Neighbours Wood Burner

[Livingonaprayeryeah]

My Neighbour had a wood burner installed a few weeks ago by a legit Company and the flue looks to be legit height, approx 4m tall on the external wall.

The problem is, the top of his flue sits below my bathroom & bedroom windows since I live in a house and he is a Bungalow, and the road slopes down. Now I can’t have the windows open or put washing out as it smells of smoke.

It’s not terribly bad and the smoke isn’t black, but it is noticeable. If I open the back door or window, I can smell it. He has it on literally all day.

Is this normal? Should I be able to smell it?

I raised the issue with Neighbour politely and he said he is burning the right fuel and it is a new burner and he has all the certification and follows the rules etc. So I’m wondering, is this it then. Is this the new norm for us. We live in a Smoke Control Zone.

It’s very annoying as it blows on to the bathroom window, my DC bedroom
window & the downstairs loo window, as well as the back door. All windows that I need to keep open after showers/toileting. I also hate not being able to put washing out now as I have done for years. I have young Children, one has serious respiratory issues, so I wouldn’t allow him out in the garden now if the burner is on.

Is this the reality of living next to a log burner? I don’t know if not being able to open my windows & put washing out would be classed as nuisance by the Council? I can’t and don’t want to move; just want to know if this is our new reality or if there’s anything I can do?

We have this from our neighbours new external boiler. The flue is a good distance away from our house but as our property is higher up, and the prevailing wind is towards our house, it blows a lovely plume right across our garden and steps leading up to it, as well as depending on the wind, into our bathroom window. I think you have grounds to complain to the council given the individual circumstances of it. My neighbour doesn't give a shit as it doesn't affect him, sounds like yours is similar but it's really unacceptable.

If the government wanted everyone to be greener then they would bring the cost of electricity down so then every house in the uk could use that. But i see the price cap is set to rise again 5% in jan.

but seeing as a huge portion of our electricity is generated by gas fired power stations then thats not going to happen anytime soon.

The price of gas and electricity is only going one way ☝🏼

We can do better, but most of our electricity is now generated by non-polluting sources (link).

Many people who use woodburners (including me in the past), use them because they like having a fire, not because they rely on them for heat. Those people should stop for their own health, as well as everyone else's.

When I was a kid we had a coal back boiler. Our town was then made a 'Smokeless Zone' like a lot of urban areas. That meant we had to change to a special sort of coal, in hexagonal blocks, that wasn't as polluting.
Are there no Smokeless Zones any more? Or if there are, are wood burners exempt or what? Surely it would be simplest just to make it illegal to use other than smokeless fuels in urban areas?

We have 78 biomass power stations in this country. They are less polluting than the old coal ones but they are are still pumping out pollution to produce so called clean energy! The drax power station runs on pellets that have a contract with a supplier in Canada over 3000 miles away. I wonder how clean the electricity it produces is by the time you add all the fuel its used in transport/ prodution costs ?

I think you will find most people use woodburners because they want heat, they give out an incredible amount in relation to the wood they run on. why do you think they are so popular? Add in that a lot of people will have access to some/ all free wood and its quite easy to see the draw of them.
Stoves are also very good for just heating a smaller space than GCH and are good in older properties that are poorly insulated that can lose heat quickly.

wood/smokless can also be bought in bulk so it’s easier for many to buy upfront and have more control on costs rather than electricity or gas where its harder to control.
In 20 years of owning stoves I’ve never spent a penny on fuel, but im ok in doing a bit of leg work.

i suppose it boils down to basic needs …..its human nature to keep warm and for many costs come first…….environmental second

Thats why people will choose gas over electricity because it costs less.

Also , and a few might find this hard to believe but not everyone is bothered about the environment/climate. They just want to get on with their lives the way they want to.

You can dress it up as a fundamental need as much as you like, but your last sentence is the truth. Many people with wood burners (not all) do not rely on them for heat. Like the OP’s neighbour, they are a lifestyle choice by people too selfish to care about anyone else and too dim to understand the damage they are doing to their own health. That’s why we need legislation to ban them in urban areas.

I think you will find most people use woodburners because they want heat, they give out an incredible amount in relation to the wood they run on. why do you think they are so popular?

Most people I know have one for the look

Could you rent some giant industrial sized fans for a couple of weeks to blow their smoke back at them?
(Half joking but it might work)

I can't hang the washing out. The dc are coughing. It stinks. The dc can't play out. Just day after day...

It's just bloody unacceptable.

I'd be tempted to start Neighbor Wars if someone put one of these fucking things in the house next to me.

Who does that? You must be fully aware that much depends on how the wind blows. And where is she going to erect these massive industrial fans?on the side of her house?

Sympathy for you OP, it's horrible isn't it? I think some wood burners are very anti-social. We're in a very similar position, in that our house is raised over the house next to us , so their smoke/fumes is at bedroom-window height to ours. It stinks and gets in our throats. I reported to the council last winter but didnt hear anything back. We're moving shortly so I haven't bothered to follow it up, but I'm quite surprised these polluting nuisances are allowed in built up areas. (We're in a built up housing estate, not a semi-rural house next to the woods!)

Maybe take a look at the building control dept on your local councils website, they may have some advice of how to complain about smoke.

As a owner of a wood burner, smoke is caused by the wood burner not being hot enough or burning bad or wet wood.

@CompSc4542 is right. A log burner, using properly seasoned wood gives out very little smoke at all. If your neighbours are using wet wood, they will soon find that their chimney cakes up much faster and needs cleaning much more often.

@babbygabby I don't know anyone who has one 'for the look'. We must live in different environments. Perhaps they will get bored with the need to clean it if that is all it is for. I have one because it uses free wood (a non-fossil fuel) to heat my sitting room and the two bedrooms above. Last year my utilities bill for a four bed detached house was £1,000 which was mostly electricity & water heating.

When the power goes down (not infrequent where we live), I use it to heat our home, provide a warm destination for my elderly neighbours, and cook on if absolutely necessary. The last time it snowed, we had a four day power cut, the gas central heating switch doesn't work, so having an alternative is essential.

Have you talked to your neighbour, perhaps asked them to install a taller flue?

That may be so, but those of us who are affected have no control over whether neighbours are operating their wood burners correctly, we just have to live with the consequences.

We have a few neighbours with wood burners. We can smell it through the house and it really affects my chest even though I don't have asthma or any other lung condition.

It really pisses me off and I'd love to see them banned in built up areas. I feel bad for people who bought them because I don't think they mean to disturb their neighbours so much but it's awful.

People "getting on with their lives the way they want to" is fine, so long as it doesn't affect anyone else.

But generating pollution clearly does affect other people and is a blight on many peoples quality of life.

So basically "getting on with their life at the expense of someone elses".

This is very unusual. We have a stove, modern, defra approved, we burn seasoned wood. Very little comes out the chimney, and I can’t even smell it in my own house when it’s lit. They must all have old stoves they don’t operate correctly.

@BlueMongoose There are laws about what can be burned in log burners. House coal is banned. Small volume sales of wet wood have been banned, and larger volume sales come with advice on how to dry wood properly.

But there are still a million households in the UK that use solid fuels, many because there are no easy alternatives for ageing properties. Many still have open fires which are the least efficient and the most polluting and dangerous. Many of those will be in the homes of the elderly or the poorest. It isn't something for which there is a quick fix.

@MintJulia Im in London, it’s defo a thing

@Cosywintertime I don't think it is unusual because there's other people here saying the same thing and looking at my local WhatsApp and next door it's clearly an issue.

And actually, as a PP said, the reason makes no difference to the households suffering because of their neighbour's burners.

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/14/wood-burning-air-pollution-uk-doubled-decade

Re ECO4: those are NOT the only financial criteria. We recently enquired about this scheme to install solid wall insulation. We only need the front of our house done as the rest is extensions that have cavity wall insulation. Independent quotes of around £6k. GBIS told us we were not eligible for a grant as we are not.having at least 67.percent of the house done, and the price they estimated for this after the grant applied was £16k plus - way more than our budget. What a waste of time.

Then ideally you need to report to your council or worst case move if the situation is not improving (yes I know unfair)

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow I get that, my main worry is outdoors air pollution. Inside the house we have an air purifier and it barely flinches when the log burner is on - by comparison, the small particle count goes through the roof when we cook.

On the other hand we’ve just been retrofitting our home with double glazing and solar panels, so I’m hoping we can use it less this winter and that we’re balancing out whatever harm we do…

We have exactly the same issue as this and we cannot open the window in winter to air the room anymore. Even the back door of the wind blows that way as it can blow it down and not up and our garden gets all the white smoke.