Wood burners in the news

[Scottieoutdoors]

Wood for a lot of people is still a heck of a lot cheaper than gas and oil because of the labour side of things. Gas an oil is an end product that you have zero input into collecting, manufacturing, delivering etc... Wood, someone mentioned it, that it's more expensive because people don't measure their own time... whilst this is true, depending on your work, you may not have the option to use that "free time" for overtime etc, so in actual fact you're "earning" by sourcing your own wood... by cutting, splitting, etc etc, you're actually not paying someone else to do it, thus there is more money in your bank account because of it....

It's also not taking into consideration the exercise aspect, nor the theraputic aspect of it. Admittedly my line of thought is not taking into consideration the days when it's pouring down or freezing cold and you need to split some logs and your axe is blunt because you meant to sharpen it but didn't get round to it etc...

 

[huntersforge]

As a woodburner owner I am in agreement that there needs to be some middle ground met. Burning old pallets , builders offcuts and moisture laden wood create more pollution than properly dried wood, educating rather than legislating is the way forward in my opinion.
We have access to woodland where we collect, split and store our own firewood. All wood we burn is seasoned and dry stored in our log store at home.
We also have mains gas but try to keep its use to a minimum.
HF

 

[Robson Valley]

There are "wood burners" and then there are wood burners. Which is which you talk about? Mine is practically smokeless. From the street, you can't tell if the stove is running or not.

Wood pellet stoves are very popular here for smokeless heat and economics using trash wood post-wildfire. Millions of hectares of standing, cracked useless pine , spruce and douglasfir. BUT, the pellet industry is positioned to use it all.
Unit trains are a mile long, moving pellets to the East Coast then across to Scandinavia. There's economy in there, somewhere.

Took just 3 winters to repay the capital cost of the stove and fixtures. Two more winters saved enough to build the entire photovoltaic system. A winter was about 5 tons (4500kg) for 1/2 the price of oil-fired furnace heat which was climbing every few months. The pellet price was stable for 5+ years which both pleased and surprised me.

Burning junk lumber or trash round wood should take some special care to get as complete combustion as you can. I decided when I bought this house in 2000 that I didn't want to mess with either of those.

 

[wickerman]

my wood burner is my only source of heat apart from electric water heater .....I burn dry logs from my our little 3 acres of woodland .....you can not see smoke coming out of my chimney once it has started I heat my house for free that is what government dislikes.....and people should not burn treated wood ie pallets and decking off cuts

 

[Paul_B]

Who gets to decide whether or not you need a woodburner? What about a mobile phone, or a laptop. Perhaps the children who are forced to slave away under appalling conditions to produce them might think you don't need them either.
I've got a phone and a laptop, I could barely justify needing one of them, let alone both.
My point is, you educate people and let them make their own minds up. But it becomes murky when you start talking about restricting people based upon what someone else decides your needs are.

Government it seems if the law goes through! lol

 

[Kadushu]

This seems to be the general direction of modern "progress" - a march down the road of totalitarian control over life's minutiae and towards urbanisation. Undoubtedly that suits many but I'd rather run the other way.

 

[Laurentius]

It is getting worse, I have just seen a newspaper article this morning telling us that gas hobs are dangerous to health because they cause pollution in the kitchen!

 

[FerlasDave]

It is getting worse, I have just seen a newspaper article this morning telling us that gas hobs are dangerous to health because they cause pollution in the kitchen!

At least the newspaper will make good tinder for your wood burner.

 

[British Red]

It is getting worse, I have just seen a newspaper article this morning telling us that gas hobs are dangerous to health because they cause pollution in the kitchen!

That's okay, we don't use gas

Esse & Pheasants Sepia by British Red, on Flickr

 

[Robson Valley]

The tricky part was to get the Health Gurus to reveal what they were on about for "toxic" fumes from gas-fired appliances. The kitchen stove is the only gas appliance without a chimney. We can buy gas-fired clothes dryers if we had gas for other purposes. Revealed, it's carbon monoxide. How much, they never say.

I hedged my bets and added a pellet stove thinking that the price of petroleum-based product prices (furnace oil, etc) would never go down. I was right. In fact, the pellet stove ran at about 50% of the furnace operating cost and the price per ton stayed at approx $230.00 for 5 years, as I recall.

I have no major debts at all so I can afford the oil furnace. I sold the pellet stove as I was warned post-operative, that lifting the 40lb pellet bags would be too much of a strain on my guts.

 

[demented dale]

Wood burners are a source of independence from the big energy companies and government and we can't have that. The so called climate crisis is being used to highlight and ultimately forbid any form of self reliance under the ruse of saving the planet. We could soon see the banning of solid fuel burners and the laws on foraging, fishing and hunting tightened. Even the keeping of chickens and other animals could be outlawed under some phony bird, monkey flu prevention strategy. We are seeing the systematic removal of our rights and choices. It is unfolding in plain view. We will all just have to go and live in the new proposed smart cities, eat insects and worship Bill Gates. I am not a conspiracy theorist but I do believe the Queen was a shape shifting lizard and it stands to reason that King Charles is one also. Any thought?????

 

[C_Claycomb]

… Any thought?????

11 posts in 1h5m…exactly how much coffee did you have this morning!?!

Bill Gates is so yesterday!
Don’t worry about having to live in a smart city. We cannot even keep the potholes filled in on dumb roads.

As for the rest, just be sure you don’t fall fowl of the forum rules about posting politics or it won’t just be chicken keepers in trouble

All the best

Chris

PS. Anyone interested in the secrets of the Royal family should know they are not Lizard People…too cold esp in Scotland. They are alien werewolves…I saw a Doctor say so on TV…looked a lot like David Tennant.

 

[William_Montgomery]

Wood burners are a source of independence from the big energy companies and government and we can't have that. The so called climate crisis is being used to highlight and ultimately forbid any form of self reliance under the ruse of saving the planet. We could soon see the banning of solid fuel burners and the laws on foraging, fishing and hunting tightened. Even the keeping of chickens and other animals could be outlawed under some phony bird, monkey flu prevention strategy. We are seeing the systematic removal of our rights and choices. It is unfolding in plain view. We will all just have to go and live in the new proposed smart cities, eat insects and worship Bill Gates. I am not a conspiracy theorist but I do believe the Queen was a shape shifting lizard and it stands to reason that King Charles is one also. Any thought?????

A new law is currently being proposed which will require all backyard chickens to be registered with the UK government.

 

[MrEd]

my wood burner is my only source of heat apart from electric water heater .....I burn dry logs from my our little 3 acres of woodland .....you can not see smoke coming out of my chimney once it has started I heat my house for free that is what government dislikes.....and people should not burn treated wood ie pallets and decking off cuts

Untreated wood makes for good kindling though, I last summer had a wooden garden office built for home working and it all came on giant wooden pallets - none of which were treated chemically (just heat treated) and so new they were still leaking sap. I have split the lot down into 6 inch by 1/2 x 1/2 inch kindling and it’s all now stacked in supermarket stacking crates airing and drying in the wood store ready for use winter 2023 (maybe 2024 as I have loads left over from this winter!)

But yeah chemically treated or pressure treated, painted, oil soaked etc are a no-no in a wood burner tbh.

 

[Keith_Beef]

On the issue of fuel costs; I think feeling you have an option, a way of being somewhat in control of your expenses, of providing heat / cooking for your family, must be very reassuring.
I think it's often a false economy though, because you have to vector in not only the cost of firewood but the all too often ignored costs of your time and labour.

If I spend an hour on a Saturday cutting into firewood a tree that was felled in the back garden three years ago, that's time I would otherwise have spent doing something else that I wouldn't be getting paid for. Ditto, if I spend a, hour out in the street the day after a very windy night, picking up deadwood that the wind has shaken out of the trees.

Our wood burning insert should reach around 400°C when the secondary combustion gets going: very little other than carbon dioxide and water vapour. We don't use it much, mostly as a secondary heater to supplement the oil-fired central heating when the weather is really cold.

We live on the outskirts of the Forêt Domaniale de Saint-Germain. There are plenty of fallen trees, mostly oak, hornbeam, chestnut, beech, locust, a bit of birch.

I could probably borrow a horse, make a breast collar and long reins for it, train the horse by having it drag a tyre around and then take it into the forest and pull big sections of wood back to the house.

 

[gibson 175]

Scratching my head again, at my cottage I have central heating taking heat from water heated by wood. So is central heating by wood totally unknown concept?

i am really interested in how they do the central heating in Finland. can you point me in the right drection to find out more eg links ,articles, books etc
is this the kind of thing most people use in Finland?https://www.tulikivi.com/ Do you use masonry stoves?
Also, I have never seen a house with wood fired central heating in a big UK city.

 

[Keith_Beef]

Also, I have never seen a house with wood fired central heating in a big UK city.

Neither have I, but I have seen them in France. A friend has a massive hopper in the cellar, pellets are blown into it from a tanker that delivers once or twice a year.

There are a few companies in England that will install a system for you.

wood pellet fuel central heating - Google Search

 

[Laurentius]

Unfortunately there are some folk who think that owning a wood burner gives them a licence to go anywhere on anybodies land when they don't think anyone is going to notice and cut down whatever they find there.

 

[MrEd]

Unfortunately there are some folk who think that owning a wood burner gives them a licence to go anywhere on anybodies land when they don't think anyone is going to notice and cut down whatever they find there.

yep that is actually an issue tbh. Some woodland i have permission to enter (family owned) had some issues with fly tipping, and wood theft - particularly of the piles of wood cut up and stacked for biodiversity, a new gate and 4g cameras put a stop to it but yes, PITA

 

[SaraR]

Plenty of ppl around here who've got an Aga or Rayburn range connected up to their radiators...