Woodburner owners

[Brixtonvssouthcroydon]

Are you happy with it?
Our new place has a biggish living room and not sure radiators will be enough to keep it warm in very cold days
We are considering a wood burner (using it with smokeless fuel) but wondering if it is actually quite fastidious (time to light it up, feeding it, ordering and storing fuel etc) and in practise it won't be used very much.

@Handyweatherstation especially when off mains gas!

I am just lighting my woodburner now.

I lit ours at 4.30 😀

Quite, we have no mains gas!

Really interesting context - will defo be getting an air quality monitor now, as quite intrigued.

There is a sliding scale of risk associated with many of our choices (cooking with gas, for example, also has significant air quality and health risks, eating red meat is bad for your health and the environment) and sometimes (often?) we are a bit hypocritical about which risks are acceptable and which are not.

I think there is a major difference between newer stoves and those even a decade or so older. I find the potential increase in risk can be mitigated, and is quite acceptable when balanced against the positives when trying to keep my big old house comfortable.

I understand why you'd use one if that's the only way to keep a house warm.

This thread has made me think! We had a wood burner & an open fire in our last house and loved them. We’ve just removed a huge, old stove from our new house and decided against replacing it with a new one as honestly they are a bit of a pain. I’m lucky that my husband likes sorting the fires so they were his job, but I rarely lit it if home on my own.

We are planning on putting an open fire in our front eventually, but will probably leave the existing gas one in our back as it’s nice looking and we will rarely light it. I’m a bit worried legislation will change & render wood burners obsolete!

I love mine (5kw). I have a Victorian house with a 20x15 sitting room which can be costly to heat.

Last year I had to replace the roof, & I broke all of the old roof battening into small pieces. The waste wood fed the wood burner for the whole winter and saved us £1,000 at last winter's gas prices. Saved the cost of a skip too. It's paid for itself.

Last spring we had a tree die, and the tree surgeon cut the trunk into 9" rounds. I split it all into pieces, & dried it. It'll be ready to burn soon and will cut this year's bill.

The wood burner heats the sitting room, and the two bedrooms above. It works during power cuts, and my wood is home grown so no fuel miles. It takes 5 minutes a day care. We live rurally so the neighbours don't notice any smoke.

Thanks all for your replies.
I am aware of the pm25 issue but I thought that that was the point of smokeless fuel? It would not generate such particules or did I misunderstand?

There was one in the house we bought and it looked nice but we had it removed because we have a child and someone with a lung condition in the house and it's just not worth the risk to them.

Is there another way of improving your heating? Better insulation? We installed a heat pump and under floor heating instead of ancient combi, radiators and wood burner and it's amazing!

I like ours. It means we can leave the radiators off and have one room hot. But our house is old and large and would be unaffordable to heat with central heating except for a short amount of time each day

its about 80 percent less, but no not nothing. Defra approved stoves reduce further, the issue is the knowledge is limited. Studies are high level, so include those with old stoves, burning any old fuel , inc wet or treated wood.

logically if everyone used seasoned wood in a defra approve stove, then the impact would be much much smaller say than a diesel van doing a delivery, but that level of granularity has not yet been achieved.

the do nots are right, not burning anything is the perfect answer, as is not driving, flying, having deliveries or using public transport,not using electricity or gas, it all impacts us at either a macro or micro level, you just need to decide what level is acceptable for you, will you have a stove, order from Amazon, drive, get the bus, get the train, use electricity. Your choice on how far you go, but fundamentally they are right, do none of this is the safest option. If we all agree to do none of it.

I don't understand why people still voluntarily make their indoor air quality worse.

New wood burners should be banned, to protect neighbours, but doing it to yourself - especially if you have kids - is quite weird IMO.

Burning anything is bad for health.

Mmm, and what was the average age of death when wood was the main source of heat, Einstein? 🤔

Millions of people in low-income countries still suffer early deaths and lung disease because of wood-burning stoves. Household pollution from wood smoke causes about 4 million premature deaths a year.

Burning wood in your home is like chain-smoking except that, instead of just fucking your own lungs and those of your family, you are also fucking over your neighbours.

Love mine. First thing I sorted when I moved here. The heat it kicks our is unbelievable.

Mmm, and what was the average age of death when wood was the main source of heat, Einstein

lol, I’m embarrassed for you. Yeah as medical science hasn’t improved our lifespan, it’s all about wood burners..

Medical science - like reduction of environmental hazards, you mean? The biggest contributions by far to improved lifespan are clean water and cleaner air.

And 4 million people are still dying prematurely because of wood-burning stoves in the home. But I guess you haven't got an actual answer to that.

@poshme the article reports that the study found that where a free wood source is available a stove is cheaper than a boiler or heat pump.

@MidnightOnceMore I'm guessing you live in area with mains gas, and infrequent power cuts?

Last winter we had lots of power cuts- so my only heat/cooking was using our woodburner. 24 hours with no electricity when it's below freezing outside could've been pretty cold- but it wasn't because of the woodburner.

If I lived in an urban area I wouldn't have one.

weve run out of oil, so the wood burners been on all day - I love ours

Did somebody say free wood ?

there’s loads more too👍 Once people know your a wood collector it comes freely

Indoor air pollution is literally one of the world's biggest killers, especially women. Shifting from burning wood, coal and dung, towards modern ways of heating and cooking, has been a major factor behind longer lifespans.

Granted, a modern well-designed woodburner in the UK is far safer than one of the hellish smoky cooking devices used in places like Nepal and Kenya, but it's still producing an awful lot of dangerous particulates. Why use them, unless it's unavoidable due to living in a place where there is no other reliable source of heating?

As for "China," "India" etc., I find that for people determined to make no changes at all to their lifestyle (even quite easy changes like "Don't have a woodburner unless you live in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere etc.), "China" invariably gets used to justify this no matter what the evidence is.

If they think China's emissions are really bad: "See? Nothing I do makes any difference anyway."
If they think China is making rapid progress on emissions (which it actually is, now): "See? This is why I don't need to do anything myself."

Sigh.

If we want less-well-off countries to continue to make progress on cutting emissions, we need to be doing everything we can as well. Otherwise, it will create understandable resentment.

Absolutely love our woodburner. We have wood from trees in garden that came down so saves money. I love gathering the kindling and the scent in the house is lovely. Nothing cosier on a dull autumn day. Don’t need heating on so often at all. Doesn’t take that much effort, but I enjoy the whole process of laying and making fire burn well.