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

[Don'tcallthepolice]

Just this

Husbands a tree surgeon and wood is free why would I pay for heating when I don't have to

Good for you on solar. It will bring down your fossil fuel use indirectly and your bills too.
prices of heat pumps will have to come down in the interim. Admit they’re expensive and not suitable for all houses.

We mainly have ours for aesthetics, although we do live in a rural sandstone house and it can be hard properly heating the house in winter.

It gives a feeling of independence that we ‘could’ heat the house ourselves if needed. We aren’t on mains gas and a few times delivery of gas to our tank has been late and we’ve almost run out (once when DD was a newborn). It is nice to have the safety net of the wood burning stove.

To annoy me, as the smoke drops and comes down our chimney, as we appear to be the only person locally ( semi rural) who doesn’t have one.
Immediate neighbour has two now.
Other close neighbour burn horrendous smelling stuff.
If you’d like to see what we are all breathing in, the top of a neighbours caravan, near one offending chimney, regularly is covered in brown tar as a result

In laws used to have two , I did a comparable on the cost of oil against the continual supply of logs and the logs were more expensive than the oil fired rayburn that heats the rads
I have just quoted a barn conversion of 180m 2 for an air source heat pump with under floor heating and was surprised how it compared with an oil boiler and UFH
The air source was circa £10k installed

I live rurally, with no mains gas supply. Like the majority of my neighbours, the log burner supplements our very expensive LPG or oil heating - did you know that there’s no energy cap on LPG/oil?

It’s also essential in a power cut which happen quite frequently and can take a long time to be rectified.

Lastly, it wasn’t installed by us. It was installed by the builder because, as I said, pretty much every house has one round here.

Oh and I have asthma and it doesn’t impact my breathing at all. As others have said, a modern burner using very dry wood creates little pollution.

I grew up in a property with no central heating & a coal fire

Electricity is produced by fossil fuel or nuclear, only a small percentage is provided by renewable green technology

In my sibling’s case:
No gas supply to their village. Electric / oil heating costs sky high.

However they have access to woodland / local trees that need cutting, and are low income but hardy practical self sufficient types.

Stove was installed long before any publicity about environmental issues.

In other cases, for the past decade all the fashion / home magazines and pages in MSM have been about ‘hygge’ and cosiness , a stove was / is a much flaunted feature in Estate Agent blurb, compared to recent and minimal info about particulates etc.

Oh yes, and I’ve forgotten the point about running out of gas. We actually almost run out today. Luckily Calor turned up first thing.

Because it's bloody lovely, and husband gets free wood through his job. There's something very primal about the family gathered around a fire.

Another rural person without a gas supply. We buy 3.5 cu. m of logs annually, from a tree surgeon and season it for two years before burning it. It's a modern stove so it meets all the regs, and the sweep assures me that it burns hot and clean. We also have oil heating, which is expensive.

That’s great for you, but that’s an individual benefit on a micro scale. It isn’t a convincing macro argument against a ban in urban areas.

Many of our neighbours have them. Unfortunately, the large particles given off are not only polluting but they trigger my asthma; especially if people burn unseasoned wood, as most seem to. They are also very inefficient at creating heat.

No OP is perfect! 😂

I agree it’s very primal and feels lovely. Such a pity it’s actually very harmful to health.

We bought a house with one already installed. We never use it as it’s so bad for environment and smoky/messy. Have just put pinecones and fairy lights inside. But EVERYONE who comes by the house says “ooh a log burner, how lovely, you must use it all the time!?”

people really do love them but I agree with you OP, I don’t know why!

What, like the guardian readers slagging them off?

We have had power cuts that last days at a time. I know two people who fitted ground source it is rubbish Anthracite has tripled in price this winter still cheaper than oil. Our building is over 400 years old it needs warming through due to the walls being so thick . We have no gas and unreliable electric.

They are the most efficient form of stand alone heating you can get.

Bizarre statement. A new woodturner that meets current emission standards costs around £1k. It can cost that much again to install. You then have to pay around £300 upfront for a crate of logs/ truckload of logs and have somewhere dry to store them. £2k buys you enough oil or gas or electricity to get you through the winter very comfortable.

If you really were as concerned about the environment as you say you are, you'd have had an air source heat pump fitted years ago. I've had my Mitsubishi Ecodan for 12 years now.

It’s not so much about being bad for the environment regarding CO2, it’s bad for the environment regarding health damaging particulates. These are especially bad for children. I’d not want one in my home due to this. The evidence is all there, you can choose to deny/ignore it but the facts are there.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/16/home-wood-burning-biggest-cause-particle-pollution-fires

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/27/wood-burning-stove-environment-home-toxins

People still breed which is way worse for the environment but hey ho.

How would you like people to keep warm in a maritime climate like ours?

Current & previous property, no gas supply

Seasoned & cut my own wood

Stillwantingadog, rubbish, you cant have a ground source heat pump in an old property without a cavity wall. Only works in newish homes.