Wood cabin woodstove suggestions

[Fintray]

If you do end up with a used stove and it has cracked fire bricks I would replace them with vermiculite board. I replaced cracked ones in my Morso once only for them to crack shortly afterwards, no problems since vermiculite board fitted (easy to cut to the correct shape).

[Mr Gus]

Yeah I need to fit some myself, thanks for the reminder.

[Joeboy]

If you do end up with a used stove and it has cracked fire bricks I would replace them with vermiculite board. I replaced cracked ones in my Morso once only for them to crack shortly afterwards, no problems since vermiculite board fitted (easy to cut to the correct shape).

Excellent idea, mucho gracias Senor!

[ALAN/ALAN D]

“Ecodesign” wood burning stoves produce 450 times more toxic air pollution than gas central heating, according to new data published in a report from Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England.

Older stoves, now banned from sale, produce 3,700 times more, while electric heating produces none, the report said.

Air pollution was chosen by Whitty as the focus of his 2022 annual report. “It kills a lot of people [and] causes a lot of disease and disability throughout life,”

Time to rip all these out and Open Coal Mines again. ?

[Mr Gus]

You couldn't make it up

Also as per another thread, what is "eco design" if there's no proper mother-fudging proper credentials & it is no more than a blimmin buzzword to be whored out to whoever, whenever!?

Add to that zero mention of woodstoves with scrubbers / catalysts as per usual, which is my reply as usual, .broken bloody record, because of sh1te reporting AGAIN.

[Oldgreybeard]

“Ecodesign” wood burning stoves produce 450 times more toxic air pollution than gas central heating, according to new data published in a report from Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England.

Older stoves, now banned from sale, produce 3,700 times more, while electric heating produces none, the report said.

Air pollution was chosen by Whitty as the focus of his 2022 annual report. “It kills a lot of people [and] causes a lot of disease and disability throughout life,”

Time to rip all these out and Open Coal Mines again. ?

Been the case for years now. Woodstoves took over as the biggest single source of toxic air pollution years ago in the UK, after they made cars so much cleaner that car exhausts dropped from the number one spot. The fact that more people have been installing them hasn't helped. I have an air quality monitor outside, been there several years now. We live out in the countryside, so rarely get any significant air pollution here until the autumn, when it rises to higher levels than the middle of the city of London, as all the neighbouring wood stoves fire up.

Not at all unusual in weather like this to have visible yellow smog from the stoves in the nearby village, stuck there because of the depth of the valley and the inversion that often sits over this area in still weather. Looking outside right now the visibility is maybe 20 metres, and the "mist" is mostly trapped woodsmoke, as it's faintly yellow and the particulate indicator is reading about 1,500 times the safe level for PM2.5s.

Much of that will, thank goodness, be trapped by the F7 filter on our air intake, but definitely not a day to go outside without a decent filtration mask on. That level is around the same as those seen during the infamous smogs in London in the year I was born. Around 10,000 people died from that single smog event that year. No wonder the neighbours either side of us both have severe breathing difficulties, given the air quality issues here on cold, still, days.

[chris_n]

Where I live in Austria we can clearly see the smog created by burning wood. When we are skiing on the local mountains I can see down to the Inn valley which is the main valley that runs through Tirol. We can also see many smaller valleys in the surrounding area. In winter when everything is covered in snow and we have a high pressure area the air in the valleys becomes trapped and gets very cold (temperature inversion) when this happens as the days go on you can see the brown - yellow smog building up until eventually the weather changes and the air can escape and take the crap with it. In the Inn valley some of this pollution can be down to industry and the motorway but the surrounding valleys have no industry (apart from farming and tourism) and you can still see the same effect there.

[Oldgreybeard]

I went to see my GP yesterday, noticeable that two out of the four people in the waiting room were carrying portable oxygen bottles and using cannulas for breathing assistance. Commonplace this time of year, when the air quality is extremely poor, but almost unavoidable, given that there is no mains gas here, electricity is expensive, most homes are are very old and open fires, stoves and oil boilers are the most common form of heating.

[Joeboy]

I went to see my GP yesterday, noticeable that two out of the four people in the waiting room were carrying portable oxygen bottles and using cannulas for breathing assistance. Commonplace this time of year, when the air quality is extremely poor, but almost unavoidable, given that there is no mains gas here, electricity is expensive, most homes are are very old and open fires, stoves and oil boilers are the most common form of heating.

That is a pisser...

[Oldgreybeard]

A town in Tasmania, Launceston, became a very good test case for wood smoke specific health issues, and the town set about reducing the use of wood stoves and also ran some high quality research studies on the effect this had on public health. The British Medical Journal summarised this in 2013:

Reduction in air pollution from wood-burning stoves associated with significantly reduced risk of death
(Published 7 January 2013)

Research: Evaluation of interventions to reduce biomass smoke air pollution on mortality in Launceston, Australia: retrospective analysis of daily mortality, 1994-2007

Male deaths from all-causes, but particularly cardiovascular and respiratory disease, could be significantly reduced with a decrease in biomass smoke (smoke produced by domestic cooking and heating and woodland fires), a paper published today on bmj.com suggests.

The researchers say this could have significant impact on further interventions to reduce pollution from this source.

Although a large amount of research has been carried out on the adverse health effects of air pollution, no studies have reported reductions in deaths associated with interventions to reduce biomass smoke pollution.

In 2001, Launceston (in Tasmania, Australia) was the setting for a series of interventions to reduce wood smoke pollution. The interventions dramatically accelerated a general trend towards using electric rather than wood heaters. As such, wood stove prevalence fell from 66% to 30% of all households and average particulate air pollution during winter was reduced by 40% (44 µg/m³ – 27 µg/m³).

Researchers from Australia and Canada used this data to assess whether there were any significant changes in all-cause, cardiovascular and respiratory mortality.

This is the first study to assess changes in mortality associated with a reduction in smoke from domestic wood heaters. The researchers compared the population of Launceston with the population of Hobart (also in Tasmania), which did not have any air quality interventions.

The reductions in mortality (deaths per 1000 people at risk per year, adjusted for age) between 1994-2001 and 2001-2007 were not significant for males and females combined (2.7% for all-cause mortality; 4.9% for cardiovascular mortality; 8.5% respiratory mortality). However, reductions were statistically significant for males alone: differences of 11.4% for all-cause mortality; 17.9% for cardiovascular and 22.8% for respiratory.

Results taken during the winter months (June – August) showed even higher reductions: cardiovascular 20%; respiratory 28%.

The researchers conclude that a trend was found in reduced all-cause, cardiovascular and respiratory mortality during the period of improved air quality which was greatest during winter with stronger associations in males. They say that the findings “highlight the potential for important public health gains from interventions to reduce ambient pollution from biomass smoke”.

One key figure in the above to note is that the worst particulate concentration measured was 44µg/m³. Right now, as the smog is clearing here as the sun comes out, our reading is 168µg/m³. First thing this morning it was reading 420µg/m³. We only have two neighbours, one about 40m to 50m away, the other about 200m away. My guess is that the air quality in the village, with the houses much closer together, will be significantly worse.

I do not go outside without an FFP3 mask unless the particulate level drops below about 30µg/m³, in conditions like this. As soon as the cold, still, weather changes the particulate levels drop dramatically.

The full BMJ paper can be read here: https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.e8446.full.pdf

These two photos of the town illustrate the effect that an inversion has on any low lying settlement:

Lauceston wood smoke problem.jpg (87.36 KiB) Viewed 3446 times