Or does every small town stink of smoke?

[Flamingnuisance]

I drive for a living and I have noticed that as I enter smallish towns and villages the smell of wood smoke hits me and when I exit the vehicle I then stink of bonfire. It’s not bonfire it’s wood burners in peoples homes. When did people think it was a good idea to go back to the old days of smog and smoke? What’s it doing to our health and our children? It’s getting worse now with the energy crisis but these things are thousands to install and when do you even recoup the money? I just don’t get it. And yes I think it’s mighty selfish to use one. And these people act like they give a shit about the environment.

Well, mine was already installed when I moved in so it didn't cost me thousands.
Without it we would be freezing. Our central heating barely warms our rooms if the outside temp is close the freezing, even if we could afford to have the heating on all day we still wouldn't get above 17 inside but our log burner will heat our living room quickly and it stays warm.

So much cheaper than trying to use our central heating to warm the house.

I also love the smell when walking around our village.

I live in a small town and it doesn't smell like smoke.

It sometimes smells like manure because we're surrounded by fields.

It is certainly more noticable With the current high air pressure we are experiencing all pollution whether it's wood smoke, vehicle fumes or factory fumes will be sitting in the air at ground level and not dispersing. It's unusual to have a such a long spell of high pressure in the UK. Normally we have wave after wave of mild wet low pressure systems bowling in off the Atlantic which disperse all the smoke.

Yep, as PP says, there is no mains gas here. This will be the same for an awful lot of rural villages and hamlets. Wood burners or multifuel burners are the norm - it's not new.

I live in an old draughty house (we've done our best, but we still have draughts) in a large village. We had the gas heating off most of yesterday, and just lit the living room fire in the afternoon.

It's a lot cheaper to run a woodburner.

Another attempt at a wood burner hating thread. 🙄

We have one. We burn dry wood. It’s either that or we freeze.

Come bleating to me when you’ve given up any form of travel other than your bicycle.

We are also not on mains gas and we don’t have electric heaters.

We would freeze without the wood burner.

our wood burner also heats our water so we get a bonus bath!

Yes! It's everywhere I go on my evening walks round our small town. Seems like every other house.

I love the smell.

It does smell strongly of smoke here in my small town. I wouldn’t have minded it most years but in June this year there was a random arson attack on the house next door that spread to our house. Thank goodness, the fire was noticed and put out before the houses proper caught fire but gosh it was close. Still thousands of pounds of damage to fences, shed, garage, guttering and roof line. The fire got very near to next door’s gas pipe. We thought the smoke was from a barbecue at first and didn’t investigate til things had got really serious. Now we hate the smell of smoke and have to find the source before we relax so all the sodding wood burners are really triggering me. I know that’s no one’s fault etc. The same goes for fire pits in the summer. Now they are really unnecessary to my mind. I can’t understand people starting any kind of fire voluntarily now I’ve seen first hand what fire can do.

So… you were driving a car through other people’s villages and complaining about pollution? Physician, heal thy self!

This. We have 2 woodburners. We have no mains gas. It's minus something impressive outside and trying to snow. They will both be lit all day. We are burning seasoned wood and a lot of old decking from my sons garden that has been drying in the shed for18 months. If it's flammable we will burn it.

Have you ever been to Port Talbot?

😁😁🔥

I haven't noticed such a strong smell in towns and villages near me! But I do occasionally get a nice whiff of a log fire as I walk past one or two houses. I love it!

Im about to light our own wood burner now as it's freezing here today and the fire gets the house warmed up quite fast. It also looks lovely and cosy on a Sunday morning and I do love the smell :)

The air stinks of bonfire every time the weather is cold. I get how some people find it nostalgic but by the evening it smells in my house and the air catches the back of my throat. We moved here 20 years ago partly because of the fresh air (rural and coastal). This smelly smoky thing started early 2020 when several neighbours put in log burners. The pollution aspect of this appalls me. I get needing wood fired heating when you live remotely but everyone here has access to gas and electricity, it's a housing estate making a large village.

Much prefer the smell of burning wood than that of car fumes, fast food shops and weed, which is what most cities smell like.

How is the vehicle you drive for a living through small towns and villages powered?

Yes, burning wood. It's exacerbated by the cost of living crisis. If there were more help getting houses properly insulated, more subsidy for solar panels and if previous governments had invested in other, cleaner energy sources over the last decade/ two or three decades, then people wouldn't find it so hard to keep warm indoors.

This hasn't happened and so now, everyone is burning wood.

The thing that really worries me....

Yesterday I saw a man sawing branches off a fallen tree on the verge. With a hand saw. How desperate would you have to be? I felt so sorry for him. That tree came down in October, has sat through the wettest November I can remember.

That is the problem. People burning green wood probably under an unswept chimney.

People who rely on wood as fuel know to cut and stack two years in advance. Have chimneys swept annually. Have burners checked, fire backs replaced when necessary. Have carbon monoxide alarms. People are taking too many risks in desperation.

In our town there is the strong smell of diesel and petrol fumes in the winter with people warning up their cars before they drive away or stuck in traffic jams

OK, so our cars are both fully electric (as is DH's motorbike) and we have mains gas in the village. Our neighbours burn bituminous coal regularly (delivered by truck every couple of months). We find that we can't dry washing outside during the autumn and winter and the fumes come into our house and trigger DH's asthma. The ban on wet wood and coal that is not smokeless can't come soon enough. Half the problem in the current financial climate is the idea that it's OK to burn any kind of scrap wood to save money. What price our children's health?

And yes, when we lived in France we used a log burner. The wood had been cut and then seasoned for a minimum of 2 years. People in the UK don't seem to know how or why to season wood before chucking it into the wood burner.

I've noticed this OP but I was brought up in a village in the 80s and certainly don't remember the smell then. I remember seeing a lot of houses with smoke coming out of their chimneys though and now we are seeing it again. I'm not entirely convinced the burning smell is coming from chimneys now. The smell seems more bonfire like?

We were smoked out of our last house by the neighbour installing a wood burner in their bungalow. We were right in the fume plume, so got pretty ill. They couldn't work out why were unhappy as they couldn't smell it.

So I know a fair bit about the stats for the ill health results of this. For all the "it's natural" people, there was a reason for the clean air legislation last century. When even smoking fags was allowed...

I can also smell it on clothing & the dog, so I'll agree some people are more sensitive but we are your canaries, folks.

Interestingly, we moved to an area with less pollution (again) but now pretty much every house has one & it stinks.

Like every van owners says they don't dump their shit, everyone with a woodburner says they burn dry wood. Which is bollocks as you can smell fence painted wood & wet shit, not to mention coal, as you wander around the town.

People really don't always burn at the correct temperature & bank their fires, which is terrible for fumes, too.

However, like legislation for the obesity crisis, it's difficult as for every recreational fire, there's one for the reasons other people on this thread have shared like living rurally or sheer cost of living.

So it's really difficult but next time you're out for a walk, look upwards & look for the chimneys with little mesh hats, they are getting ever so much more common.

🤣

No OP, I haven’t noticed this. I live in a small town and don’t have a wood burner. None of my friends do either. My dad does, he lives in a 250 year old cottage and it’s hard to heat. He rarely uses it though, too much faff.