mei wrote: ↑26 Sep 2022, 1:11pm
Very interesting reading all the previous pages, in regards to a valid point raised about wood burners polluting neighbour´s ¨air¨ may I throw in my particular (no pun intended) situation.
I live in a very small terrace (semi rural) with houses both sides and I have exterior insulation on the outside walls, insulated plasterboard interior, reasonable loft insulation and windows/doors that meet the current building regs. Central heating is on 47kg gas bottles and I have a 5kw woodburner.
I use the CH less than 20 hours a year and manage to heat the house with just the woodburner, wood is industrial wood waste (dry,pine, no paint) and I manage to collect all I need from work so no extra journeys in it´s collection. I am aware that I am contributing to general/local air pollution with the woodburner but how clear cut is any comparison to other methods of heating, one neighbour burns coal almost all year round (AGA type stove) and the other uses heating oil in a 30 year old boiler. If I was to stop the woodburning and just use Gas bottles is it that much better versus the refining of the gas, delivery by diesel lorry multiple times per winter and waste fumes by the boiler? Electric probably (theoretically) could be the cleanest of all but I would need to change the CH in the house. is there really that much in it at the end of the day? I´m not looking to justify my woodburning but am interested in others take on it.
P.S Thick socks and good jumpers are my friends over the winters.
There are two aspects of pollution in these discussions, one on a neighbour level, the other on a global level.
If you and your neighbours aren't being bothered by your flue outputs then fine. There are some locations and atmospheric conditions which can concentrate smoke pollution from chimneys and flues, others where the pollution carries on up and away. There has been at least one succesful court case taken against a neighbour whose smoke was affecting a neighbour's health.
From the planet's perspective, bottled gas delivered by a lorry and being burned in an older design (serviced/running correctly) of boiler is likely to result in few less black dots on Arctic snow than wood burning, which the scientists judge to be as much of a factor in AGW as CO2, but burning of waste wood (no paint, varnish, ply or other engineered 'wood' etc) which results in no increase in road miles has to be a highly efficient way of heating your home. Together with insulating yourself rather than having a whole house at 18C+ in cold weather surely makes your household as one of the more efficient and lower polluting.
Burning coal spews a particularly nasty cloud of toxins into the air, although in its mitigation it can reduce the frequency of a stove's cycles, emissions are at their highest just after a stove has been reloaded. I can't think of anything else about coal burning which is positive, it's nasty stuff.
https://www.indoordoctor.com/blog/not-b ... fireplace/