Wood burning stoves are annoying and OVERRATED and now I've read they cause THREE TIMES more air pollution than road traffic!

[flashbac]

I have one (came with the house) and it's such a high maintenance beast. Wood isn't cheap either. It makes a mess too. So overrated and harmful to the environment.

There's also a link with strokes, Parkinson's and dementia.

I bloody love ours, all the haters can fuck off. Especially if they drive ICE cars.

We have air source heating and 2 fully electric cars, live rurally. If the electricity goes off (as jt does regularly) we are buggered.

We have properly seasoned hardwood and a modern woodburner, that importantly we use properly (so many people use shit wood and don’t light it properly). I am very content that the level of pollutants it generates is marginal. We have a fully smart heating system with built in air quality monitoring. It’s always in the green with the woodburner going.

Oh man, not this again. It's weird when people keep coming on MN to promote their soap box issues. I wonder if they set alerts in their diaries and spend time devising the new 'angle' they have found to promote their pet cause. They must keep a whole list of little 'influencer' website communities to keep visiting.

I 💖 my woodburner.

Wood burning stoves are only carbon neutral if you ignore the cost of harvesting the wood and transporting it

Yeah... that would be the wood that we scavenged after trees were cut down by council & the wood left to rot in situ, keeping local footpaths clear. DH & DS sawed it down in place ("warms you 3x" - or is it 4x?, coz we sawed it some more at home), and transported home via bicycles. And the pallets we sometimes collect from neighbours (they would take to tip otherwise in their car, retrieved by us with a wheelbarrow).

@lljkk it’s because a new study just came out and was in the news today:
Wood burners cause nearly half of urban air pollution cancer risk – study
www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/17/wood-burners-urban-air-pollution-cancer-risk-study

For those collecting fuel from the woods - wood left to rot in situ is an important habitat and crucial for biodiversity.

yes wouldn't be without mine - again fairly rural but a clump of around 80 houses no shop etc. It heats cooks and boils a kettle. We use our own seasoned wood if we can and kiln dried if not. You can get slow burn overnight logs although we don't tend to have on over night unless we are withut heating then we go to bed around idnight and load her up set the vents low and she is still warm in the am at 8 but has gone out

[quote TuftyMarmoset]@lljkk it’s because a new study just came out and was in the news today:
Wood burners cause nearly half of urban air pollution cancer risk – study
www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/17/wood-burners-urban-air-pollution-cancer-risk-study[/quote]
Yep. The findings are shocking.

yup, important habitat right up there with the barbed wire fences on each side of path. Super complementary with the quarry the owner of the woods wants to create (on site of adjacent woods) and the pheasant shooting each year. And the semi-permeable layer and grit/gravel/sand that was put down to make the footpath less muddy. Sure someone was thinking of biodiversity when they left the fallen tree, not the fact tree was too awkward to remove.

We would be frozen without it.... the cost of domestic heating oil means that the central heating can hardly be put on.
We have never paid a penny for wood, we forage for fallen trees and process the logs ourselves.
The woodburner is warm and cheap heating for us.

When I was househunting I rejected anywhere with a log burner. I don't want an actual fire in my home, they are expensive to run and I only put the heating on when it's really cold.

@montysma1 you are paying with your health

@VestaTilley

YANBU. They’ll be banned before long - a major health hazard to you too, unless you have a ginormous sitting room.

They won’t be banned. Because there are too many thousands of rural properties with no other source of heating. Until real government funding is available to change this then no ban will happen.

We have a professional pm2.5 and pm10 monitor I have from work. Lighting a candle produces a higher pm2.5 reading than the wood burner 10 min after lighting!

We are very rural and whilst we have oil when there is a power it oil doesn’t work without the electric so the wood burner is a lifesaver. It also seems to dry our house out and we don’t get any damp over winter.

@FangsForTheMemory

When I was househunting I rejected anywhere with a log burner. I don't want an actual fire in my home, they are expensive to run and I only put the heating on when it's really cold.

You know you can have them very easily removed? A decent roofer can then take out the flue and cap the chimney. You can then put in lovely lights or decor in the space left. Plus the burners usually have really good resale value.

I will most likely cling to life like humans for millenia before me.
And I wont be cold.

Not sure that’s a great comparison, humans didn’t live very long in past millennia

Between 28,000 and 36,000 deaths a year in the U.K. can be attributed to air pollution, to which wood burning is a strong contributor.

@flashbac

And once I've finally got it going can I pop out for a quick walk? No Can I get cosy in a blanket and not have to get up every time it needs another log? No

Why can't you go out?

Just shut the air vents to kill the fire. That's what they are there for.

@Lockheart

Perhaps, but a lifesaver when the power is out for 5 days and there's snow on the ground as per the Storm Arwen chaos only last month.

When I buy my own property I would not be without a source of heat which does not rely on the national grid and gas pipelines.

This. Me too!

@kinko I have to keep feeding it hence not going out. I don't want it to go out while I'm out, especially not after I've spent all that energy getting it going!

We have a multifuel stove which burns anthracite and smokeless ovoids.

As for indoor air pollution, all those aerosol air fresheners, plug ins, scented candles and reed diffusers are full of respiratory irritants and carcinogens.

YANBU OP. People can try to justify it all they like but they’re the most selfish, thoughtless vanity item you can possibly buy.

We have a lot of kiln dried wood waste, can't wait to get a log burner.

As for indoor air pollution, all those aerosol air fresheners, plug ins, scented candles and reed diffusers are full of respiratory irritants and carcinogens.

Yes, they are. Not just them, but cooking with gas causes indoor air pollution, painting your home, new furniture. They all contribute to indoor pollution but, if these studies are reliable, then many people who have log burning stoves will experience three times the level of indoor pollution as those other homes.

They are only really good in certain circumstances e.g. if you live in an area without mains gas as they can be cheaper than running storage heaters. Or if you have access to a load of free/very cheap wood.

A few villages nearby that do no have mains gas stink all autumn/winter of smoke from the woodburners. You can't hang out your washing from about mid September or it'll stink.

They are very polluting but mainstream media/government never bring it up because there is no easy solutions for communities without mains gas. And the people who just love having one, will continue to use anyway.

Well we are going to invest in one after going without power and heating for 4 days a few weeks ago. We are rural and prone to power cuts.

YABU for all the caps