People that call wood burners dirty / polluting / not green are ignorant

[Sazzas]

With a modern stove that is DEFRA approved it reburns the smoke so hardly any smoke comes out of the chimney. Also as apose to gas or oil powered heating its far greener, less environment impact and local. My wood all comes from down the road from a responsibility managed forest and by buying it I'm promoting more of the land to be converted into forestry.

Its by far the cleanest, greenest and most sustainable way to heat my home

Actually there are many plants that grow a lot faster than trees that also trap carbon. And I believe that marine micro-organisms (algae) are best of all at it because there are so so many of them.

What the flue gas reburning is doing is burning carbon particles that remained unburned on the first attempt, that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. From memory, most wood burners are not all that efficient (our heating is a (highly efficient, German) biomass boiler rather than a woodburner meaning that our woodburners installed 10 years to avoid using the LPG fired CH have become largely decorative now).

"Cote- taken from the atmosphere, turned into carbon, which turns back into CO2 during combustion."

Again, sorry but that is a complete misunderstanding of Photosynthesis, which does not create carbon mass. It creates sugar for the plant to use up as energy:

carbon dioxide + water + light >> glucose + oxygen

ok, maybe I was a bit pompous. But my point remains that conservation isnt just about planting trees.

But the good thing about wood burners is that they are accessible. I can heat my home and my hot water using my biomass furnace and accumulator tank. I put in two wheelbarrow loads of wood and it gives me heat for 2-3 days since the system is ultra efficient and burns the wood gasses. My tank holds 3000 litres of water which is currently sitting at 87 degrees from me starting it up this morning (i've put in a barrow and a half and will put in another half barrow load in about an hour).

I cannot heat my home and hot water using solar because my home is not situated in a place which will allow me to generate enough for my needs (heavily wooded area). Likewise wind. I cannot erect a wind turbine which will power my house.

As a result my option is oil (no gas supply) or electricity (from a coal fired power station).

So in my scenario I can heat using oil or biomass. In switching to biomass I have personally made a significant difference. We have also replanted hundreds of trees since we want this to be sustainable for years to come.

Every person's scenario will be different but I am a lot greener (and the world is a little greener) through my personal efforts and every little step helps.

atticus and choot
no I do not have to resort to sour grapes
I was pointing out the obvious
if you are 'lucky' (i.e. privileged) enough to have your own woodland from whence you can extract logs so therefore saving on transportation costs and get the wood for free (you had no need to mention the excessive number of bedrooms or how big your house was) of course it is economic
the rest of us poor huddled masses do not have that luxury
I am sure you are richly deserving of your 'luck' but don't assume we are all so 'lucky'

Let's start nitpicking Ego, why not. That has ended so well in the past

why does this have to turn into a rich versus poor argument? It's not about whether it's economical, it's about whether it's green.

Actually biomass is very economical at the moment (if we're talking about the personal purse) since the RHI payments will cover the cost of boiler installation plus the vast majority of your log/pellet costs.

choota

at least she's trying

Oh definitely.

Apologies. I've reported my own post having messed up the windows on my phone.

Not strictly true. The greendeal process is there to provide loans to those who don't have the cash to purchase outright. I don't know the detail because we didn't use greendeal but it is there for those who need it.

I'm certainly not saying it's right for everyone though. It's not low effort.

atticus, sounds like we have similar set ups! We also have a 3000 l accumulator tank and a boiler that needs a couple of wheelbarrow loads for between a day and week (depending on how much we have the CH on).

In the part of Germany where I come from the popularity of wood burners has fucked up the deciduous forests. They used to be managed with a long term profit in mind selling large oaks and beech trees for furniture making, small trees that grew to close to them were cut out every few years and sold to locals. Now huge machines come in and take out anything they can, churning up the ground, leaving the woods looking like a war zone with no concern for the wildlife there. Some councils (most forests are council owned) are better than others in protecting their forests but some cash-trapped councils sell the cutting rights to the highest bidders and let them lose.
Apart from the carbon balance you need to have a good sustainable supply of wood in the first place to make them ecologically sound.

I guess we're really lucky that our kind of set-up isn't more popular here. The bloke I buy the wood from is still selling off a large number of fallen trees from along the river bank of a large estate near here- they need to get rid of them to clear the river, it's fallen wood that had been lying out for some time already so well-seasoned before he even bought it (quite cheaply as he was doing the estate a favour as well).

Since the 2013 storms when large numbers of trees were felled by storms, there seems to be a good supply of self-felled wood. Of course it won't last, but I just wanted to mention that it is possible to buy wood that hasn't been industrially harvested.

Igneous, it looks like that's what happening here. The small woods which are dotted about everywhere near me are disappearing fast.

Burning wood is carbon neutral. It releases back the carbon that has been locked away. No more, no less.

I'm finding it difficult to take anything seriously after I read this. I mean, we are all made from star stuff, but I still wouldn't want to be trapped in an exploding supernovae. It's a totally ridiculous and meaningless statement, and completely unhelpful to the current discussion.

Biomass is lower-carbon, generally, than heat from gas or oil. However it's not as good as heat from zero-carbon electricity.

Some large-scale biomass is worse than coal, depending on where the fuels come from.

I'm a proponent of a mix (gas for transition, nuclear especially based on new liquid fuel reactor designs that are near-zero waste and meltdown is near impossible, and renewable electricity especially as it comes down in price, plus battery technology for storage as big batteries come online and become economic). I don't really see a role for long-term biomass, or mass roll-out of small-scale biomass in areas currently served by the gas grid. It would be a distraction from the end goal of zero carbon heat. In urban areas in particular heat networks and heat pumps are a much better idea.

We had a wood burner for many years and they are great but what puzzles me is how few people fit a back boiler to heat hot water too. It seems a shame to waste all the heat when u can get gallons of hot water for free(after fitting costs) Now got an old log burning Rayburn which does the hot water, radiators and we can cook on it too. Cost a bit to get fitted but it was the best money we ever spent. Would be uneconomic if we had to buy logs but husband is in forestry so plentiful supply. Other upside is we only use a small amount of electricity as a result. Doesn't work for everyone but lovely when it does