For designers; it makes me really sad the terrible choices people make

[saveasteading]

2 hours ago, Gone West said:

the same amount of CO2 as the tree you cut down and burnt.

Coppicing does not require the tree to be killed and if grown in the appropriate sequence is getting close to sustainable.

Apart from buying a saw, and running it. and transport, and particulates.

But nothing is perfect, and it is better than oil, or coal, or gas, or charcoal from the Amazon.

 

[CharlieKLP]

@SteamyTea 

 

>If you want really want to know how long it takes CO₂ from wood burning to be reabsorbed, count the rings in the logs you burn, then add some.

 

They grow fast growing trees for sustainable timber sources, then turn them into pellets. You can also use willow.

 

I’d even argue turning land into copice was better than a field of cows for nature.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

7 minutes ago, CharlieKLP said:

 

I’d even argue turning land into copice was better than a field of cows for nature

You want to burn cows to power homes?

Good luck pushing that one on the sustainability of new homes.

Edited August 17, 2022 by SteamyTea

[CharlieKLP]

27 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

You want to burn cows to power homes?

Good luck pushing that one on the sustainability of new homes.

Smells like bbq though!

[SteamyTea]

6 minutes ago, CharlieKLP said:

Smells like bbq though

You didn't live in a farming area during the BSE culling and disposal then.

[Gone West]

4 hours ago, saveasteading said:

Coppicing does not require the tree to be killed and if grown in the appropriate sequence is getting close to sustainable.

Apart from buying a saw, and running it. and transport, and particulates.

But nothing is perfect, and it is better than oil, or coal, or gas, or charcoal from the Amazon.

 

I'm not sure about that, but I don't have any data. The only coppicing that was carried out near where we lived before was Sweet Chestnut. IIRC it was coppiced every seven years. The trees were never allowed to reach any where near the size where they were able to absorb the maximum that a fully grown Sweet Chestnut tree would absorb. The trees were used for fencing posts and pales so at least were not burnt and the sequestered CO2 was not immediately released back into the atmosphere.

Again I don't have data but it would be interesting to compare the CO2 and particulates released when burning oil in a 90% efficient condensing oil boiler and burning wood in an efficient wood burner. I can't imagine burning coppiced wood is better than burning gas though.  @SteamyTea may have some data on that.

[CharlieKLP]

I think you should include extracting oil vs coppicing in the calculation too, it’s a nasty business getting it out the ground. 
 

I’d have thought there were more particulates in oil than wood by a long way, but idk maybe I’m brainwashed by big timber lol. 
 

I feel like the benefits of using something that grows back is just far greater than something that doesn’t, but I’m not opposed to bio gas. 

[saveasteading]

Wood was coppiced on a very large scale for making charcoal.

The trunk size was very convenient for stacking for charring.

I think any hardwood, but may look up a book on the mediaeval iron industry, if I can find it.

 

btw Coppiced timber was also used for splitting into broom heads.

[Thedreamer]

In the right circumstances and setting, trees are a perfectly fine resource for heating your home.

 

My heating bills since June 2020 have been about £5. I have used that money each month to overpay on my mortgage and I should be mortgage free by the time I am 41.

 

The majority of our firewood this year will come from coppicing and wind blown trees. I collect sticks during the course of year and already have my wood stored for next winter.

 

No trees existed on our surrounding land 40 years ago and thousands exist now. 

 

It's not just the actual firewood which is important to us.

 

Leaves are great for the compost and a lot of carbon can be captured through efficient biochar production. The biochar will provide goodness in our soil for many generations. 

 

This works for us in a unique situation and could for others in a rural setting.

[jamieled]

@Thedreamer slightly off topic but I've been thinking about charcoal with some of our wood. What are you using for biochar production?

[Thedreamer]

I keep it quite simple with a pit and just keep putting stuff on top. Once the flames are gone I pour a couple of buckets of water and then crush it up and store in bags, ready to be added to my compost.

 

It amazing how much charcoal you can make from a small pile.

 

It will be next summer before I see the growing results, but the compost looks and smells top quality.

 

When you consider the number of conifer plantations in the Highlands, the amount of biochar that could be produced is crazy.

[SteamyTea]

6 hours ago, Gone West said:

Again I don't have data but it would be interesting to compare the CO2 and particulates released when burning oil in a 90% efficient condensing oil boiler and burning wood in an efficient wood burner. I can't imagine burning coppiced wood is better than burning gas though.  @SteamyTea may have some data on that.

I do

 

Diesel is 0.25 kg CO₂/kWh 

Bio-Diesl 0.25 kg CO₂/kWh 

Timber is 0.41 kg CO₂/kWh 

Natural Gas is 0.18 kg CO₂/kWh 

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/co2-emission-fuels-d_1085.html

 

Particulates are here, just got in and too tired to go though it.

Worth noting that particulate emissions from vehicles and boilers are not the same, for many reasons.  So the VW scandle is not applicable to bomestic boilers, or lare scale ones for that matter.

https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat11/1708081027_170807_AQEG_Biomass_report.pdf

 

a snippet

 

A GJ is 278 kWh

So 

Timber PM_2.5 2.2g/kWh

Oil PM_2.5 0.0115g/kWh

Gas PM_2.5 0.0018g/kWh

 

And people wonder why they are told they are dangerous.  Even putting coal on you fire is an improvement.

 

Stop thinking it is safe, it just isn't, even if you are rural.

 

Edited August 17, 2022 by SteamyTea

[Ferdinand]

On 16/08/2022 at 20:33, Trw144 said:

Difficult to heat a house with solar - it just doesn't produce enough in the winter. You could argue a very low energy house puts back on the grid in the summer, what it uses in winter, but I'd think this is quite rare.

 

I like the way of thinking of the Grid as a seasonal storage battery - that is export in the summer, import in the winter - is quite a useful tool.

 

That can then = if desired - be included in a wider emissions analysis (since we know the carbon intensity of our grid electricity) and if really desired extended to a lifecycle analysis.

[Gone West]

Thanks @SteamyTea. I'm not surprised at the CO2 figures but am amazed that coal produces more PM2.5 than wood and that oil is so much less.

[SteamyTea]

41 minutes ago, Gone West said:

I'm not surprised at the CO2 figures but am amazed that coal produces more PM2.5 than wood

Other way around.  Coal is better than wood.

A lotof it is down to the energy density of the fuel.

Chemically they are the same thing, carbon (major consituent) and hydrogen (minor constituent), 'pushed' together until they fuse, then pushed some more.

44 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

I like the way of thinking of the Grid as a seasonal storage battery

It is very scalable and a tiny marginal price as well.

It is hard to buy a battery that storges just 0.5 kWh one hour, then magically expands to 20 kWh another hour, all at 28p/kWh.

[Gone West]

1 minute ago, SteamyTea said:

Other way around.  Coal is better than wood.

Ooops, sorry finger trouble, should have said "less" rather than "more".

[saveasteading]

13 hours ago, Thedreamer said:

It amazing how much charcoal you can make from a small pile.

If  a barbecue is extinguished when the food is done, what looks like ash is about 80% charcoal, which can be used again, or spread on the ground.

Put it in a container, soak it and the charcoal floats to the top.

 

With a bonfire, the charcoal content will depend on how long it has been burning, but I find it to be about 30%.

 

Someone else will know better, but I gather that bonfire ash is good for the garden, but wood-burner ash is inert.

 

[SteamyTea]

17 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

spread on the ground.

There have been many reports and studies about adding charcoal to soil to improve it.

Jury is out still.

Much depends on the condition of the soil in the first place.

 

My view is that there is a lot more to soil fertility than just the base elements. So enzymes/proteins mix, mechanical properties, ion/electron exchange etc.

If soil science was simple, we would have cracked it by now. 

One thing that adding charcoal does well is help water retention (useful for some plants, deadly for others). But there are probably better, cheaper, and more environmentally better ways of doing this than combustion.

https://energy-surprises.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-green-is-my-charcoal-barbecue.html

 

If you want to help restore the planet, just leave it, or a bit of it, alone.

Edited August 18, 2022 by SteamyTea

[Roger440]

19 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

I do

 

Diesel is 0.25 kg CO₂/kWh 

Bio-Diesl 0.25 kg CO₂/kWh 

Timber is 0.41 kg CO₂/kWh 

Natural Gas is 0.18 kg CO₂/kWh 

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/co2-emission-fuels-d_1085.html

 

Particulates are here, just got in and too tired to go though it.

Worth noting that particulate emissions from vehicles and boilers are not the same, for many reasons.  So the VW scandle is not applicable to bomestic boilers, or lare scale ones for that matter.

https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat11/1708081027_170807_AQEG_Biomass_report.pdf

 

a snippet

 

A GJ is 278 kWh

So 

Timber PM_2.5 2.2g/kWh

Oil PM_2.5 0.0115g/kWh

Gas PM_2.5 0.0018g/kWh

 

And people wonder why they are told they are dangerous.  Even putting coal on you fire is an improvement.

 

Stop thinking it is safe, it just isn't, even if you are rural.

 

 

Good post. I remeber Jeremy saying that running your average log burner was like having 300 diesel cars outside your house ticking over. On that data, that doesnt look to be that far wrong as far as PM_2.5 is concerned.

 

And the goverment wants gas boilers gone..........................................

[JohnMo]

They only bothered with CO2 emissions reduction - blunt stick approach will do

[Adsibob]

Humans also emit CO2. Shall we ban them?

What about cows, providers of my favourite food: steak. Should we ban that?

[JohnMo]

No to human, but the way we are going we kill our selves off.

 

Cows yes.  They could be banned, they emit loads of methane also

[Trw144]

2 hours ago, Roger440 said:

 

Good post. I remeber Jeremy saying that running your average log burner was like having 300 diesel cars outside your house ticking over. On that data, that doesnt look to be that far wrong as far as PM_2.5 is concerned.

 

And the goverment wants gas boilers gone..........................................

These are wood stoves though, so not really comparable to an oil boiler. The equivalent to an oil boiler is a biomass boiler, and the efficient ones of these are sub 2.5 g/GJ now. 

[Thedreamer]

9 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

There have been many reports and studies about adding charcoal to soil to improve it.

Jury is out still.

Much depends on the condition of the soil in the first place.

 

It is not a great idea to add charcoal directly to the soil, as it will act as a sponge soaking up the existing goodness. It's much better to charge it first by adding to the compost and then apply it.

[SteamyTea]

3 hours ago, Roger440 said:

I remeber Jeremy saying that running your average log burner was like having 300 diesel cars outside your house ticking over.

Based on what I said a decade ago, but it was only 50 cars.

Vehicles have to comply with much stricter rules and most have had particulate filters fitter for the last two decades.

Free air combustion and compression combustion cannot really be compared.

3 hours ago, Roger440 said:

And the goverment wants gas boilers gone.

Yes, and for the righth reasons.

Getting rid of domestic combustion technolgies will benefit us all in the medium term.

Those NO_x emissions will virtually vanis from the towns and cities.  Farmers are going to have to work hard to cut their NO_x emissions though, not that rural people care.  They like to think they always get the sticky end of the stick.