Wood cabin woodstove suggestions

[Bugtownboy]

DEFRA paper re PM2.5

https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/assets/docu ... the_UK.pdf

[Oldgreybeard]

It's a very great shame that the gas grid doesn't extend as far as here. If it did, then I am certain the pollution levels would be a great deal lower. Although burning gas is far from perfect, it is MASSIVELY cleaner and less polluting than burning oil, wood, or coal. My anecdotal and far from scientific "sniff" testing when there are problems here are that coal is the very worst (although few burn this now, perhaps because of the cost). Wood comes a very close second. Oil seems undetectable, as does LPG.

Far and away the greatest local winter air quality problem here is burning wood, especially on cold, still, days. If the Mayor of London lived here he would have a fit at the extreme levels of air pollution, I'm sure, it's far, far worse than fleets of dirty diesel buses. I did an ad hoc estimate a few years ago and concluded that our nearest neighbour's (pretty clean burning) wood stove was roughly the equivalent of about forty old Euro 4 VW Golf diesel cars sat idling on their drive 24/7.

[CrofterMannie]

The worst offender in my area (fortunately about 4 miles away) constantly has thick smoke coming from his chimney so bad it has left a brown strain across his roof and the chimney had to be replaced a couple of years ago. I'm sure he uses wet wood all the time.
The annoying thing is he runs the estate sawmill so has a limitless supply of free wood and has plenty space and sheds to dry it. I think it is just pure laziness and he can't been bothered to dry it.

[Mr Gus]

As gone over before.

When a smoker returns to the fire in my local pub the pollution meter goes APE for several minutes from residual chems on the smokers clothing, bringing harm indoors! (which needs dealing with via the same degree of concern & coverage in media.. bit doesn't)

The same monitor hardly blips when around the fire, ..they burn coal nuts AND wood, & no blips outside when the stove is lit either.

So, in the interests of safety, do we ban smokers from pubs countrywide altogether!?

How about "personal toxicity" pieces? ..nah too easy to pump out copy & paste the same narrow slant than come up with new pieces & comparison charts.

&..ban bbq's & wood fire pizza ..so many targets, so little effort by journo fraternity to give sound contextual comparisons & fresh reading matter.

Likely *most* kitchen hood extractors sold dont do the job properly (they'd pull all heat from a room if they did) & really all kitchens ought have a modern pollution meter to learn from, & improve the typical "sealed" home, ..but they don't.

Proximity to pollution must surely be on the rise in many "tight squeezed" in apartments , open plan, toxic drift, ..housing space is getting smaller, ..likely directly linked.

Cannot take it seriously therefore.
What does chris whitty drive / got chauffeured in ? (incidentally)

Blinkers, available for selective viewing

[Oldgreybeard]

I spoke with my GP on the phone earlier (wholly unrelated to this, initially, but I made a light hearted comment about oxygen bottle deliveries along the lane and she mentioned the high incidence of emphysema and what's known colloquially as "farmer's lung" (mostly it isn't, but this is a farming community).

She runs educational groups in the community about health topics and better understanding some common ones, and asked if I could do a stint at one as a "case study" (nothing serious, I've been living with a very mild chronic condition for decades). I've half a mind to see if she can run one of these groups on avoiding the worst impact on health of air pollution.

I have a good ally, the couple that run the village shop moved here from West London about 10 years or so ago, and his mother-in-law (who moved with them) has chest problems now. He's convinced that the cause is the poor air quality here in winter, and reckons it's far worse here than when he and his family were living in Southall, and that's saying something, as that area of West London, along the Uxbridge Road, was notable for poor air quality (I lived in a bedsit near there as a student).

Be good to get hold of someone that really understands the benefits of properly drying wood, choosing the best species as firewood, how to reduce pollution as far as practical, etc. It definitely won't fix the problem, it's far too severe for anything other than the removal of wood and coal burning to fix, but any little improvement would help.

Right now the air quality has improved a great deal since the reading of 420µg/m³ first thing this morning, it's down to between 6µg/m³ and 10µg/m³, but that will start to rise soon as soon as the fires get stoked up. The F7 filter on our MVHR filters out most of the smoke particulates, and is due for a change tomorrow. I'll take a photo of the old filter alongside a new one, as I will happily bet that it will illustrate the scale of the problem.

[Mr Gus]

Presumably OGB, you reminded them that damage may not show until way down the line as part of aging& reduced capacity of lungs, exercise taken weigt etc!? ..easy to moan without thought given the oppo to rattle on via one track (them).

Like "old, sport's injuries"

[Oldgreybeard]

Presumably OGB, you reminded them that damage may not show until way down the line as part of aging& reduced capacity of lungs, exercise taken weigt etc!? ..easy to moan without thought given the oppo to rattle on via one track (them).

Like "old, sport's injuries"

I'll leave that to the GP, she's well up on lung disease, judging from the number of patients she has with it. There does seem to be much more of it here than when we lived in Scotland, many years ago. There heart disease seemed to be very prevalent, so much so that our GP was almost paranoid about monitoring for it, never seen anything like it. I'm generally healthy but had to endure his six monthly regime of ECGs, blood pressure testing etc, and constant reminders from him about diet and alcohol intake.

[ducabi]

I'm a huge fan of wood burners but luckily couldn't install one at my house due to issues with chimney, and at that time I didn't know I could easily run it in a different corner of the house. But when I do bbq or a bonfire I very often use african wood which is quite expensive but very dry, so hopefully less polluting, and I don't bbq more than 2-3x a year now.

Anyway, I've seen some chimney filters recently and was wondering whether they really make any positive impact. Since the temperatures dropped couple days ago I can feel a huge difference in what we are breathing in on evening stroll.

[Oldgreybeard]

The problem with filters is that they need to be very, very fine. The extremely harmful and toxic stuff is invisible, mostly down in the PM2.5 range, so particles around 2.5µm made up of carcinogenic and toxic waste products. To put that size into perspective, the droplet size of very fine fog is typically around 4 times larger, about 10µm.

We filter the air coming into our house with the finest commercial filter available, a grade F7. This keeps out about 50% of the 1µm particulates out, about 70% of the 2.5µm particulates out, and about 90% of the 10µm particulates out. This means about 30% of the really toxic stuff still gets into the house (we can smell smoke in the house despite the filter, for example) but it would be impractical to fit such a filter to a stove, it would clog up in minutes, unless very large indeed, as a stove emits a massively greater amount of flue gas than the ventilation for our whole house.

The hotter a wood stove burns the lower the large (around 10µm and above) particulates it puts out, but burning hot and clean doesn't do much to reduce the volume of harmful very tiny particulates. Being invisible to the naked eye people are often fooled into thinking an apparently "clean" burning stove is safe, the reality is that it's little different to any other in terms of the most harmful pollution products.

[Mr Gus]

Ducabi.

First find the base level of pollution within your room.
Then go outside, different weathers & measure again.

Buy a high efficiency wbs, preferably wit a "catcher" to filter some pollutants (joe has one in his house) the filter needs cleaning annually / replacing eventually.

Tie in with good wood practise, kindling - roaring fire & heat output within minutes as your everyday goal.
If possible insulate the chimney.
Where possible room sealed air flow direct to fire assist complete burn & secondary burn efficiency as a result of good design & procurement of decent aged, dry stored hardwoods, = more heat & less ash.

Consider a Ceramic H pot to improve flue balancing from outside influences & increased draw.
Add in a damper if possible to tweak flow further, ..nb overnight slumbering fire = bad in terms of pollution & tarring potential.
Buy "bailey blue" rods ..they rock where rodding drains & chimneys are concerned.

Folk are chalk & cheese about dampers, but I think of it as an extra layer of security to shut down a fire asap, or restrict out of season air flow & sound via a chimney from outside.