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?

But it shouldn't be down to individuals to have to uproot their lives because the govt is allowing the proliferation of something that is clearly a nuisance and clearly unnecessary in many cases.

As I've said previously on this thread it's madness that they can be installed anywhere, such as densely populated modern housing estates like mine where EVERYONE has gas central heating. There is no reasonable justification for installing them in such properties no matter how defensive those who have them get about it, or how convinced they are that their burner can't possibly be a nuisance to anyone else.

Maybe the more people complain, to their local council, MP, etc, maybe something will eventually be done.

This reminds me of the famous Descartes quote :

“Man is incapable of understanding any argument that interferes with his revenue.”

A lot of people run these burners because they are convinced they are cheaper (they probably are with "free" wood). So their benefit is achieved at the cost of other peoples health.

Thing is, there are solutions around that can help, for example :

https://exodraft.co.uk/product/particlefilter/esp-particle-filter/

However no one seems to fit these. I wonder why.

But it shows there are solutions around that could be used without imposing an outright ban.

I have an Extractor Fan, but as we all know, there's nothing quite like fresh air after a number 2! Or to ventilate a steamy bath/shower. The Extractor Fan is new and 'powerful' but it still takes time to clear.

I can't move DC. They could only swap with me, but I too am getting the smoke come in so no point.

We've had to close all the trickle vents on the side & back and now have damp washing all over the house but can't open the windows/trickle vents so I am concerned about the damp.

I'm not against wood burners, especially for people in rural areas or where there's no other means of heating, but this is an ultra modern new build, with new UFH and we live in a busy residential area with loads of families & schools.

I'm just surprised at how smoky they actually are and that it is ok for others to suffer in a case where it isn't a necessity.

No point writing to MP & Council, they're useless round here!

Those big houses are one mile from an urban settlement. They are not rural just because you can see some fields. They shouldn't have woodburners.

If it's got that many houses on the street, no one relies on their wood burner as they'll definitely be gas. You should have to get a license to install one, like planning permission, and prove you have no alternative.

There are whole villages near me with hundreds of houses which aren’t on gas and the nearest gas pipe is ten miles away. Due to the landscape the villages are often long and thin with 95% of the houses on the main road. So while it might sound like a street with hundreds of houses must be a metropolis of some sort it’s not always the case.

Our village got gas about 20 years ago, just before we moved. Not everyone got connected up…..I believe you had to pay for the connection and you certainly would have had the expense of installing a boiler, central heating, changing your oven…..so lots of people didn’t.

What do the ‘houses with gas shouldn’t have wood burners’ posters would think of houses that are old enough to have been built with proper fire places?

Every house on our street has a proper fireplace with chimney, some people have had a wood burner inset into the fire place to make them more efficient. They all still have central heating.

@PinkPlantCase
Well that's exactly what people are saying. If you have gas central heating and access to clean fuels there is no need to polute the environment burning wood. The evidence of the health risks is becoming ever more obvious along with the damage to the environment but people who like log burners even though they don't NEED one simply don't want to know.
If you have no other way to stay warm or live in a remote area with frequent power cuts that necessitates the need for one then that us something else.

If you acquire a much better/cleaner form of technology, you're not compelled to carry on using the old one, are you?

It is only relatively recently that we have understood just how polluting wood-burners are. Times change, and we change with them. When we first realised tobacco smoking was dangerous, lots of people didn't want to believe that either. It didn't stop it being true.

You can convert open fireplaces to gas fireplaces.

I guess the efficiency you will get and how much particulate filtering you will get depends on how much you want to make it look like an open fire. But a lot of wood burners don't exactly look similar to an open fire either.

Google for some ideas.

https://www.flames.co.uk/gas-fires/broseley-evolution-5-gas-stove.html

This even looks like a woodburning stove and has high efficiency but because it burns cleaner gas it will emit far less particulates, both because gas is cleaner, plus you don't have to open the door to fill it.

Our neighbours had an entire brick chimney and woodburner installed. We had moved there specifically because there were no visible chimneys as I was sensitive to smoke.

We tried to talk to them and they were really rude, probably because the installation must have cost a fortune. They went full fire and got a garage filled with wood, not really dry enough and were keen on starting a fire every day.

My DH got pretty ill from the constant woodsmoke and we had to move again. He's not really recovered years later and now there are a lot more, so it's incessant. Neighbour here spends his day salvaging trees and chopping them up, so for him, it's free fuel and he banks the fire overnight, so we wake up to smoke too.

If you walk around and look up, there are so many woodburner basket chimney tops. It is really bad for the environment and your health. People love them, it's pretty much back to how it was when they brought clean air acts in but they are only in cities and not really enforced. Other than move, there's not a lot you can do.

Can you plant something in-between to eventually grow up and block the smoke being blown across?

Gas may be cleaner in terms of small particle pollution, but it’s still harmful due to CO2 released into the atmosphere in its production. So those using gas for heating need to consider their own impact to the environment. Gas is not the clean option.

the solution is better insulated homes where wood burning / much heating is not needed, and low carbon heating such as heat pumps installed, ideally powered by solar PVs.

Burning wood emits more CO2 than gas or coal, and is also a big source of short-lived climate pollutants. https://www.dsawsp.org/environment/climate

A gas boiler emits 450 times less air pollution that a perfectly used newer Eco-certified stove. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/08/eco-wood-burners-produce-450-times-more-pollution-than-gas-heating-report

I completely agree that the ideal would be better insulation and heat pumps. But anything is better than burning solid fuel for heat.

I think there's "rural" and "rural."

There are some genuinely remote communities and farmhouses inthe UK, who very often really do need wood burners.

But a huge percentage of English villages are suburb-like bubbles that are satellited around their nearest town or city, and the majority of residents (unless they WFH or are retired) commute there for work. The UK is densely populated and restricts the size of its cities through green belt policies; most English villages are closer to the center of their nearest town than the typical American suburb is from its own urban center.

Rural communities of the second type usually do have gas and regular, reliable utilities, so it's irritating when the (mostly upper middle class) residents use the vague excuse of "We're rural!" to explain why they need wood burners.

Plus, many people who use wood-burners also use GCH.

I am so sorry you are going through this, woodburners should be banned, they are unnecessary and if you are unlucky enough to live next door to one it will make your life miserable and will also damage your health. I strongly recommend you purchase hepa air purifiers to remove the particles and a carbon air purifyer will get red of the smell and invest in some air purifying plants to clean the air in your house as well, this isn't just a nuisance wood burner fumes are poison and will cause health problems long term even with the doors and windows shut that poison will be coming in to your property through every single crack and crevice. The laws on the flues are ridiculous in a world where you can be fined for driving vehicles in certain areas, can't smoke in public yet your neighbours are allowed to literally poison the air in your home and adversely affect your health with no consequences. It's a joke but I don't think local councils have the budget to enforce anything and the burden is on you to show its a nuisance , it makes my blood boil

@Awotdckycktxkttxjtxj 'Poison coming in through every crack and crevice.'

Isn't that a bit extreme? I have neighbours both sides with wood burners. I can sometimes smell wood smoke when I am outside but nothing in the house.

Wood burners are unnecessary in towns, certainly, but people have used log fires to keep warm for millenia.

That’s so extreme and ott. Modern wood burners are defra approved, give off a fraction of the particles, and using the right fuel reduces that even further, with very limited to no smoke out a chimney once it’s up to heat, it’s clearly not poisoning the neighbours through every crack and crevice, your electricity has more of an impact on the overall environment or getting an Amazon delivery in a diesel van.

this sort of extreme hyperbole just loses you credibility. People have used fire for years, it’s completely necessary in many many places in the uk.
for those areas it is not the government have implemented smokeless zones, where new defra approved stoves and dry wood/smokeless fuel has to be used.

That’s so extreme and ott

thats your opinion, its similar to how people behaved concerning smoking in the 1960s - now you can't smoke on a train, plane, pub, restaurant for health reasons.

The person most at risk is the one sat in the room with the fire, regardless of whether its got 100 hall marks etc, they can still cause lung disease

What is a hall mark ?

People have used fire for years; they have also died prematurely of lung disease for years.

Unfortunately, modern wood-burners are still very polluting. Only 8% of homes have wood-burners, yet they produce 17% of all small particle pollution - gob-smacking when you consider that the totality of road traffic only produces 13%.

Yeah “gob smacking “ 🤣

You don't find it surprising that about 600,000 stoves produce more pollution than 41 million road vehicles?

Maybe you're a little hard of thinking?