To ask how you can justify using a woodburner in a city or town

[MojoMoon]

www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/09/eco-wood-stoves-emit-pollution-hgv-ecodesign?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

New wood burning stoves billed as more environmentally friendly still emit 750 times more tiny particle pollution than a modern HGV truck, a report has shown.

Only stoves that meet the ecodesign standard can be legally sold from the start of 2022 in the UK and EU, but experts said the regulation was shockingly weak.

The report used data on the emissions produced by stoves in perfect laboratory conditions and the pollution could be even higher in everyday use, the researchers said, with older stoves being much worse.

Tiny particle pollution – called PM2.5 – is especially harmful to health as it can pass through the lungs into the bloodstream and then be carried around the body and lodge in organs. At least 40 ,000 early deaths a year are attributed to wood burning in Europe.

Wood burners also triple the level of harmful pollution inside homes and should be sold with a health warning, said the scientist behind a study published in December. The researchers advised that the stoves should not be used around elderly people or children.

The government may have banned the burning of wet wood but has no plans to ban the sale of woodburners, despite the fact that the 8pc of homes that use them are almost entirely in cities and can use power or gas for heating. And are almost entirely fairly wealthy households.

(Those of you who live a "very rural" location, to use a common Mumsnet phrase and are entirely off grid may justifiably need one. But the question was cities and towns).

It worries me so few people know how dangerous PM2.5 emissions are, particularly for pregnant women and children.

YANBU: correct, woodburners should be banned in homes in cities and towns asap

YABU: no, they look pretty and who cares about science and health

The thing is, where do we stop?
We have to consider the environment, our neighbours and our families.
Most people would care about their family as regards health short and long term.
The exposure we get in our houses to gas from cooking in own kitchen (There is some health implication but I couldn't say what). Car engines running. All the chemicals in carpets and fabrics. All the shit in fabric conditioners and general detergents and cleaning substances. Paint and other relatively stable compounds which do release something or other when disturbed or exposed to temperature and humidity variations. And on and on it goes.
Yes, we could substitute certain activities by relying on energy for power. Which in itself, at a global level, relies mostly on fuel consumption. Certainly at manufacturing stage. Everything needs fuel to be manufactured, uses pigments which are very very very bad for the environment (who needs colourful designs on kitchen paper towels? Or why do we even need kitchen paper towels? This one product can easily be banned worldwide and nobody would miss it really)
The manufacturing processes themselves must be the biggest polluters of our times. And associated distribution channels. And all the raw materials they use. Recycling only goes so far and to recycle something it requires cleaning, disinfecting, melting or repurposing through some mechanical process that uses energy and creates waste.
I have no idea what the best way is to reduce pollution and we should do our bit. But household habits are a drop in the ocean. Industries required a redress. And consumers need to reassess consumption, desires etc.
Our wood burning stove is staying put though. I'm thinking Scandinavian engineering must have put a lot of thinking in environmental impact of their products. And good quality wood helps.
Sadly it only heats part of downstairs, it doesn't seem to help in any way with upstairs rooms but that's probably because of the way our house is laid out.

YADBVU

2 closest neighbours also have woodburners...

Although 'in town' our electricity line comes from the villages. We get about one unscheduled power cut/year on average. I suppose typical duration of outage = 4 hours. Our boiler burns oil (no gas here) but boiler only works when electricity is working.

Our wood & kindling this winter will all be scavenged.

Our local air quality is amazing. So much better than any of the city roads i ever go to. The big blight on our local air quality is people who leave their stationary motor vehicle engines running -- often with no one in the car at all. Diesel fumes off of coaches. Blech.

@meadowbleu

I'm loving the idea that people have absolutely no idea of the vagaries of the mains electricity supply in rural England and pissing myself that someone at the council could override a ban on log burners during a power cut. There's literally no one at our local council to speak to full stop about anything, let alone someone dedicated for 4pm on a Friday when the supply's down, or when it's a sudden take out to provide power elsewhere while emergency works take place. I highly doubt I could get through to anyone at the council who's even heard of where we live, let alone give two hoots as to how we exist and keep body and soul together.

I know . We live near a wetlands reserve where thousands of geese and swans migrate to from Siberia in the winter . They’re great at flying . Absolutely shit at landing . They plough through and bounce off of power lines for miles around and cause endless power cuts . Most are blips , but some can last for hours.

Can’t heat my house with an oil boiler without the electric to fire it up in the first place and getting up in a stone cold house is soul destroying.

Just been talking about this to dh who works as an engineer in the energy sec/power stations and has done for nearly 40 years. He’s adamant as things currently stand if people stopped using gas central heating (and to a lesser extent log burners) and switched to heat source pumps there is not currently enough capacity in the National grid to run all the heat source pumps which would be needed. So sounds like there’s some way to go yet.

I've always burned smokeless fuel, it's the only way you can properly heat the house, it heats the front room, the room above and if you leave the doors open the rest of the house, the central heating struggled to heat to even 16 degrees in cold days - yes I've moved now!

We have a lot of spare kiln dried timber that would go into landfill otherwise. It's free fuel.

It'll be illegal to fart soon
Either that or we'll get taxed on it...

Couldn't give a shiny shite about particulate emissions from wood burners.
HTH.

I would much prefer to be able to heat my home by burning fuel I can source myself than relying on the whim of the market to dictate to price of electricity.
As it is, I need a duvet and numerous blankets in order to sit in any comfort in the winter as my relatively modern home has no flue, no central heating and no gas supply so my only option is expensive and inefficient electric heating.

YANBU

My neighbours have one. They have a wood store and use seasoned wood.

It still stinks. We can tell when they use it and it's really unpleasant. It exacerbates my DH's asthma and means we have to keep the windows shut.

We are semi rural ie not in a town/suburbs but also not in the back of beyond and have a gas supply.

I can totally understand people wanting a "back up" to electricity and why in very rural areas an open fire/wood burner is not only attractive but essential (and I'm against banning them outright for that reason).

Beyond that I think if you have access to an alternative (we have a very realistic gas "wood burner") it's a very selfish choice.

There is
absolutely no thought given to asthmatics or people with respiratory illness. The slightest smoke and Im coughing for days. I would ban the lot. What is the point in banning coal, petrol, diesel etc, then be subjected to the godawful stink and particles that get into your airways with these and no people do not burn the appropriate wood, they burn anything and don't give a jot for the effect it has on others.

I don’t know how I have grown used to it when I only arrived 5 hours ago

Then you have really no basis to speak on this. Wait until you have a really cold morning with no wind and heavy cloud cover.

@UsedUpUsername

I don’t know how I have grown used to it when I only arrived 5 hours ago

Then you have really no basis to speak on this. Wait until you have a really cold morning with no wind and heavy cloud cover.

You are making too many assumptions. First that I have been here for ages Second that I am new to the area and it is the first time experiencing it.

Both wrong. I don’t live here but it is not my first time here. I know the weather and in few months the snow will be a few inches thick on the ground. The outdoor kitchens will be left in favour of cooking on the indoor wood burner and every house in the village will be burning wood as it’s main source of heat.
This morning the dogs have woken me barking. It is wet and overcast but the area doesn’t stink of burning.
This is a more natural way to live. No one burns nicely chopped up new logs. All the wood is seasoned, bought during the summer when it is cheaper and left out during the hot summer to dry. Most people grow a lot of their own food. Chicken wander around until someone fancies on for diner, rabbits are kept and eaten. Pretty much ever man has a still and produces their own booze out of whatever they have a gut of in the garden but usually plums.
This is an ex communist county. Wages are low food costs high and without the traditional wood heating most would freeze in winter. But the air quality is far above London and I bet even with the wood heating their carbon footprint is a fraction of your average Londoners.

I want to have one installed. We live in the sticks and the cost of our non-mains gas has always been astronomical and is set to become more expensive. I don't want to rely on electricity as a heating source in an area prone to power cuts.

If it boils down to a choice between keeping my family warm in the winter or occasionally creating air pollution, I'm going to go for the former.

The thread is about woodburners in urban areas in in the UK. Where there's lots of traffic, so where particulate pollution mixes with traffic fumes and is harmful to health. If you live elsewhere where those circumstances don't collide, crack on with your wood burner if you want.

I have Parkray ( coal ) central heating which also heats the water. I would never get rid of it. I sometimes burn wood on it too, along with fruit and veg peelings etc.
It's also great for cooking things or boiling water on if there's a power cut. Potatoes wrapped in foil and placed in the ash pan to bake are gorgeous.
No way would i have it changed to anything else.

We've wanted one for a while, and the ban on gas boilers and the shift towards heat-pump boilers means we'll get one of the new types of wood-burning stove put in our living room. In older houses heat-pumps are ok for background heat, but they don't really get your house warm. You need another heat source for that.

(Incidentally, not too worried about justifying it.)

@CovidCorvid

Just been talking about this to dh who works as an engineer in the energy sec/power stations and has done for nearly 40 years. He’s adamant as things currently stand if people stopped using gas central heating (and to a lesser extent log burners) and switched to heat source pumps there is not currently enough capacity in the National grid to run all the heat source pumps which would be needed. So sounds like there’s some way to go yet.

Not just that, but installing a ground source heat pump, for example, is not suitable for all sites and not everyone has the available land for this.

Are the wood pellet stoves safe? Really concerned about Dd, 3’s health now. We have no central heating where we are and use a small electric heater in the bedroom, which costs us a fortune. What other option do we have??

YANBU. I absolutely love how cosy they are (in Scotland here, so winter nights are long, dark and bloody cold). We thought of getting one installed, read up on the air pollution aspects of ECO ones, and couldn't justify it. Whichever way you cut it, it creates a major environmental problem. We installed lots of low golden lights and big thick rugs to snuggle under instead, to get that cosy feeling.

@Barkinginthedistance

Afraid wood pellets are not a fix - combustion of any wood releases particulates.

I'd suggest looking here for well trained people who can advise on all sorts of options

www.heatgeek.com/find-a-heat-geek/

My parents have two wood burners (one in living room, one in dining room) in their 300 year old cottage. They don’t have any other heating apart from a small electric heater in the bedrooms. Their house is listed and doesn’t have cavity walls and there is no gas in their village (they’re not even they rural to be honest, just the Sussex countryside).
I presume that there would always be an exemption for houses like that as you couldn’t fit any other type of heater anyway.

@Barkinginthedistance

Are the wood pellet stoves safe? Really concerned about Dd, 3’s health now. We have no central heating where we are and use a small electric heater in the bedroom, which costs us a fortune. What other option do we have??

Don't worry too much. Yes, there is a risk, but millions of people in the UK (more around the world) have grown up with this sort of heating and the vast, vast majority have no ill side effects.

I’m interested in the health damage issues too - I grew up in that house heated solely by wood burners. I don’t have any health issues at all (mid 40s now) and didn’t as a child either and neither do my parents who have lived in their house for nearly 40 years.

Would the health issues have made themselves known by now? Genuine question.

@MojoMoon
Thanks for bringing my attention to this. I won’t be using mine any more.