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

You are having an absolute laugh OP. I take it you live in a shoebox new build with an air source heat pump?! Some of us, who live remotely, rely on our stoves for heating. You are delusional if you think MSPs of remote areas will support this. I know mine has been fighting this nonsense

I take it you don't live on a farm? I'm not in the UK but people who live on farms or in small rural towns here usually have a woodburner. When electricity goes it can be off for days/weeks, how are they supposed to cope with no form of heating, and I imagine that happens more in Scotland than it does here. People also have them here in towns and cities and I don't see any big issue with pollution.

Thanks a bunch. I have to live in a house which is surrounded in smoke, some of which gets inside whatever I do to prevent it, for about 18 hours a day. I can't open a window unless I get up in the middle of the night. When I open the front door smoke pours in. I can barely use the garden because if the wind switches direction there's smoke there too. The poor cat comes back inside stinking of smoke. And it is undisputed that this smoke is highly dangerous to human health. I've posted a number of articles on it. How is being concerned about this, for myself and for others, virtue signalling?

@SouthernNights59 @ForUmberFinch I have already said, approximately a hundred times, that rural houses or areas that would struggle to comply with a ban would be excluded. But a ban should be brought in for everyone else. Are you saying that the government shouldn't regulate wood burners in Edinburgh and Glasgow because some people live on farms or very rural properties elsewhere in Scotland?

Even if it wouldn't work where you live, doesn't mean it wouldn't work in most of the country. And getting rid of wood burners would save many lives and reduce the burden on the NHS.

Would you like to have a motorway in front of and another one behind your house, with lorries driving past you all day and part of the night? That's the amount of pollution we're talking about, from one woodburner.

To be honest I think you should say something about the baby. I know it's hard and as we're seeing on this thread people people really pile on if they feel that their wood burners are under any kind of threat.

I don't expect the Scottish government to do anything because it would be likely to harm their own short term interests and that's more important to them than the health of Scotland's citizens. People will put their wood burners before their health and even the health of their children, let alone their neighbours' health. It's absolutely insane.

This map of England and Wales (yes, I know that doesn't include Scotland) is from 2022 fgs, so imagine what it would look like now. Even then, domestic wood burners were producing more fine-particle air pollution than road transport was.
Map of Polluting Woodburners In England & Wales | - Technology, Science & Other News

I really don’t get the outrage about wood burners. Most people over the age of 40 grew up in houses with either open fires or stoves, and until I moved to the city aged 18 there was a fire going in my house every day, to heat water if nothing else. We didn’t all drop dead, and we were burning coal at least as often as wood. Wood burners are a great improvement over open coal fires. Every photo of me as a baby is in front of a fire. You don’t sit inhaling smoke when the stove is on, not if the chimney draws properly, and the point of a chimney is to direct smoke away from people.

A lot of the research in the articles often shared seems flawed to me, the studies are often small scale and the comparisons and conclusions drawn don't always seem very precise. The studies are also quite small and often clearly not subjective - when you delve into it many seem created specifically to prove a pre-decided conclusion, which is not the best way to complete valid research. Some of them, not all, are also funded by those who definitely don't want people using alternative methods of heating - energy companies etc.

Of course, wood burners come with some risk, but if you choose an eco one these are actually minimal and only of a similar level to normal household activities. Hairdryers, ironing, air friers, hairsprays, candles, older vacuum cleaners, toasters, self-cleaning ovens, spray deodorants etc are all far worse than the most efficient of woodburner stoves. Arguably, they are also more essential than many of these, since heating ones home is a necessity.

I do agree that eco versions should be the only ones being newly installed, but I definitely don't think they need banning. Some of the Ecoelite ones, for example, have less than 0.1mg per hour particulate output, which is far less than many of the other things mentioned.

You are welcome to ban ironing though!

I live rurally and the multi fuel stove came in very handy when there was a power cut and we had no electricity for 4 days.
Ours has a back boiler which heats the water and radiators which is also handy as oil is through the roof and we don’t have gas.

I lived in a house with wood heating one winter, was a godsend when we had a 5 day power cut in the middle of winter - no amount of woolly jumpers would have coped with that cold.

But I do recommend masonry heaters over log burners - you only need to burn wood for a couple of hours, and you burn it fast and hot which means very little emissions, and after that the heat is slowly released from the bricks the rest of the day.

Well that’s a load of nonsense for a start. What internet tripe have you been reading?!

This, unless they offer a massive subsidy to rural households who rely on them, they'll face massive protests. I don't think people who live in towns/well insulated modern properties realise just how cold old rural houses are. Rural areas are generally always colder than towns, and the homes can be quite exposed to the elements.

You've completely made this up OP.

I'm about to put a third one in.

Although we have no mains gas, we produce all our own wood since we own 15 acres of woodland and we also have 30 solar panels and two large batteries.

The HGV comparison is sensationalist. The data is true – the meaning construed from it is not.

Due to the location of our house our only option is electric heating. No gas and oil deliveries can't access our property. If there was a power cut we would have no heating at all if we didn't have a wood burner.

It is pretty sad that in 2026 in a developed country a lot of people still have to light a fire to stay warm.

There is definitely a special kind of penetrating rural cold that doesn’t seem to exist in the concrete storage heater of cities.

I do understand OPs point of view and if I’d never left Edinburgh I’d possibly agree. Living rurally is an education though. Older buildings need a decent blast of heat. Wood stoves are the eco upgrade! My house had five open fires when it was first built. Bedroom fires have been decommissioned (3) and the two open fires have had wood burners installed. I was told that with a woodstove you retain about 80% of the heat, with an open fire you lose sbout 80% up the chimney.

How many of us live in old buildings built before modern central heating that are designed to be heated by open fires? Sometimes it’s not as simple as whack a boiler in. Unless we’re going to get rid of all the older buildings and replace with modern housing stock?

Or in areas where, for a variety of different reasons, mains gas pipes can't be laid.

Do have to laugh at the 'developed country' comment - I'm hardly having a wee sob to myself as I light my coal fire. It's just reality in rural areas.

Perhaps this is a modern house? Some rural homes are old and difficult to heat. The house would have to be tiny for one stove to keep a whole house warm. I did once live in a tiny farm tied cottage with only an open coal fire and that did heat the whole house.
Where I am now (oil CH no gas, frequent power cuts) I have a multi fuel stove with a back boiler. It heats hot water and the living room but certainly not the rest of the house and it's lit all day in winter. I'm not a million miles from civilisation, half an hour from a city.

I associate not having any heating option other than fire with developing countries, as that’s where I have seen it most.

I don’t think they’re laughing about it.

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/cooking-smoke-kills-millions-every-year-heres-what-world-can-do-about

Do you get the difference between a modern closed coal/wood fire with or without a back boiler to fuel central heating like the ones used in rural areas in Scotland and a literal open fire like the ones your report is referring to?

I don't find it sad. There are many other things I worry about, the log burner is not one of them. I think the things people put in, on and do to their actual bodies must be way more harmful.