Woodsmoke...

[spread-tee]

Blimey Gus, calm down a bit.....

your argument basically seems to be, "there are many other sources so why target wood burning" and a bit of shooting the messenger

Lets face it as arguments go it's pants, if we follow that to its conclusion we may as well not bother with anything.

It's another inconvenient truth, I don't want to get rid of my woodstove either, but can I keep pouring out particulates?

Desp

[Bugtownboy]

But - read the DEFRA paper Desp. There just so many sources of PM. The measurement and assignation of PM2.5’s is questionable - though I accept they are produced.

Perhaps we need a system of TEQ’s but instead of Energy it’s Environmental Quota’s. So I can either go for a blast in my Tesla to produce PM2.5’s or light the WBS.

[AE-NMidlands]

All I can say is that I live in a suburban street and am surrounded by them, including the houses either side and in streets in front and behind, so we get it whatever the wind direction. This autumn has been very mild, thank goodness, but it has started again in the last week or two...
Almost nobody seems to have any technical competence or sense of social responsibility (like drying wood before use.) We are trying to ventilate our double glazed Victiorian house adequately but we still have to dash around shutting every window tight to prevent the rooms get filled with filth as the polluters light up and then keep topping up.
The window-sills show up just how much black crap drops out, so the finer stuff that stays airborne is clearly worse and much more penetrating. Grrrr!

[Bugtownboy]

Ours is on at the moment. No visible smoke, no odour, clean, bright flame.

Burning Ash at 12-15% MC. Never burn carp. Always well seasoned hardwood. Wood is from managed sources locally, all air-dried - don’t touch any of the kiln-dried stuff.

I accept there’s a societal responsibility, although surely this has to be taken in the round with your other emissions and non-renewable energy.

[spread-tee]

Hi BTB,

I agree that a good woodstove burning dry wood wont be the worst polluter and there are many sources of PM2.5s out there

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/12/1326/htm

this paper does provide what seems pretty robust evidence that stove do indeed produce a fair amount of particles, measuring their relative impact on overall outdoor air quality is a slightly different issue. The Camden paper seems to suggest a good proportion of particles in the air are produced by stoves, 25%ish IIRC. Part of the issue is that whilst stoves are lovely things to have in the house we don't really need them, there are plenty of viable alternatives.

These are the kinds of choices we all face, a change of habits that are hard to9 do..........

Desp

[Ken]

Ban open fires immediately! They are quite inefficient and are heat negative ie more heat is lost when they are not lit than when they are !

So we let trees fall down and decay and produce methane which is x% more polluting than co2 and doesnt get removed. I prefer particulates that can be washed out of the air.

When my stove is burning (at c350C and dry wood) there is no visible smoke.

Compare to one volcano, one bush fire, all the car tyres etc etc. Your haveing a laugh.

Ken

[AE-NMidlands]

but there isn't a volcano just outside my bedroom window...

[Joeboy]

This is a fiery one (did ye get it)? It would be nice if there was a carbon capture or even water lock inline filter that could be replaced every year but I don't think such a thing is out there? Social responsibility is the answer and also the stumbling block. We are up and running here to heat soak the house after 3 weeks shut down and its perking away at 320 C and a middle setting for air intake at the moment. Will damp airfow slightly later on when full ash bed has developed. I have a particulate screen in the burn chamber and the unit is meant to be 89% efficient. Best I could do with the tech at hand. I feel no guilt, can't smell it, cant see it apart from a heat haze at flue. Be a good neighbor is the way to be, It doesn't hurt to be that.

It is also room sealed, this makes a massive difference to the performance and means we burn less to achieve the goal.

I'm not D waving but from the books and more for someone who hasn't yet bought a stove 'Quaternary combustion Burley's stoves have a unique quaternary (fourth) combustion process. ... The mesh is heated to such a high temperature that, when any particles of soot or creosote which have escaped the secondary combustion touch it, they are ignited on contact'.




All of our logs are renewable harvested, split and air dried using solar power or at worse grid electric for the chainsaw & logsplitter. I aimed to have all my logs processed in solar months and hit 98%+ (roughly) of that goal.

Any ash from post process is strewn across the veg patches.

[Ken]

but there isn't a volcano just outside my bedroom window...

No but i have your gas boiler.

[Oldgreybeard]

I live in a rural area and we usually have pretty good air quality, being well away from any cities or built up areas. I've been monitoring the air quality here for a few years now, using a particulate monitor that logs the quantity and size of particulates in the air. One thing that shows very clearly is that the air quality here deteriorates when our nearest neighbour (around 300m away) lights their wood stove. On cold nights we can easily get air pollution levels that are far worse than those on a busy city street. We rarely seem to get any visible air pollution, and our neighbours stove doesn't really seem to emit smoke, it seems that whatever it is releasing to the air is invisible.

I was really surprised by this at first, but having done some research I came across this recent Guardian article and then traced back some of the research it was based on: https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... tion-fires

The article seems to be true, as far as I have been able to tell, and it seems it is a well known problem, as I found a BMJ article examining the causes of harmful air pollution in a town in Tasmania: https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.e8446 .

It really does seem as if the small percentage of people burning wood are now creating the biggest contribution to particulate emissions here. On a bad night our monitor often shows that we have PM10 levels of around 50µg/m³, PM2.5 levels of around 25µg/m³, which is a lot higher than the street level pollution in big cities from around 30 years ago, before stricter vehicle emission controls. We regularly see winter air pollution levels that exceed those in cities that have imposed pollution control measures, in fact the air quality here can often be worse than that at street level in central London.

It seems that one of life's pleasures, sitting in front of a warm stove on a winter's evening, is probably far worse for our health than driving around in a big diesel truck.