fake electric "log burner effect". As well as the huge building cost,I asked about running costs,chap showed me a tiny bag of logs, said it would eat them in a day,a couple of pounds. I was shocked. We were looking at a very small stove.The fire came into its own during the beast from the east, when the condenser pipe on the boiler froze up. We looked into ground and air source heat pumps,way out of our pension budget,used our life savings for solar panels. Great in the summer. We have the pitch perfect south facing bungalow roof. We were not informed how much electricity they take from the grid to run,in winter, continuous cloudy raining days, produce nothing. I still wish I had a log burner!

I could have written this, except our home (rural farmhouse, N/E Scotland) was built in 1820! Last year we had two power cuts, the first was ten days long, followed four weeks later by another six days. Minus temperatures and high winds throughout.

Our elderly neighbours (84 and 92 at the time and with only electric heating on their farm) came to us for the first couple of days while they waited for a place in the hospital 8 miles away for the rest of it. Our neighbours never went home after that, but moved in with their son (who couldn’t get to them during the power cut because of the weather) and passed away a few weeks ago shortly before this year’s December power cut, which was only three days.

I see having an off grid, self sufficient source of heat as a necessity, not a middle class vanity. If I lived in London maybe I would feel different, but probably not.

We don’t use ours anymore. It was here when we moved in. Then I read about the health risks which I wasn’t aware of until a few years ago. Not worth the risk at all.

I have no idea why people choose to ignore these health risks but they clearly do - as evidenced on this thread.

I understand if it’s your only source of heating but not the ‘it looks pretty and cosy’ arguments.

I don't have one but at some point I shall get one. I shall choose the most eco and efficient one possible. Although I agree with you, op, this winter has shown me just how necessary it is to have one. In spite of asthma, I need some way of keeping warm in the depths of winter and have only just been able to afford the heating on at its bare minimum.

I've also tried wood pellets

You can buy coffee (waste) logs, but I've not tried these yet

Heating your home with gas is just as bad for the environment, it's predominantly methane which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and is belching out of pipelines all over the place

Very good point.

^^This.

And if you have already got a lung condition you are advised not even to sit in a room with one.

All of the above. Plus the science used to discredit these drives has been proved to be flawed. Even the scientist who have written these papers have admitted to using incomplete and flawed data. But it would appear from just this forum, that no one is actually reading these papers to discover this for themselves.
cannot wait until the same people clutching their pearls discover that their probably beloved gas ovens and hobs are the next thing being proposed to be banned.

I think because trying to do the right things for the environment is exhausting, not always clear what is best- wood is renewable after all, is it better or worse to burn it or rely on other heat sources? I don't fully know, lots of eco things and theories go full circle after a while. If you do more of one thing but a lot less of another, maybe you feel ok with that? It's not black and white to me

Hope you’re not cooking with gas either
Read yesterdays news article on carcinogenic effects

“Clutching their pearls”!!!!!
Thats rude
Wonder why.

Us, too, and we get free logs. Could be worse, my parents burned peat.

You could also ask, why do people have more than 1 or 2 children, knowing how terrible it is for the planet? We do have a woodburner - we only use it occasionally at weekends if it gets very cold - it creates a nice atmosphere and warms up the house. Actually, it's quite a hassle keeping it clean and running, so that's one reason we don't use it more often. Do I feel guilty about it? Nope. We only have one child to pollute the planet, I walk to work instead of driving (a 6-mile round trip!), we very rarely fly, I religiously recycle, upcycle and reuse everything I can. You have to put things into perspective and look at your overall carbon footprint - and you have to admit, having children is by far the biggest impact you can have on the environment.

Same here, we have 2 woodburners we only use them in cold snaps and if we fancy an evening in front of the fire, I am so glad we have them, if we have blackouts we can heat our home and cook food, it gives a great feeling of self sufficiency and security.

What about the impact of the wood burner on your child’s health? And yours? Are you aware of them?

@Everyonehasavoice why - because of the bloody annoying habit of the same bad science being constantly trotted out!

Free access to wood so just put one in. Saving a fortune in oil already!

They do, and I pay around £600 a year for all my heating, hot water and cooking. I live in a well-insulated house.

People who choose to drive Range Rovers and Porsches have higher overheads and costs than people who drive Fiestas or Kias. People who choose to live in period properties have higher overheads than people who live in well-insulated homes. It's a choice, but it doesn't give them the right to inflict major pollution issues on everyone else. Massive amounts of evidence now that even good modern woodturners pump out dangerous particulates that are bad for the people outside the home but also bad for the people in them.