If you use a wood burning stove - what would change your mind?

[letmeeatinpeace]

I live in a densely populated area in London, and the smoke from wood burners seems to be getting worse each year (it's coming into our home).

I'm intrigued to hear from people who use wood burners whether there's anything that would possibly change your mind to stop using them?

I would really love to persuade our smoke-producing neighbours to be more considerate and switch them off, or at least switch to something smokeless, so any tips on how to go about it in a positive way would be much appreciated.

I don't actually know which property it's coming from - it's probably several.

Would dropping leaflets with useful info about smokeless fuel, and proper stove usage be appreciated..? I'm pretty desperate..! (I'm borderline asthmatic, and really worry about my dc's exposure)

Also, is smokeless fuel genuinely smokeless?

(I will also go down the route of contacting my council, if needed, but I just don't imagine they'd do much specially as we don't know where it's coming from)

On cold ,still, frosty days like now the smoke will hang in the air, its always more noticeable as there is no breeze to disperse it.

i would love to heat my house with electricity,turn it on and off with an app and instant warm house , but unfortunately the government have no intention of lowering the prices. If the price were lower then we wouldn’t need to burn gas or solid fuels. They need to invest heavily in solar and wind. Every new building should be fitted with solar by law and start feeding it into the grid to bring down the costs. But until that happens people will continue to heat with the cheapest way they can.

I hate wood burners in towns and cities. They should be banned except in rural areas imo.

I don't live in London but I live in a small town. All around the older and more substantial housing stock there's wood smoke in the air

I went for a run tonight and the cold air is bad enough on my lungs without wood smoke on top.

Fortunately I live where the newer houses are and no one has one in the streets directly around me. But half a mile away the drop in air quality is immediate and obvious to anyone with sensitive lungs 😟

Even when there’s no smoke it is still producing fine particle matter which is infinitely more dangerous as it penetrates so far into the lungs.

What if a mother came to your door with their sickly asthmatic child and pleaded, still nothing?
Serious question

As you said, you'll struggle to see where it's coming from when it's dark but my house is in the middle of a city on a hill and if I look out the window on a cold weekend afternoon I can see exactly which chimneys are pumping out smoke. I think people are most likely to stop if they think they've been caught breaking the law.

Im seriously considering putting a post up giving away free firewood and see who comes..!

See below

Also interesting re economics. I wonder if people are actually carefully monitoring and comparing costs, or just going off what they think is cheaper.

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/11/wood-burners-more-costly-for-heating-than-gas-boilers-study-finds

A working central heating system and easy access to heating alternatives.

However my mind is blown as to why anyone in London, literally the warmest most connected place in the country, would need a stove. For us in the arse end of nowhere it's essential

I think if you are that concerned about air pollution and asthma perhaps don’t live in London? Move to somewhere with better air quality.

Nothing would make me give up ours- we live rurally and DD’s asthma isn’t impacted.

We’ve been electric car only people for a
long time - early adopters. When other people try harder to give up ICE vehicles I may start to give a shit about our fires, but for now, nope.

Our wood burner is definitely cheaper. If I have the heating on 5pm - 10pm it would cost about £7 at the moment and the heating still wouldn’t creep above 17.5. Instead I burn around £3 of logs in a modern stove and it’s really toasty.

I need my house to be way more energy efficient - much more insulation, better double glazing and better radiators. We do plan to make all those improvements over time (just moved in this year), but the government keep fucking us over with interest rates and inflation and taxes and all the rest. And you can bet that if they ever get themselves together to offer grants for this kind of stuff it won’t be for families who actually pay ££££s in tax every month.

I honestly would retire my stove in favour of the environment/health if I could afford to and when I can see that it’s genuinely a society wide effort.

Our stoves are Esse ones and are eco-clean burn - they only produce smoke at the very start sometimes but we have a massive woodpile (my partner goes out chumping regularly!) so our logs are well dried out over a couple of years which makes a big difference.

Woodburners shouldn't be churning out loads of smoke - they are either not using them properly or are using wet/green logs.

I don’t think all that many people have any idea of the dangers they pose. We have one and have stopped using it after doing a quick google search after seeing some worrying stats on here re cancer risk etc. Sadly we are surrounded by them though and even out a walk today with our baby my husband commented on the fact they were all you could smell in the air. To me yes it’s obviously important to be warm but I’d rather pay the extra and not then blame myself years down the line if one of us have lung cancer or something

Wouldn't give it up...no gas available and we have no central heating. Very old house.

You may be able to afford the extra but not everyone can ?

"How can I persuade people to burn fossil fuels instead of renewables" is not the trend I was expecting in 2023...

I'm city outskirts. We have one and only put it on if we are all in for the afternoon /eve and only burn very dry wood etc. Its so cosy and we then don't need heating on. We also have all the washing on air dryers as dryer broken.

We really tried to go for renewables - the ground source heating and solar panels were a huge investment because we didn't want an oil or calor gas tanks outside (neighbours frequently have their oil stolen and it stinks).

But solar only works well in the summer (barely heats the water in winter) and the ground source pump needs electricity to work. So we had to have a backup as we get so many power cuts - birds fly into the village lines (they are low ones not big pylons) regularly but we get them a lot in stormy/windy weather too.

But I agree - why you would need them in a city I don't know. I envy the Icelanders who get free thermal heating - one advantage of living on a volcano I guess!

£100 buys 1,479 kWh of gas (6.76p per kWh). I live in a fair-sized house with no cavity wall insulation, no double glazing (listed, 200 years old) and in the depths of winter will use 120 - 150kWh per day. Max I've ever used in a day was 200, during the Beast from the East.

Given how un-eco my house is, I'm aghast that you could be using TEN TIMES more. How?

Quite! We are paid to use ours (biomass log burner) because it’s important to switch to renewables. We also have no gas access

Are you really trying to persuade people to burn more fossil fuels?

Free period appropriate ( nothing else gets by planning) double glazing. Several thousand pounds a window...

We have never, repeat never, paid for wood, in over 25 years. It's cheaper for us.

I sympathise, @letmeeatinpeace , and admire your constructive approach. Unfortunately, altruism seems to be in short supply when it comes to this particular issue. Unless they are banned by law in urban areas, and / or the cost of gas, or alternatives to gas come down, I'm afraid those of us who want and need to breathe clean air will continue to suffer. Personally, I'd never use a woodburner, and would not buy a property if that were the only heating option.

If there’s smoke at it’s not just after lighting they are burning the wrong type of fuel.
I had this problem in a small town basically they were burning wet wood and the chximney wasn’t high enough.

It would take a lot to stop me using my wood burner but when I looked at the chimney today no smoke was could be seen. Obviously stuff was going up the chimney and out but it wasn’t producing smoke.

Councils have new powers for spot fines for smoke producers

I live in the countryside and right about now our village turns into a smoke show, and not in a good way. We are on the grid, btw, and the main culprits are the houses in the 600-800k range, who don't seem to be lacking funds to refrain from using stoves.

For them, it is a lifestyle thing. It is hard to convince people that something is harmful, when they themselves don't see and experience the consequences of that harm. You can see that in the debates on wood burners here, where until recently they were furiously defended against any suggestions they might be harmful, and not just the lovely Christmassy-cosy thing they seem to be. I feel we have turned that corner slightly now on MN, but like with the SUV car use, people don't want to give up on their comforts and luxuries, even if it would be in their community's best interest.