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

Our open fire is so cosy now the nights are drawing in…I love it and so does the rest of the family.

As others on MN have told me in my time -“you do you and I’ll do me”

The same thing must apply to fire pits as wood burners?

@BungleandGeorge

If you buy proper smokeless fuel it’s not that cheap to run a wood burner is it? I don’t have one but it’s never appeared to be particularly cheap unless you forage fuel for it (and in many cases that ends up with some burning of unsuitable fuel!).

No, it's not cheap. More expensive than central heating, less efficient and obviously not as spread through the house so not all your rooms will be heated by it.

Families who are struggling in my town are unlikely to have a woodburner or the money to buy wood. They are, however, disproportionately impacted by air pollution.

Our house came with a woodburner installed - as I'm sure do many others. You also don't need to pay for wood - around here you can pick it up for free from local farms and businesses, or just from people on social media who offer it either for free or for very cheap.

DH, for example, got a lot of our wood last winter for free from work and chopped it all himself. No cost involved.

Some people have them in our village and you can definitely smell when they’re in use. The smoke from the ones in bungalows seems to hang round at ‘person’ level, whereas smoke from chimneys seems to get blown away more. Perhaps it’s the height of the chimney, as there was one installed near me and the chimney of it is not at roof height, as I assumed it should be.

We had one neighbour who burnt a coal fire every day of the year. I'd be sitting there in his smoke plume, boiling with the windows shut when it was 25c outside. Apparently, he liked a fire!

Moved specifically to an estate with no chimneys visible & the neighbours built one and proceeded to smoke us out.

It's getting bad here now, think one neighbour is banking his fire overnight.

It's really bad. The equivalent of smoking loads of ciggies.

@icedcoffees

Families who are struggling in my town are unlikely to have a woodburner or the money to buy wood. They are, however, disproportionately impacted by air pollution.

Our house came with a woodburner installed - as I'm sure do many others. You also don't need to pay for wood - around here you can pick it up for free from local farms and businesses, or just from people on social media who offer it either for free or for very cheap.

DH, for example, got a lot of our wood last winter for free from work and chopped it all himself. No cost involved.

People burning unsuitable wood, with too wet, not sufficiently seasoned or treated wood adds massively to the pollution.

There's a reason they're giving it away, proper disposal is regulated & costs money.

You can always tell if someone is burning shit wood.

There are rules about the chimneys but they are not always followed @GoodnightGrandma. A relative recently bought a house with a woodburner that had been installed by the previous owner as a DIY job. Searches prior to buying the house revealed a complaint from the neighbours that the smoke was going into their windows because it turned out the chimney was the wrong height. My relative is just going to rip the woodburner out because they are a reasonable person and also have young DC.

I dont know how i feel about this as so many people bbq, fire pit and have bonfires round here and i dont know how different that is to using smokeless fuel in a new eco burner.

Surely if you're going to ban wood burners, then any open fire needs to be banned. I would have thought there are more emissions from an open fire than a wood burner.
We have a wood burner, which we installed last year. We chose the most efficient eco model we could afford. Oh, and we aren't rich and didn't install it for it's looks. There are no live, love, home signs here either.
It really helps not only keep our house warm, but it helps my dd who has a chronic pain condition and has bad circulation in her feet (they are like ice all the time) and this is the only thing that has actually made her feet warm. So for her health, we will be keeping ours.

I do wonder if hgvs having such a low level for particle emissions is because they are so many many more of those than there are wood burners in the country?

BBQ, bonfires etc are also bad in terms of releasing particulate but they don't tend to be in quite as regular use (at least not bonfires). I have an allotment and the council asked us not to have bonfires during the pandemic because the pollution was harming people who were ill, and worsening people's chronic conditions.

i agree , if you have central heating i cant see the need for them , in my old private rent house we had the original victorian fire , but i never was tempted to use it .

my ex husband who lives on a canal boat uses one , but then thats a bit different ,as its the only way to heat the boat and keep it warm , but it does give off a wee bit of a smokey smell that probably would give me a headache if i breathed it in for too long ,

I agree , if you have central heating i cant see the need for them

I live in a 4 bedroomed house, why would I need to heat the whole house when I can hear one room?

What happens when the central heating fails?

Pellets made from waste wood are pretty green. Several towns use them for collective heating. You can get home pellet burners too.

I don’t think there’s any way of getting away from the fact that burning things releases toxins and carcinogens. There’s 2 groups though, those who want a wood burner but have other options and those who don’t have other options. The availability of gas is probably a moot point as gas boilers are being phased out too. I’d be very happy to switch to an eco friendly option but the cost is unaffordable. The government don’t want to subsidise people to switch over, thus why they’re not really tackling the problem of chimney smoke.

@nestoftables

I think there is a market for getting wood burning stoves converted somehow to electric. There must be a way to do this with some sort of heating element, without people having to get rid of nice stoves (which would be an environmental issue itself due to all the waste).

There often seems to be a snide tone towards posters who say they live in a rural area, some of us really do with all the pros and cons it brings. We have mains fresh water and electricity, but private drainage and oil for heating., there's no gas, but then gas boilers are supposed to be phased out. Where we live there is no public transport route, no pavements and no street lighting. We've struggled to get a delivery of oil during the fuel crisis, you can't buy and store more than the tank allows and if they can't deliver, you're utterly without. Some areas really do have a need for alternative sources of heat.

Our multi fuel flat topped stove is a godsend during frequent power cuts, or when the oil's run out, or boiler broken down, as it's more efficient than an open fire and we can heat water or soup or do scrambled eggs on top of it to get by. Converting to electricity would make it useless.

We use wood on a rotation, it's two years seasoned in a barn when we receive it and we keep it another year under cover, this supplements the main fuel source which is Eco briquettes. These are mechanically pressed offcuts and sawdust from the local sawmill.

Our nearest air quality reading is at Level 1 and we have no light pollution here either. We do lots of things to try and live responsibly as we can.

I do agree they should be used as responsibly as possible and that in towns and homes where the main source of heating is reliable, they're mostly a decorative object.

I hope the height of the chimney does make a difference, because I am in a small town but at the top of a hill and live in a tall Georgian house with insanely tall chimneys, so if the particulates blow away it might be fine but not if they fall down.
The wood burner makes a huge difference to the comfort of our (very cold, listed) house in the winter and I love open fires but I am not particularly comfortable about harming other people!

I once stayed at a big, crowded campsite with fire pits at every pitch and it was striking how once hundreds of campers had their fires going you could see the pall of smoke that hung over the valley.

I don’t think there’s any way of getting away from the fact that burning things releases toxins and carcinogens.

This includes candles in the home especially scented ones.

It worries me to hear lots of people on MN saying gas boilers are being phased out. Here in NI there has been a massive push to install gas infrastructure all over the place. People are spending lots of money to convert from oil to gas. What is the reason gas is being phased out?

You're right OP, it's not justifiable. In towns/cities, with centrally heated houses, it's just selfish. An 8 year old died in London from an asthma attack a few years ago. After an inquest, the coroner has rules air pollution as the cause of death. If that, and all the other direct and indirect deaths (because it won't be the first or last, just the first officially recorded) aren't enough to stop people burning wood in their homes just because they like it, I don't know what will, we're a morally bankrupt. They should really be banned, I've no idea why they haven't been. If they were banned in towns and cities it would make sod all difference to people's lives because noone actually needs one.

@longtompot

Surely if you're going to ban wood burners, then any open fire needs to be banned. I would have thought there are more emissions from an open fire than a wood burner. We have a wood burner, which we installed last year. We chose the most efficient eco model we could afford. Oh, and we aren't rich and didn't install it for it's looks. There are no live, love, home signs here either. It really helps not only keep our house warm, but it helps my dd who has a chronic pain condition and has bad circulation in her feet (they are like ice all the time) and this is the only thing that has actually made her feet warm. So for her health, we will be keeping ours.

I do wonder if hgvs having such a low level for particle emissions is because they are so many many more of those than there are wood burners in the country?

Open fires have long been banned in London and I think in some other cities too (feel like maybe Brum?)

What is the reason gas is being phased out?

Emissions. Household heating is a huge source of CO2 emissions.

There are still debates on what the long term solution will be but in the medium term heat pumps seem to be the preferred option.

We use a wood burner as our only alternative would be electricity and we simply couldn’t afford it.
We’ve just bought new more economical radiators for the bedrooms.

The dust from our wood burner is dreadful and I do worry about our health but it’s that or freeze.

Lots of interesting debate here. Noting down re fuels etc.

As a PP said, just wearing thermals and multiple jumpers and gloves and dressing gowns over the top instead of heating even for a few days is not a good option - I cough and wheeze and have aching joints most of each winter due to lack of money for heating/from the cold. With the current worry about fuel pries and about the actual gas and electric supply, I would relish some kind of independent, back-up, cheap fuel burning option.

My parents installed a woodburner as - like @bigbluebus and other rural posters eg @meadowbleu- the power lines are overhead in their village, there is no gas, only oil, and the power goes out enough for them to need an alternative for heat and hot water. They buy wood responsibly (supporting a local business and having some rare human interaction to boot). The rest of the time, their house is well-insulated (loft, good windows, thick blinds and curtains, etc) and warm from the oil/radiators.

I would be looking into any 'good' options if I am ever lucky enough to buy a house with a fireplace etc... Particularly if I’m buying somewhere rural.

However I have a few neighbours here in this built up area who I suspect not only pick up random/wet wood from the small nearby park, which smokes horribly over the whole street, but possibly cut it OFF trees. I've never seen them do it, but I suspect (it’s on the list of issues, along with loud music and a maniac dog which poos).

Can you ban house fires if you can’t be sure that the centralised supply will never fail? or if you are rich enough to afford gas at whatever price, or heat pumps, but others are not? or if you live in Westminster but others are in far more rural places?

Firepits really are trendy these days too... Should we be encouraging one and talking about banning another?