Wood burners - will the SNP and Greens please finally ban them?

[Turtlesgottaturtle]

In my view banning wood-burning stoves should be seen as an urgent priority for the new Scottish government. I don't know why people have to have the right to cause serious everyday pollution to their neighbours, simply to produce heat in their living room, when other options are available and already installed in their homes. Where I live there's almost always a smell of smoke and there's often a thick smog. Smoke gets into other people's houses even if they never open a window - for example if your windows and doors let in any air at all, which they do. Often, if you step outside your front door it's like standing next to a bonfire, and smoke immediately gets into your house through the briefly opened door. You can't use your garden if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, unless you're happy to breathe in smoke.

I'll link to an article on the incredibly high level of pollution produced by these wood-burning stoves:
"Even a modern, approved, “eco-friendly” wood burner produces 750 times as many fine particulates as a heavy goods vehicle. - These poisons can affect every organ in the body. Tiny particles pass straight through your lungs into the bloodstream. Wherever they lodge they cause harm. They’re associated with a wide range of cancers, heart and lung disease, strokes, dementia and the loss of intelligence. They age your skin and damage your liver. They harm foetuses in the womb and children’s development."

Things have moved on since he wrote that article. Wood-burning stoves are not now restricted to the upper middle classes. I live in a working-class area and I'd say that every second house has one of these stoves. We have plenty of cheap wood in Scotland. Some people use their wood burner all day and half the night. And it's getting worse, quickly. No thought seems to be given to the fact that this affects not just the house owners but also the neighbours.

I think wood burners have become an obsession for a lot of people, so politicians won't act. Of course, the NHS won't remotely be able to cope with the impact.

Burning Shame – George Monbiot

Think the last SNP/SGP coalition tried to ban them but you can imagine the outrage.

I do understand what you are saying but I don’t think they will ban them completely, perhaps introduce wood smoke exclusion zones for some areas. I’m rural and honestly a wood stove has been a lifesaver when the power has gone out for three- eight days, it’s a source of heat / a way to cook / boil water.

There are five trees thst have fallen down in winter storms next to my drive, I’ll chainsaw them up into rounds over the summer and shift them into the barn, next summer I’ll split them and burn in winter 2027/28. Whenever I walk the dog and it’d dry I bring home a bag of sticks and pop them in crates in the greenhouse where they bake dry to use as kindling.

It saves me thousands of pounds a year in heating a ye olde stone farmhouse. I don’t think I could afford not to use a woodstove especially with current cost of alternatives.

www.google.co.uk/search?client=safari&hs=KICV&sca_esv=b88ab9f30f69b24b&hl=en-gb&sxsrf=ANbL-n5OLb5GhTb-ZjOMAAiNvqEsJWZg7A:1778417725630&q=wood+burners+scottish+govt&nfpr=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFsLGm4q6UAxV5Z0EAHaI0FRwQvgV6BAglEAQ

You are being unreasonable.
I live in a big old Georgian farmhouse. It is very draughty. It has high ceilings. We have oil fired central heating with a brand new in 2025 all singing and dancing boiler.
We can’t get the temperature above 17 degrees in our house, on a draughty day or night drop that by a couple of degrees.
We live rurally so have no gas.
We NEED our wood burners. We have one in the living room and one in the dining room. We have them on all day and most of the night in the winter. If we don’t have them on, house still feels cold even with central heating on full blast.
Cost of oil has also increased, so there’s that to think of for our family.
We are also vulnerable to power cuts in our area so use our stoves to heat food as well as heat the home while we have a power cut.
Stoves are essential in some houses.

A thick smog? Which means reduced visibility. Where on earth do you live?

1820 I think

What do you suggest instead OP? How can people afford to keep warm next winter when energy prices are through the roof?

Didn't research show them to be more CO2 efficient than a gas boiler?

Are you also going to ban frying, toasting and candles?

We're rural, no gas. I know of one local family (2 working parents on NMW) who won't be able to fill up their oil tank because they don't have £00s lying around. How do you suggest they keep warm in the winter, because I'm pretty sure that oil prices aren't going to come down to remotely affordable this year.

My mum in her 70s can’t afford her oil central heating. She had open fires which she burns wood and coal on. What do you want her to do?

Have you SEEN the current price of oil? For those who live rurally, off gas, wood burners are a life saver.

If it's a problem in your local area then push for smokeless fuel to be the requirement. This byelaw is common in areas like mine that were dependent on coal, so suffered lots of smog.

It doesn't make sense for a blanket ban to include areas where it's not much of an issue.

In order to ban them, they would have to come up with an actual plan for heating homes in n rural areas or where there is no alternative. This is beyond the ability of the SNP, so I suspect they will make lots of noise about Reasons and Things to appease the loony greens, and then let it quietly slide.

Or Barbecues, bonfires, fireworks......

I live rurally. When the power goes down, which it does regularly with any passing storm, the log burner is all we have for heat. I dry my own wood, currently burning a sallow we took down in 2023.

Three winters ago, the power was down for 5 days and my elderly neighbours came to stay. There wasn't any alternative unless you'd prefer them to freeze.

I'm not sure you have a good understanding of the issues OP. Would you prefer we used a diesel generator?!! Are you going to finance that? How about the co2 generated? At least log burners are carbon neutral.

Nah. I live in an Edwardian house which yes it does have central heating but we are rural. We have power cuts and on one memorable whole village had a 5 day long gas cut. I replaced my gas fire with a multi fuel stove as I know I can rely on it. If the boiler goes we have one room we can still heat. I also like the fact I can put it on without worrying about subsequent bills. I either have wood or I don’t have wood. And I get a lot of free wood so not an issue.

Also remember your grid electric and gas is not of no consequence to the environment. It’s just that the resulting damage is removed from your immediate vicinity.

So, living on the West coast, during 4 days of no power, how do you propose we heat? Eat? What about the escalating cost of oil? Why shouldn’t we burn something sustainable and widely available in Scotland. I am absolutely certain you live somewhere leafy and suburban. And have forgotten that Scotland’s wilderness is populated. And properly seasoned (ie dried in our wood sheds) wood is absolutely fine to burn.

Honestly, this city centre eco nonsense really annoys me. You probably think us rural peasants should just leave our cottages to the tourists and get out of the way of your gas guzzling camper van.

NB most of rural Scotland has no mains gas. Sunshine is not prevalent so solar can only ever be part of the picture.

And some social housing in parts of Scotland still requires coal fires to heat a back boiler. This is the reality, not your eco urban soap box.

There shouldn't be much smoke if they burn seasoned wood and keep the chimney in good order.

Small town. It only takes 1 or 2 houses to produce a smog for the couple of houses next to them, depending on the wind direction. These burners produce a phenomenal amount of smoke (not always visible but you can always smell it).

There is absolutely no obligation on them to do either of those things, and many clearly don't.

Assuming the wood comes from sustainable forests, probably. That doesn’t change the fact that wood-burning stoves are less efficient than gas boilers, and churn out vastly more particulate and smoke pollution.

The man who wrote the article was refitting his entire house and paid for THREE log burners and flues. That's at least £25k so I'm guessing he, unlike most people, could afford an ASHP. Sounds like an overpaid city-based journalist with no grasp of how normal people live.

I have a log burner in our sitting room. It heats the sitting room and the bedroom above. When the power fails and we use it, ds sleeps in his bedroom as normal, and I sleep on an air bed downstairs.

When the neighbours came to stay, they had ds' room and we shared the sitting room.

For us, it's not an eco-priviledged choice OP, it's about keeping warm!

If you live in a house with no near neighbours, this is obviously less of an issue (though still an issue, as the smoke obviously travels and there's a lot of it). But I think they should be made illegal in large villages and in towns and cities, unless there are genuinely no alternatives.
Forget the idea of a house with some smoke coming out of the chimney all day. Replace that image in your mind with a motorway permanently filled with large (but silent) lorries driving immediately past your house. With another motorway permanently filled with large but silent lorries immediately behind your house. Would you be happy with that level of pollution for you and your children? Should your neighbour have the right to impose that on you?