Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think our air quality is getting worse due to the rise of woodburners

77 replies

Brownbootscoldheart · 17/02/2019 19:23

I live in a semi rural area - a large village surrounded by other large towns and villages and since the start of winter there is a constant smell of woodsmoke In the air. It’s especially strong in the evenings and the air is still thick some mornings if it’s a still day.
I agree it can sometimes smell quite nice but mostly it’s an acrid smell, not dissimilar to creosote so I assume people are burning wood treated with something.
I feel we are going backwards with regards to air quality, the clean air act went a huge way to improving the situation in the later decades of the last century but due to the rise of this needless accessory (I say needless as I would expect most people have central heating and it’s just a fad to have a woodburner) I would think we are going backwards.

Anyone else agree?

OP posts:
HazardGhost · 17/02/2019 19:52

YANBU !

SpanielEars070 · 17/02/2019 19:53

We live in a rural hamlet and have to buy bulk LPG for heating. We had our 1200 litre tank filled on Friday, which costs around £700 and we use around 4 a year. So that's why we have a woodburner, and we burn offcuts from one of DHs suppliers at work - all kiln dried untreated beechwood. A huge bag costs us around £40 and keeps us warm for around a month. We also burn our own garden waste.... we had to chop down a massive tree that was damaged in the storms last year and that's all drying nicely in our woodstore to use next winter.

I'm far more pissed off with people hopping across the world on cheap flights and horrid polluting buses and lorries on the roads.

Alsohuman · 17/02/2019 19:54

I bet a lot of people merrily using wood burning stoves are the most vocal about second or even third hand cigarette smoke.

DippyAvocado · 17/02/2019 19:56

I listened to a programme on the radio about this recently and was quite shocked. Domestic burning of solid fuel (incl wood burners) is the greatest of harmful particulate matter emissions - more than industrial burning or road traffic. There's a good summary here www.which.co.uk/reviews/wood-burning-stoves/article/wood-burning-stoves-what-you-need-to-know/stoves-and-pollution#stoveenvironment.

I say this as the owner of a wood-burning stove! Our stove is one of the highest rated for efficiency and we only use logs that we have seasoned ourselves for at least a year. We only use it at weekends in the cold weather but since hearing the programme I have tried to reduce usage further. Some stoves are worse than others and I think open fires are supposed to be worse still. I can see that some regulation will probably have to be brought in.

Hoppinggreen · 17/02/2019 19:56

Dd has asthma (mild) . We can’t visit people with wood burners unless they agree not to put them on or she can’t breathe

DippyAvocado · 17/02/2019 19:57

greatest source

StreetwiseHercules · 17/02/2019 20:01

“last time I sat in a room with one on I could hardly breathe. ”

Laughable. You just close the door on the thing and nothing gets out.

Were the people you were with perhaps burning asbestos rather than dry wood?

StreetwiseHercules · 17/02/2019 20:03

“but more that some people will be burning stuff like mdf”

What?!?! 😆

Who on earth with a wood burner is chucking MDF in it?

Deadbudgie · 17/02/2019 20:05

Almost anything you do damages the planet. I offset my wood burner by having only one child, mending clothes, never having disposable fashion. Walking places. Minimal plastic bottles ( use bars of soap etc) cut back on air travel. Find natural heat from a fire far better than from central heating (and far cheaper)

crackofdoom · 17/02/2019 20:07

As somebody who's always loved woodburners and open fires, the information about particulates really shocked me. It's obviously worse to burn wood in cities, though.

In terms of CO2/ climate change wood is relatively benign, as carbon neutral, though.

The "We live in the country, what else can we do?" objection is only half valid, IMO. I live about as rurally as you can get, and my HA got air source heating installed in our new builds. It is excellent, and very economical to run.

greenelephantscarf · 17/02/2019 20:09

In terms of CO2/ climate change wood is relatively benign, as carbon neutral, though.

that only applies to the burning though.
not the logging, transporting, drying, storing...

crackofdoom · 17/02/2019 20:11

Most people with burners do use pretty local wood, though- normally dried by dint of putting it in a shed for a year...I used to literally pull it out of the hedges when I was poor and had a burner it wasn't very dry

moanymoaner · 17/02/2019 20:12

Yabu there so far worse air pollution happening . We have a log burner and use kiln dried wood too and it saves us a fortune in gas too!

tirisfalpumpkin · 17/02/2019 20:16

Properly used, they’re great - I am biased, I have one. We have barely used our gas heating this winter, which never quite seemed to get the (1890s terrace) house warm. Using the burner has encouraged us to be frugal and careful (since fuel means a half hour of manual labour chopping wood), and we heat only one room. If used properly, there should not be a lot of smoke (and certainly not in the room!) and it should be burning hot enough not to generate creosote, which will mess up your chimney over time.

Maybe there are solutions/ways to mitigate the air quality issue - it is something that concerns me, but likewise we can’t just keep guzzling oil and gas forever.

3out · 17/02/2019 20:16

Our friends had to get rid of theirs because their daughter’s asthma flared up so much. The doors were shut, they had a good seal, you couldn’t smell the logs, but when it was on it was like flicking a switch on their DD’s asthma. They only burned properly dried logs, didn’t burn off cuts etc :(

Squigglypig2 · 17/02/2019 20:17

Streetwise - I'm sure they were burning the correct stuff but it aggravated my breathing (admittedly I had a cold) and I was noticeably suffering. I simply moved out of the living room and was fine within about 5/10 minutes. I grew up with open fires and used to be as misty eyed as all the other idiots who've spent £1000s getting them put in, but in reality they are unnecessary and terrible for air quality so I'm glad I didn't go down that road.

3out · 17/02/2019 20:19

I think regulations are being brought in quite soon aren’t they?

StreetwiseHercules · 17/02/2019 20:25

We are well and truly through the looking glass. People are quite mad.

pennycarbonara · 17/02/2019 20:26

YADNBU! People are using them in many areas which are on mains heating and it is affecting the air quality. There are actual studies on this.

I can't understand how people use wood fires as everyday heating anyway. They need lots of attention so they don't go out, and even then, they go out eventually in a couple of hours. You can't concentrate properly for any length of time. I figure that back when they were common, if you would be regularly concentrating on something that involved sitting still for hours, if rich you would have servants, or if less well off you'd be in a large household or a gathering where everyone would take turns (like a bunch of women and girls knitting or sewing). If there's just one or two of you they are a faff.

greenelephantscarf · 17/02/2019 20:27

If used properly, there should not be a lot of smoke (and certainly not in the room!)

not to with the smoke. the pollution is small particles, voc etc.

read the article linked by pp

ThanosSavedMe · 17/02/2019 20:33

There are far worse things than wood burners polluting the air but they are what a lot of people seem to be focusing on

minkies11 · 17/02/2019 20:34

No gas in my small rural village so have a nice modern HETAS approved multifuel burner. Saves a fortune in bills and no one has ever complained about the smoke! You be laughed out of 'town' if you did. It's not messy or unreliable and doesn't take any time to maintain. Can't understand why people think they are a chore.....
Much bigger air pollution stories to worry about than woodburners ffs.

MereDintofPandiculation · 17/02/2019 20:52

It is a fad in cities Not necessarily, if you have a source of free wood. And it is an insurance against power cuts. During the 1987 hurricane we didn't have a wood burner but we did have an open fire, so we were able to have heat, boil water and cook food during the days before we got our power back. Quite useful with a 6 month baby in the house.

Bowerbird5 · 17/02/2019 20:55

We live in a village with no gas.
We have had a multifuel stove for over 30 years. We burn local seasoned wood and smokeless fuel when it is very cold.
It is our central heating. We run seven radiators and a large hot water tank from ours.

Penny I would be surprised if you have lived with one. We run ours every day in winter. I bank it up at night and it is still on in the morning. I set it and it stays on all day while I am at work. I leave at 8.10 am and return at 5 or 6 most days and it is usually still on. I can run mine continually for a couple of weeks. I bring a barrow of logs in at a time. I fill the bucket once a day. Unless it is snowing and then sometimes I need a bit more as it is a stone house with very thick walls.

We love ours.

justasking111 · 17/02/2019 20:57

I think there is a difference between having a log burner in the country where cottages are well apart and having them in cities where they are close together plus in the country it is windy and the smoke dissipates, in the city other buildings trap air rather than blowing it away.