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)

And people couldn't get behind Insulate Britain... Theirs was an absolute no-brainer of a manifesto, yet resonated so little with people whose homes would be infinitely more comfortable if appropriately insulated. Baffling.

We have a woodburner; DEFRA approved and only burn well seasoned year-old logs from our own woodland. We're not in a town and still try to minimise the use of the stove, preferring to rely on gas central heating (2 x 30 mins/day, 6:30am and 16:30pm) to keep our home at a comfortable 17-18°C. What has made a great difference is investing in external insulation -an absolute game changer. Lots of grants available and worth every penny.

Sorry but I don’t think there are grants available anymore, apart from for low income households.

It's most definitely not about the image for me it's about being able to afford to be warm.

We have a free supply of as much wood as we want, whereas we could easily get through a £5k gas bill in a year.

Would absolutely love to avoid the hassle of cutting, splitting, drying and carrying wood in to the house every year . But gas is simply too expensive compared to free wood.

The house is as well insulated as is possible but most of the heat goes straight through the single glazed windows because as a listed building it's not allowed to have double glazing. And also because it is listed solar panels for electricity or hot water are also not allowed.

Have you written to your council?

Start there.

I thought Sadiq K was planning to ban them in London because of the pollution?

I would love one because of the warmth and cosiness, and I love building fires. But as it happens I can’t afford one, it isn’t practical for me… and then I read about the particulates they create inside your home.

That would seriously put me off. Children playing in the floor in a fug of invisible potentially deadly particulates.

Nospecialcharacters, good to know. Ours was installed 12 years ago and whereas we didn't receive a grant, we were able to negotiate a good discount as the installer used our house as a training project for their teams, so took a bit longer to get it fitted.
Having just done a cursory search, the threshold for eligibility for a grant seems to be a household income of less than £31,000 which seems fair. I'm surprised this constitutes a 'low income' though ‐that places a big chunk of my profession in a low income bracket.

Lots of willful naivety on this thread as to the health impact of wood burners, including for those living inside the house. As soon as you open the door you're filling the room with the tiny particulates that are most associated with lung cancer, heart disease etc. Children are particularly at risk.

In a climate as cold as the UK gets in winter, it's vital that houses are properly insulated and non-draughty, especially if we want to be able to move towards heat pumps long-term. The UK has really really fallen behind with insulation (see chart). Thanks, David Cameron!!

The Nordic countries, with their bitter winters, are now mostly using heat pumps only (!). Because that's what you can do with proper insulation.

Meanwhile, the UK has just about the oldest housing stock in the world. I "get" that the British like old houses and that it's nice to keep and retrofit old buildings where possible, BUT a lot of this housing stock is just beyond retrofitting and not-fit-for-purpose. The UK goes way too far in trying to prop up every last draughty and unsound old building. The last estimate I saw suggested that around 25% of UK's housing stock needs to be pulled down; as it is, demolitions are now at a record low - around 0.03% of total housing stock each year, whereas historically it's always been closer to 0.1%.

Meanwhile, a lot of the wood burning stove people increasingly sound like those desperately trying to ward off antismoking, anti-drink-driving and seatbelt laws in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. "It's fine, honestly" "My grandma lived till 98 and she...." "You don't understand, it's safe as long as you know what you are doing," "People have done this for centuries, they did alright, didn't they?" "What about [insert other thing that the wood burning stove person is also usually doing nothing about either]."

I think there needs to be a publicity campaign around the health issues from burning fuels, including wood burners. Because there is mounting evidence on the harms but no one seems to really put two and two togehter.

We absolutely need cleaner fuel in the future. We will all be using clean electricity in the future, well either that or we just fall into the ocean with climate change.

but most of the heat goes straight through the single glazed windows because as a listed building it's not allowed to have double glazing.

Yep, and this relates to what I mentioned about old buildings in the UK. The obsession with trying to make buildings look like they belong in 1822 (Note) is not compatible with modern life, health, the environment and so on.

Old buildings need to be retrofitted properly for modern norms, even if they are listed.

For the minority of old buildings that are just so old and draughty that it's just impossible to make them liveable without the inhabitants filling their kids' lungs with particulates, there needs to be some difficult conversations about whether it is worth continuing to keep them going, or whether they should be replaced with something else (or turned into a museum if they really are utterly precious artefacts).

The UK needs to decide if it wants to be a modern serious country, or an open-air museum of architectural styles.

(Note) Of course, a lot of this stuff isn't even remotely consistent, because if we really were serious about making streetscapes look Georgian, Victorian or what-have-you, we'd also have to blacken all the walls with grotty looking soot and smear horse manure all over the street in front.

How big is your house that your gas bill is over £100 a day!?! I have a draughty old 4 bed house with some single glazed windows where the boiler runs almost constantly when the heating is on and it costs nothing like that!

If wood burners worry you, you should be equally concerned about gas hobs and cookers.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-health-risks-of-gas-stoves-explained/

Another article on the dangers of gas stoves.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/pollution-gas-stove-cooking-b2266571.html

I was thinking this sounded wild too although I didn’t have the numbers to hand. Maybe they live in a castle… in Scotland? A massive Scottish castle?!

If people can smell it then it's getting into their lungs which is bad news as it's full of tiny toxic air pollution particles which are very bad for the heart & respiratory system. www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2020/march/open-fires-wood-burners-bad-health

There's stats available on pollution and contributing to global warming.

I love wood stoves but I get migraines from the smoke, also have asthma so I totally understand. It will probably be more effective to get yourself an air purifier.

Gas stoves are a concern, but they produce far fewer particulates than wood burners, and what is more, gas stoves are used for much shorter periods of time.

I have one (I'm outside the UK) and am meticulous about keeping the ventilation fan on most of the time and throwing all the windows open every time it's used. I've also replaced a lot of gas stove usage with things like an electric kettle and electric toaster oven etc. Still wish I had electric, but that will have to wait until I can get it replaced.

Wood burning stoves are typically on for many hours and people are using them for heating when it's cold, so chucking all the windows open is unlikely to happen.

It boggles my mind that people are using woodburners unless they HAVE to live in a rural area for work-related etc. reasons.

Pretty much this. We'd freeze without the stove and couldn't afford to keep our old, rural house warm. And also, the power cuts issue. The house would be around 6c without one during winter power cuts.

With all due respect, that's not how it works. We need to be reducing carbon emissions to meet climate goals now and do not have the luxury of a long timeline where we can wait for all those (possibly replanted) trees to grow again. Electricity production in the UK is increasingly switching to renewables in any case; we burn little coal for electricity these days, contrary to what people think. The other huge concern re woodburning is "black carbon" - it soaks up solar radiation and has a huge global warming impact.

This is before you get onto the health aspects. Parkinson's disease, lung cancer, Alzheimers, anyone?

It’s a gorgeous smell! I just love it - this appears to have become a bit of an obsession for you to be so bothered about it?

I do think it’s interesting thar many people are anti lots of dc, too much car use, flying etc but very pro wood burners. Every thread like this people need them because they are off grid (fair enough) & they only burn the correct wood & it’s cheaper because they collect their own wood etc. No one ever admits they have one because it was fashionable 😆

I actually like the smell too, but the occasional bonfire etc. is probably about as much exposure as I'm happy to have. It's just not nice stuff for your body at all.

There has been a huge increase in WB usage in the past decade, and I don't think there has been any increase in the number of people living in huge draughty off grid houses. Either there are some fibbers on here, or the only people who dare to comment are the ones who genuinely do have an excuse, and meanwhile the silent majority of WB owners who don't actually need to do it at all are presumably keeping really quiet and not saying anything!

Of course, a lot of this stuff isn't even remotely consistent, because if we really were serious about making streetscapes look Georgian, Victorian or what-have-you, we'd also have to blacken all the walls with grotty looking soot and smear horse manure all over the street in front.

😆😆

Maybe if I could heat my house using renewable sources without the prospect of spending an absolute fortune, which I can't afford.

That is really misleading. At its lowest, 30% of Uk electricity is made using gas, (edit - that’s in a very good year with a mild winter) a fossil fuel. Then on top of that some is also made using coal.

At our best we manage about 45% using renewables but it isn’t consistent because we are partially dependent on the weather.