[Greenbuilding] one more pleasure (or not) of heating with wood

Reuben Deumling 9watts at gmail.com
Thu Dec 30 23:24:41 CST 2010


On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 8:52 PM, JOHN SALMEN <terrain at shaw.ca> wrote:

>  If I can make a bad analogy – a woodstove is like a diesel tractor – can
> be abused and keep on running – whereas a ‘heating system’ is for a consumer
> something more like a car that needs to be kept current and have all the
> bells and whistles – something big with a big logo (has to have a lot of
> ‘tonnage’). Not sure which is better but both have a degree of stubbornness,
> and chauvinism attached to them.
>
My analogy is also with a diesel car, but it is a bit different. My
neighbors, who all have natural gas fired forced air furnaces, point to the
air quality I with my wood stove am ruining (they used to say this, but I
think I have mollified them as I've learned to do this better). Same with
folks who drive gasoline powered cars. In this country they are fond of
pointing a finger at those with diesel cars for ruining the air quality, or,
more recently, of saddling kids with asthma. But to the analogy part, my
feeling is that the pollution generated by wood stoves and diesel cars tends
to occur more visibly at the site of the end use. The driver or heater and
those who are proximate experience some of the sensible pollution. With
natural gas and gasoline, that pollution occurs mostly upstream, it is
outsourced to the communities that get the fracking, the sludge, the ruined
ground water, the flaring, the oil wells, or downstream to everyone: the sea
level rise, the disrupted weather patterns, the spread of infectious
diseases, etc. Our predisposition to notice the variants of pollution we can
see or smell seems to blind us at least in the US to the larger issues, the
tradeoffs; this rush to judgment precludes a more inclusive comparison of
the full impacts of--in this case--heating with wood vs heating with fossil
fuels.

>
>
> That said – wood is no longer technically a primary heating system in
> houses based on insurers requirements and costs for insurance so there will
> always be some other ‘primary’ form of heating in place.
>
Is it worth pondering how this might change as the cost and availability of
fossil fuels changes? I admit to not understanding these requirements--I do
know that a building inspector told me some gobbledegook a few years back
about how the code he was to enforce required the heating system to supply
something like a constant 64F temperature at so many feet off the floor bla
bla--clearly something that only a thermostat or perhaps a Passivhaus could
hope to deliver. None of the houses I interact with are new, and so I
suppose an older code obtains, or none, so these houses merrily heat only
with wood. But I'd be curious to learn more about how insurers see this,
what power they (may) have over these heating choices and decisions.

>
>
> I have a love-hate thing with woodstoves. Based on the love of the form and
> quality of the heat and our rural life we used it for years. My hatred stems
> from the basic pollution of a wood stove and how they fail and the
> consequences of that failure in ‘wood burning communities’.  I spent the
> majority of my life in heavily polluted cities and where I live now rurally
>  is quite pristine in terms of air except in the winter where levels can
> exceed an urban smog index. This is true of a lot of rural communities in
> the world.
>

I wonder if it is reasonable to try to estimate how much of this unpleasant
experience is due to
- technique of the fire laying and stoking person
- quality/condition of the firewood
- design or condition of the stove
My assumption is that done properly, heating with a cast iron wood stove can
be accomplished satisfactorily at great densities (it certainly was the norm
in my city a century ago, though I can't speak with too much authority about
the prevailing quality of the air in winter back then).

>
>
> This can be improved upon and a masonry stove is the ultimate (and the only
> option that I have flogged) but that is a major investment and generally is
> only purchased by people that can afford it as a secondary major heat
> investment and decoration. The default for people is the basic low cost
> (approved?) plate steel woodstove which breaks down very quickly – loses
> efficiency and subsequently doesn’t meet any of the emissions standards they
> are supposed to and then goes on being used for a decade or so. The classic
> cast iron stoves work well but still need to be maintained on a regular
> basis to meet emission standards and at a certain point need to be totally
> overhauled. Historically in my area the classic loggers woodstove was a 50
> gallon drum with a door and flue welded on to it. Our community is currently
> offering $500 rebates to ‘anyone’ that will turn in an old stove and get
> something a little cleaner to pull in those 30 yr old stoves.
>
There are of course wretched combinations of stove design and fuel moisture
content and/or technique that give wood heating a bad name. How deservedly
the bad name is I'm always keen to learn more about.

>
>
> What got to me personally is that regardless of how well I had planned
> burning we are subject to rapid weather changes – including inversions and
> wind patterns that could quickly create a negative pressure and bring that
> smoke back into our house.
>

I must be lucky with respect to draft--never had a problem with smoke where
anyone indoors could smell it. I've also learned on pretty good authority
that a good rule of thumb is if the smoke is invisible you're doing about as
much right with the fire as can be hoped. I find I can achieve that
condition within a quarter of an hour or so after I light the paper. I'm not
up there with my nose--or a meter--next to the chimney cap, though, so can't
speak to the finer points of this issue.

> That was not the environment I had planned for my children despite the
> romance of the wood fire and the easy access I have for wood. We have
> switched to a hot water radiant system that is being converted now to solar
> – still not ideal but I think an improvement in the community and for my
> household.
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20101230/0a2ee4d4/attachment.html>


More information about the Greenbuilding mailing list