Wood smoke making kids ill

[Sallybun]

I live in a smoke free zone in a popular tourist city. Over the past year the popularity of wood burning stoves has gone insane. So much so that our entire house is now filled with acrid wood smoke every evening. My throat stings it’s so intense and both my children have had constant coughs.

Not so much an AIBU but what can be done about it? The council don’t regulate it and neither do my neighbours - otherwise they wouldn’t have got wood burners in the first place! They burn from 4pm through to 10pm ish and we can’t seal up our windows as we need some air to breathe! Feeling desperate.

We don't have gas and can't get oil where we live so we are very glad of our stove what with the price of electricity and the uselessness of storage heaters.

We don't use wood on it though we use smokeless coal. Our feckless next door neighbours used to leave their wood outside to get wood and then try to burn that, they would have smoke billowing out of the chimney and blowing across to us. We just shut our windows and it was fine.

If you close all your windows from 4pm to 10pm OP you shouldn't be able to smell it. Who wants their windows open at that time in this weather anyway? It must cost you a fortune to heat your house and have the windows open all the time. Just air the house earlier in the day.

If you can smell neighbour’s smoke in the attached rooms something is very wrong. I hope you have got carbon monoxide detectors.

Me neither. I live in a very old house that relies on these for heat and so have them burning regularly and do not experience this or have coughs.

No, I don’t. We used to have an open fire many years ago which didn’t make the rooms smell like this. But DH can’t smell it so I don’t know!

Wood burners are really bad for air quality and climate change. So yep it is selfish to be enjoying a cosy fire while impacting the lungs of the children in your neighborhood.
Government and council know this too - they just don't want to anger middle class voters. Complain to your council and MP. At least then they will start to see they are annoying other voters!

I think a lot of people are oblivious and genuinely don’t realise the harm they can cause.

Sadly there are a number of owners on here who have the I’m alright Jack attitude and can’t see how other people can be affected (or the possible unseen harm they could be doing to themselves). All you need is a poor installation, no maintenance and burning things you shouldn’t for people to be affected. Staring up the burner can also impact those nearby. We can occasionally smell smoke in our property from a wood burner across the road. At times they burn things they shouldn’t be burning and if the wind is in the wrong direction, it can be smelt in the rooms at the front of our property. The only other wood burner in our street is no longer used as they have a little one and are not prepared to take the health risks of using a wood burner when there is a child in the household.

Even if they are not smelt indoors by the majority of people, you can smell them when you are outside and see some belching out.

Wood burners give off all sorts of pollutants, some you can smell and some you can’t. Just because you can’t smell the smoke, doesn’t mean it is fine and dandy.

It’s appalling how we fell for the whole woodburner fashion. I’m relieved that we couldn’t get one due to the design of our house. It had definitely been on my wish list.

My sons used to get sick at my parents’ old house from the residue of years of fires.

Just like the toxins from smoking cigarettes, the stuff lingers long after the fire is out.

If you are using a woodburner, even responsibly, chances are some of your neighbours are struggling. Rural property is different, less population dense and fewer alternatives.

Never understood people who burn wet wood, it clogs the flue and gives off v little heat.

I live in the sticks, got a woodburner, as no gas and oil is very expensive, its an eco design, with high grade flue, correctly installed but on still days, with low air pressure, despite drawing extremely well & burning 20% or less logs, it gives of smoke that lingers, v glad i don't have nr neighbours!

In towns/villages, these things should be banned.

Seems to be conflation of issues here. Woodburners aren't inherently problematic if you know how to manage the fire. If you light it well and use the right materials then you can get a good low heat off one log for hours and hours.

The people you are describing are clearly using the wrong materials and then probably having to get it roasting hot running through 6 logs an hour or something which then creates all the smoke.

A few examples also seem like they've not had their chimney lined, or are getting the air exchange all wrong.

Yes, we have this with our neighbours. Totally unnecessary for them as we live in an estate of modern, well insulated homes. In the ten years I've lived here we've had a ten minute power cut - so hardly the life preserver that would be needed in the sticks. I have a house full of air purifiers as I have severe asthma that is aggregated by the smoke/ particulates that leaches into the house.

We’re in bed, having a cuppa before getting up, with the window open to let in the fresh air, I’m asthmatic so it really helps to get some fresh air flow. Nose has started streaming, eyes are stinging and throat is scratchy, just realised the next door neighbour has lit his fire. So now I’ll have to shut the window.

Lovely neighbour and I’d never complain to him but this is the impact of it. I suppose those who don’t want to see, won’t, regardless of all the evidence - a bit like flat earthers or climate change deniers

Have you reported it? It can’t be challenged unless people know about it.

I think people who deny it have wood burning stoves and are not irritated by it at the lower levels that others are. Like those same people who spray aerosols in enclosed spaces. I suppose it's more convenient to imagine that people are subject to neighbours with poor techniques/ stoves or that people are being dramatic, than to accept that this is a problem and you'll continue with it anyway.

Nope, you re burning a carbon dense product, with some moisture, at a low - relative - heat, incomplete combustion is guaranteed.

Even manufacturers say efficiency is around 80% for the v best designs.

Yes i agree, many people use WB's incorrectly and of course many are still using very old 'burners, badly maintained.

We went from an old Villager to a modern ecodesign stove the efficiency is off the scale, halved wood consumption for more heat but it still gives some smoke under certain atmospheric conditions

yanbu
they stink if people don't burn properly dried wood or low quality fuel.

and even if they do, the micro particles are seriously bad for you.

and they are not even cheap to run, unless you have your own wood source.

We live in a rural village that’s off-grid. Consequently many of us have wood burners. We must be a responsible lot as there’s never acrid smoke in the air or a detectable smell.

We only buy seasoned wood and generally store our wood for 2 years before we use it. We’re lucky to have a large wood store and my husband has a strict system.

We replaced our 25 year old wood burner with a new one. It’s so efficient and has a really low smoke particle level.

That makes no sense for a properly working burner. Even our own doesn't do that in our house! Are you adjoined to another house? Maybe they haven't swept and there is an issue with a joint chimney?

Wood burning smoke and coal fires play havoc with my lungs in the winter. Won’t go near a particular family member’s house this year if the wood burner has been on as I ended up with bronchitis and weeks off work previously.

They don’t understand what all the fuss is about but one just looks grey at this time of year and the other has a permanent cough. The wood burner doesn’t get serviced.

Holding my breath from the car to the front door when I get home in the evenings now. Evening walks and runs and anything else outdoorsy are out of the question at the moment.

This absolutely does happen and I feel for the OP. We had a wood burner in our old house and had to stop using it because it triggered my asthma so badly.

We have neighbours who like to light theirs throughout the winter. Fortunately, they're not close enough to affect us too much unless the wind is blowing a certain way. But if it is, the smoke gets everywhere. Their closer neighbours say it gets in their house all the time but the wood burning neighbours don't care.

You can smell it all down the street and I'm pretty sure they're not burning seasoned wood.

I think it should be regulated more. Air pollution is a big issue and people shouldn't be allowed to regularly pollute their environment like this.

This is dreadful. I’m so sorry. It’s outrageous that the government are not clamping down. They should at least be banned in new builds. I also think they should not be retroactively fitted. If somewhere has one, it can be replaced but no new installations! It’s dreadful for the environment, not to mention the people living in the same house as one!

All you can do is raise awareness and join campaigns for now. Our children will look back on this like we look back on our grandfathers smoking pipes.

Yes.

Like I expect others to get their children vaccinated and not defecate in the streets.

They might not even know this.

To ask the dreaded question of all the 'annoying neighbour' threads... Have you spoken to them?

What? Someone is chopping down oaks with a chainsaw?? You have to report him!

Weird comment. Of course she should expect her neighbours to burn properly season hardwood and not any old bits of unseasoned wood, full of toxic chemicals 🙄

We’ve stopped using our woodburner, begrudgingly, as it looks beautiful, is so cosy and warms the whole house, but we’ve accepted it’s a health hazard akin to smoking 🤷🏻‍♀️ hopefully, others will cotton on soon. I think we’re going to go electric log effect as some are v convincing, not the same as logs though of course but there has to be a compromise and I won’t risk harming my little boy’s lungs.