Beware: Smokey and the Log Burning Bandits

[NSS]

Households in England face fines of up to £300 and even criminal records...

 

 

Around 1.5m homes use wood for fuel across the UK, however burning wood and coal in open fires and stoves makes up 38% of the UK's emissions of PM2.5.

By comparison, 16% come from industrial combustion, 12% from road transport and 13% from the use of solvents and industrial processes.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64261624

 

Edited February 1, 2023 by NSS

[SteamyTea]

I am sure that some will claim that because they live in a rural setting and they use 'their own wood', this story is untrue.

 

Smoking in public buildings was banned, and that was less of a problem than this.

[Temp]

Log burners that are approved for smokeless zones have a stop or similar limit which prevents you turning down the air too much. This helps stop smoke when first lit but can make it burn too fast later once it's settled down. 

 

If you know what you are doing id recommend a regular model but keep the airflow high initially or it may smoke too much.

 

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, Temp said:

If you know what you are doing id recommend a regular model but keep the airflow high initially or it may smoke too much.

Two things, it is not just smoke that is the problem.

Probably illegal to fit one that is not approved for the zone it is in.

 

Easier to just not bother, they will, in time, be banned anyway.

[JohnMo]

18 hours ago, NSS said:

open fires and stoves

Think the clue is the word open. Efficiency of about 10% at heat transfer, normally in houses that leak like sieves to feed the fire. Burn enough energy in night, that I could possibly burn in a month, if I wanted a good roasting most nights.

[NSS]

51 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Think the clue is the word open. Efficiency of about 10% at heat transfer, normally in houses that leak like sieves to feed the fire. Burn enough energy in night, that I could possibly burn in a month, if I wanted a good roasting most nights.

I think it's irrelevant whether open or otherwise, the point is that just 1.5 million wood burning homes apparently account for three times the volume of PM2.5 emissions emitted by all road transport!

[JohnMo]

Another view of the world of modern stoves

https://stoveindustryalliance.com/higher-levels-of-pm-created-inside-the-home-from-cooking-than-from-modern-wood-burning-stoves/

 

To give a balanced view of things

[billt]

Hardly balanced, in fact very selective, hardly surprising considering the source.

 

It's possibly true that a modern room sealed stove emits less pollution inside the house than cooking does, but the important pollution is that outside the house which will be very much greater than the pollution from cooking and has a deleterious effect on other people than the stove owner. IOW burning solid fuel is a pretty anti social activity in urban areas.

[Mr Blobby]

22 hours ago, NSS said:

Households in England face fines of up to £300 and even criminal records...

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64261624

 

 

The house next to our plot has a log burner, it will be interesting to see how much smoke comes out the flue in the winter.

Log burners are just anti-social but who's going to enforce this legislation?  Probably nobody sadly.  Even less chance of any fines issued here in Northern Ireland where attitudes to burning stuff are stuck in the 1950s.

 

 

Edited February 2, 2023 by Mr Blobby

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, Mr Blobby said:

Even less chance of any fines issued here in Northern Ireland where attitudes to burning stuff are stuck in the 1950s.

Will that be about ten to 6 on the 31 January 1606.

[ProDave]

4 hours ago, NSS said:

I think it's irrelevant whether open or otherwise, the point is that just 1.5 million wood burning homes apparently account for three times the volume of PM2.5 emissions emitted by all road transport!

WHEN they stop burning mostly imported wood on an industrial scale at DRAX and telling us it is carbon neutral and green, then I might, just might, start thinking about my own use of a small wood burning stove occasionally in the middle of nowhere.

[Mr Blobby]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

Will that be about ten to 6 on the 31 January 1606.

I have no idea what that means.

Go on, give us a clue.. 

[joth]

8 minutes ago, Mr Blobby said:

I have no idea what that means.

Go on, give us a clue.. 

 

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=31+January+1606

[NSS]

42 minutes ago, ProDave said:

WHEN they stop burning mostly imported wood on an industrial scale at DRAX and telling us it is carbon neutral and green, then I might, just might, start thinking about my own use of a small wood burning stove occasionally in the middle of nowhere.

I assume DRAX falls into the 16% industrial combustion segment, Dave, which is still well under half the figure attributed to those 1.5m homes.

[Adsibob]

5 hours ago, NSS said:

I think it's irrelevant whether open or otherwise, the point is that just 1.5 million wood burning homes apparently account for three times the volume of PM2.5 emissions emitted by all road transport!

I don’t think it’s irrelevant at all. If you banned all open fires and converted them all to the latest eco design stoves, the pollution caused by log burning would fall drastically, such that they would emit less than road transport.

[Mr Blobby]

1 hour ago, joth said:

 

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=31+January+1606

 

Guy Fawkes?

That's a GB celebration. Nobody in Northern Ireland has ever heard of him.

 

[SteamyTea]

9 hours ago, Mr Blobby said:

I have no idea what that means.

Go on, give us a clue.. 

Guido Fawkes

[NSS]

9 hours ago, Adsibob said:

I don’t think it’s irrelevant at all. If you banned all open fires and converted them all to the latest eco design stoves, the pollution caused by log burning would fall drastically, such that they would emit less than road transport.

 

Perhaps, but that's a big if, and there are 39 million vehicles on Britain's roads (26 times the number of fires/burners).

[SteamyTea]

I suspect people change their vehicles to a newer model more often than they change wood burners.

 

We already have legislation to reduce the number of ICE cars, and many cities have pro actively banned the worse polluting vehicles from cities centres.

 

I drove, in my old EURO4 Diesel past the Hayle estuary the other day.  There was a haze over it caused by wood smoke.  There is probably less than 100 houses next to the bank, and even less higher up.  If 10% had the stoves going, it showed how bad things are.

And that is just the visible smoke, can't see the fine particulates, but they are there.

[SteamyTea]

Bit in the Guardian about Londoners' and wood burners.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/20/wood-burners-urban-air-pollution-londoners-support-ban

 

[twice round the block]

There were more than 200.000 new log burners installed last year and with the rising fuel prices the number is expected to be far higher this year.

 

Khan is trying to get them outlawed in London.... along with everything else that creates an odour. 

[Ecthelion]

I don’t believe for a second that log burners emit more than road transport. Or even a fraction of road transport or industrial. 
 

it’s total nonsense with an agenda to force heat pumps. I have both.

[SteamyTea]

16 minutes ago, Ecthelion said:

I don’t believe for a second that log burners emit more than road transport. Or even a fraction of road transport or industrial

It depends on what you measure, and how.

 

For example:

Compare the particulates emitted by a wood burner and a diesel car that is ticking over.

Both will be producing about 5 kW of power, so comparable in output.

You can also compare the efficiency i.e. how much energy each uses in one hour.

You can compare noise, say at 1 metre distance.

 

What you cannot do is compare 1 wood burner will all the vehicles that pass your house while it is lit. 

 

As for industry, not many use wood fired energy these days in the UK. If they did, we would have run out of indigenous things to burn.

 

You can try as hard as you like to convince yourself that your wood burner is doing no harm.

But you are only convincing yourself.

[dpmiller]

Power is not heat tho. You'd need to load the diesel up until it's producing 5kW of *waste* heat to compare directly...

[Ecthelion]

32 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

It depends on what you measure, and how.

 

For example:

Compare the particulates emitted by a wood burner and a diesel car that is ticking over.

Both will be producing about 5 kW of power, so comparable in output.

You can also compare the efficiency i.e. how much energy each uses in one hour.

You can compare noise, say at 1 metre distance.

 

What you cannot do is compare 1 wood burner will all the vehicles that pass your house while it is lit. 

 

As for industry, not many use wood fired energy these days in the UK. If they did, we would have run out of indigenous things to burn.

 

You can try as hard as you like to convince yourself that your wood burner is doing no harm.

But you are only convincing yourself.

I am entirely convinced. My wood burner is a modern, Norwegian built Jotul F373, installed as I was building my house in 2016. It has exceptional performance and I use excellent wood which is sourced locally. 
 

When it burns you have to look very hard indeed to see anything coming out of the flue and on a gray day you won’t be able to see anything. I also had the flue cleaned and after 8 years of burning the guy said he could find nothing in the flue. 
 

in this 8 year period I have planted 208 trees on my property. 

Edited April 21 by Ecthelion