Another neigbour getting a wood burner

[JoSFry]

Come on …. When will people wake up to the pollution these things cause!

Are the people with wood burners going out into the local forest with an axe and collecting their own firewood, or just buying in pre-packaged firewood? If the latter, doesn't that kind of defeat the object?

Mu neighbours all have wood burners too, or multifuel burners, or coal fires.

Cars also cause air pollution which has a significant impact on public health. Do you also tell people that they shouldn’t drive?

I have a wood burner. It’s not something that I would have installed, but it was already here when I bought the house. However, given the global state of affairs, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have a backup heat source.

Well after the headlines in the paper today that the government are issuing advice that we need 3 days supply of food and water and wind up radios due to possible cyber attacks and power cuts I’m absolutely delighted I have two woodburners, I will be able to cook food and heat my home, very glad we can be self sufficient if the need arises.

To be honest, yes, I judge people who drive when (with a little bit of forward planning) they could very easily live without a car.

If it’s just about fire risk there are many things that when poorly maintained also cause fires. Like tumble dryers.

We replaced the geriatric one in our house with a new, efficient one when we moved it. I LOVE it. We live in the arse end of nowhere, no neighbours and have our own wood. With the predicted power cuts and the price of heating oil I wouldn’t be without it.

Many of us live more rural OP. Many of us have them for that reason as we are on oil. You have a very suburban mindset.

We have two trees in our garden and pruning them gives us enough wood for the winter. It has to sit outside for 2-3 years to season but then is perfect.

We use ours to warm one room during the day while we work from home and have it burning low and slow.

we have a 350 year old cottage in the middle of nowhere. I adore mine. We burn properly seasoned logs and it is swept every September before the winter. We’ve just replaced the fire bricks and baffle. Absolutely nothing will make me think not having it is better - it might cause pollution but we are a tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere and I really think maybe we need to start looking at the massive cities first!

Mine’s for apocalypse purposes. Not for cosy.

I agree. OP has said she is considering moving somewhere more remote to avoid the burners and ironically may well end up with one herself😂

Oh!! Our chimney is shared with a neighbour who also has a wood burner!

And probably no mains gas. 20 years ago we moved to a small village which was lovely but no gas, just oil heating and an open fire. Also the inconvenience of having a 5 mile drive if you've forgotten to get bread or milk or whatever. We moved back to the city for family reasons but the accessibility of local shops can't be understated especially when getting older. However, maybe the remoteness will suit the OP.

We use ours because we generally are in one room in the evenings and it’s too expensive to put the GCH on.

I’d love a wood burner .

You'd hate me - we have 6 wood burners in our house - yes 6 - old country house - each bedroom has them but we have never used them. One in the lounge and one in the kitchen. TBH they are a necessity here in winter as there is no mains gas and oil is too expensive so we just heat the rooms we are in.

DH cuts up fallen trees and branches and we use those.

I've got 2.5 acres of land, most of it woodland. I will never run out of firewood. We cut fallen logs with the chainsaw then use a log-splitter to split them, then stack and season for a year before using. No ax required.

We have one and an open fire.

it is immensely useful when you live in an area prone to power cuts and cold weather. In recent years, we have many spent days at a time without power and no other way to heat the house (we aren’t able to have mains gas). Many homes in this region have them for precisely this reason. Heat source pumps aren’t a magic bullet for all homes (from experience).

where utilities are unreliable, other sources of heating your home are going to be relied upon.

And, the seasoned wood is considerably cheaper than oil and bottles gas at the minute, you can hardly blame people for trying to hear their homes in a way they can afford.

If you are buying logs in those plastic bags from Tescos then it is way more expensive than just putting on your central heating. It's effectively being done for aesthetic reasons. In which case it's probably one evening a week with very dry wood than has minimal impact.

Whereas if you are genuinely using it to heat your home on a daily basis then you pretty much need your own supply of wood, which to be fair many people do.

Also I know of landowners that will happily let chop up fallen trees and take away the wood as it saves them dealing with the problem.

Lastly yes people do use axes to split logs, but chopping logs is done with a chainsaw.

In Maine more people than ever are going to wood banks so that they can stay warm this winter. We have wood banks in many towns, offering free or cheap seasoned wood to people who need it.

We had 5 oaks/maples taken down professionally recently on our land, and most of the wood went to wood banks. It'll be chopped, split and stacked by volunteers for people to take next winter. We just kept enough for us to burn next winter.

That's a really great idea. People get free or cheap logs for heating and the landowners get someone to take away deal with fallen trees.

Better that than just being stacked and left to rot.

We get ours from local tree surgeons - usually comes part seasoned and we store it for a year before we use it. It comes from max 5-10 miles away.