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1 hour ago, dmr said:

 

On Christmas day we lit a fire in a canalside field, ate a bag of mixed nuts and drank a bottle of port (or was it two). I suspect and hope we did less damage to the environment than a typical christmas day.

I've bought two bottles of Taylor's Reserve port, they are pretty awful compared to the real thing (bottled and aged naturally).  I'll probably try a few mulled wine recipes with them if the temperature drops again.  I seem to remember a twist of orange peel and lemon zest are involved, nutmeg and cinnamon in moderation.

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Just now, IanD said:

The problem with woodburning stoves is not CO2 emissions but particulates, especially the small PM2.5 ones which have recently been found to be particularly unhealthy to breathe.

 

That's why there have been all the articles recently against solid fuel stoves, even woodburners...

 

Like the particles the neighbours' diesel 4x4 SUVs all emit, would that be? 

 

Just wondering...

 

 

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Just now, MtB said:

 

Ah right. My stove and flue is brand new, installed by a HETAS bod in full compliance with Building Regs and whistles annoyingly when you close it right down as air gets sucked in through the microscopic gaps in the door seals etc!

 

 

That's posh, this one isn't, I suspect, installed by a proper bod and it's from the cheaper end, I should have properly inspected it at the end of the summer and sorted it.

 

I did spot the insanely dangerous one in the other end of the house and did sort that one, but we don't use that end :)

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Just now, MtB said:

 

Like the particles the neighbours' diesel 4x4 SUVs all emit, would that be? 

 

Just wondering...

 

Just because somebody else sh*ts in the shower doesn't make it OK for you to do it... 😉

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Both of my boat fires are custom made with small diameter flues. 70mm on one and 80mm on the other one. Small fires for comfortably small boats.

 

People think you need larger diameter flues to get the gases out but the truth is that you need a hot flue. Once you have a hot flue you can do what you like. I've had loads of fires with 4 inch diameter flues before but always had problems with blockages. These small flues are no trouble at all. I've been burning green winter felled ash continuously during the day for the last week and can have the door of the fire open no smoke into boat.

 

 Big fan of hot fires and hot flues !

Edited by magnetman
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Given that climate change is going to cause massive uncontrollable temperature increase and a lot of burning things it seems wise to me to get used to bad air quality and learn to live with it.

 

It isn't going to get better. Everything is going to burn. It could get quite scary. At least this is what the marketing says.

 

 

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4 minutes ago, LadyG said:

I've bought two bottles of Taylor's Reserve port, they are pretty awful compared to the real thing (bottled and aged naturally).  I'll probably try a few mulled wine recipes with them if the temperature drops again.  I seem to remember a twist of orange peel and lemon zest are involved, nutmeg and cinnamon in moderation.

 

For me the concept of drinking alcohol is to get  pi***d, I do like good stuff but no point in going over the top.

Taylors late bottled vintage is a very decent mainstream port and plenty good enough for me, especially if I drink at least half a bottle.

Some of the more specialists ports are quite a bit better, I think they are anyway, can't really remember.

If you had come up to the Rochdale summit rather than whimping out you could have shared some posh port with us. 😀

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10 minutes ago, IanD said:

The problem with woodburning stoves is not CO2 emissions but particulates, especially the small PM2.5 ones which have recently been found to be particularly unhealthy to breathe.

 

That's why there have been all the articles recently against solid fuel stoves, even woodburners...

 

I know. But the articles place all the blame on wood burning stoves. There is no mention of unregulated wood burning in the media which in reality probably contributes a lot to the particulate pollution. You don't have to look very far where I live to find someone burning a large pile of soaking felled wood complete with leaves in a bonfire bigger than a small house, probably emitting more particulates per hour than a wood burning stove would emit in an entire winter. 

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1 hour ago, dmr said:

 

For me the concept of drinking alcohol is to get  pi***d, I do like good stuff but no point in going over the top.

Taylors late bottled vintage is a very decent mainstream port and plenty good enough for me, especially if I drink at least half a bottle.

Some of the more specialists ports are quite a bit better, I think they are anyway, can't really remember.

If you had come up to the Rochdale summit rather than whimping out you could have shared some posh port with us. 😀

Be careful what you wish for :)

I still have the summit pound on my radar, once I've filled the diesel tank. I really don't want to be iced in too far from civilisation (it was quite convenient outside the pub), and handy for the shops!

Edited by LadyG
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6 hours ago, booke23 said:

 

I know. But the articles place all the blame on wood burning stoves. There is no mention of unregulated wood burning in the media which in reality probably contributes a lot to the particulate pollution. You don't have to look very far where I live to find someone burning a large pile of soaking felled wood complete with leaves in a bonfire bigger than a small house, probably emitting more particulates per hour than a wood burning stove would emit in an entire winter. 

That sounds pretty stupid, but one can't legislate for stupidity, to my mind there is also a lot of treated wood which is burnt, outputing PCBs and other contaminates straight in to the atmosphere, to be inhaled forever, not just by humans but by the entire biosphere.

I'm not convinced that large particulates remain in the air in the same way, look at the blackening of buildings from smoke of the industry from the eighteenth century onwards, smoke particles having been permanently removed from the atmosphere

In my experience my coal fire exhausts horrid black smoke at start up, immediately potentially lung damaging while my dried hardwood logs are much more user friendly. 

 

Edited by LadyG
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Out here in Kosovo our power station runs on a dirty brown coal called Lignite and is the most polluting power station in Europe, most cars are diesel including one of mine. 

Some years back when the power supply was crap the NATO military camp used to run Cummins 72 liter V16 generators that used 500 liters of diesel per hour and they had 3.

Rest of the world pollutes massively so i wouldnt worry about smokey narrowboats.

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9 hours ago, booke23 said:

Burning sustainable wood is the only realistic way of heating a house in a (almost) zero carbon way at the moment, so it does surprise me that certain media are taking that stance.

If properly sized and installed a heat pump is way cleaner. If powered from renewable energy it's local PM and CO2 footprint is zero.

It's a long and complicated process to get the system set up correctly and  many installers do not size the pipework and radiators correctly hence the doesn't work comments. I have solar and battery storage so have the electrical supply the only thing stopping me from getting one is that we live on a quiet estate and the noise from the pump would disturb my neighbours.

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1 hour ago, Mike Hurley said:

Out here in Kosovo our power station runs on a dirty brown coal called Lignite and is the most polluting power station in Europe, most cars are diesel including one of mine. 

 

Bizarrely you can still buy bags of lignite coal here now even though proper bituminous coal is nearly banned.

 

Our coal merchant sells 'union brikettes' which are brown coal. We tried them a few years back, burn nicely but clean they are definitely not.

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2 hours ago, LadyG said:

That sounds pretty stupid, but one can't legislate for stupidity

 

That’s true you can’t. However I noticed a big increase in domestic bonfires were I live after the local council introduced a charge to empty the garden waste bins a few years back. A lot of people would rather have a massive bonfire a few times a year rather than pay the garden waste charge.

 

55 minutes ago, Loddon said:

If properly sized and installed a heat pump is way cleaner. If powered from renewable energy it's local PM and CO2 footprint is zero.

 

Indeed. Or even an electric convector heater for that matter if run on renewable electricity. The question is, where does the average Joe get 100% renewable electricity all year round?

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13 minutes ago, booke23 said:

Indeed. Or even an electric convector heater for that matter if run on renewable electricity. The question is, where does the average Joe get 100% renewable electricity all year round?

I'm pretty average and mine comes mostly from my roof. On days, like the last few,  when it's windy and there is a surplus of electric my overnight electric price goes negative so they are paying me to charge the batteries to use in the daytime.

Even if running a heat pump from grid electric it's still less local CO2 and PM than a stove.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Loddon said:

If properly sized and installed a heat pump is way cleaner. If powered from renewable energy it's local PM and CO2 footprint is zero.

 

52 minutes ago, booke23 said:

Indeed. Or even an electric convector heater for that matter if run on renewable electricity.

But whereas an electric convector heat just converts the incoming electric energy to heat, the heat pump extracts heat from the outside environment, so the energy put out into the room as heat is more than that drawn from the electricity supply. 

So renewable electricity or not, it is a cleaner source of heating.

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2 hours ago, Loddon said:

If properly sized and installed a heat pump is way cleaner. If powered from renewable energy it's local PM and CO2 footprint is zero.

It's a long and complicated process to get the system set up correctly and  many installers do not size the pipework and radiators correctly hence the doesn't work comments. I have solar and battery storage so have the electrical supply the only thing stopping me from getting one is that we live on a quiet estate and the noise from the pump would disturb my neighbours.

Cant you do ground source via a borehole?

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46 minutes ago, Loddon said:

Even if running a heat pump from grid electric it's still less local CO2 and PM than a stove.

 

Less PM - yes, Less ‘local’ CO2 - yes. Less planet CO2 (which is what actually matters) - No

 

15 minutes ago, David Mack said:

 

But whereas an electric convector heat just converts the incoming electric energy to heat, the heat pump extracts heat from the outside environment, so the energy put out into the room as heat is more than that drawn from the electricity supply. 

So renewable electricity or not, it is a cleaner source of heating.

 

No one is disputing that. But both these heating methods require Electricity, which, at the moment, for the vast majority of us is generated using fossil fuels thereby emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. Whereas burning only renewable wood in a stove releases no additional CO2.  

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5 minutes ago, booke23 said:

 

Less PM - yes, Less ‘local’ CO2 - yes. Less planet CO2 (which is what actually matters) - No

 

 

No one is disputing that. But both these heating methods require Electricity, which, at the moment, for the vast majority of us is generated using fossil fuels thereby emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. Whereas burning only renewable wood in a stove releases no additional CO2.  

For the last week Gas, Biomass and Coal have been less than 30% of grid power. So hardly the majority of generation.

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2 minutes ago, booke23 said:

 

Less PM - yes, Less ‘local’ CO2 - yes. Less planet CO2 (which is what actually matters) - No

 

 

No one is disputing that. But both these heating methods require Electricity, which, at the moment, for the vast majority of us is generated using fossil fuels thereby emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. Whereas burning only renewable wood in a stove releases no additional CO2.  

 

One of my New Years resolutions is to ignore attempts to demonise me as a wood  burner by the likes of the Guardian. I do what I can, I only burn dry 'ready to burn' wood with my 'ready to burn'  smokeless.

 

The stove we have is Defra approved for use in smokeless areas and at the time it was installed in 2017 it was the best and 'cleanest' we could afford. We also live in a semi rural area with a relatively low population density.

 

I have no intention of ripping it out any time soon. Just as I wont be changing my perfectly serviceable diesel car sooner than I need to to swap it for an electric one.

 

There is just a bit too much attempted 'demonisation' going on in sections of the media (bordering on actual hate) and on here from certain quarters too.

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22 minutes ago, Loddon said:

For the last week Gas, Biomass and Coal have been less than 30% of grid power. So hardly the majority of generation.

 

Very true and excellent news it is. But still 4800 tonnes of CO2 per hour being emitted by the 30% being generated by fossil fuels.  

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37 minutes ago, M_JG said:

 

One of my New Years resolutions is to ignore attempts to demonise me as a wood  burner by the likes of the Guardian. I do what I can, I only burn dry 'ready to burn' wood with my 'ready to burn'  smokeless.

 

The stove we have is Defra approved for use in smokeless areas and at the time it was installed in 2017 it was the best and 'cleanest' we could afford. We also live in a semi rural area with a relatively low population density.

 

I have no intention of ripping it out any time soon. Just as I wont be changing my perfectly serviceable diesel car sooner than I need to to swap it for an electric one.

 

There is just a bit too much attempted 'demonisation' going on in sections of the media (bordering on actual hate) and on here from certain quarters too.

 

Instead of demonising woodburners with clickbait headlines or guessing at how much pollution they cause compared to other sources, perhaps some actual facts would make things clearer?

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/15/wood-burners-emit-more-particle-pollution-than-traffic-uk-data-shows

Wood burners emit more particle pollution than traffic, UK data shows

"Revised government data estimates a lower proportion of pollution comes from wood stoves but they remain a ‘major contributor’

 

The new data significantly cuts the estimated proportion of small particle pollution that comes from wood burners from 38% to 17%. But wood burning pollution remains a “major contributor” to particle pollution, another government report said. Road transport is responsible for 13% of particle pollution.

 

The data shows tiny particle pollution, called PM2.5, produced by wood burning rose by a third from 2010 to 2020, when it reached 13,900 tonnes a year. This all comes from the 8% of homes that have wood burners, 95% of which have other sources of heating. The data revision was made after a survey of 50,000 homes provided updated information on the use of wood stoves.

 

Other recent research has shown that wood-burning stoves in urban areas are responsible for almost half of people’s exposure to the cancer-causing chemicals found in air pollution particles. Even wood-burning stoves meeting the new “ecodesign” standard still emit 750 times more tiny particles than a modern HGV truck, another study found, while wood burners also triple the level of harmful pollution inside homes and should be sold with a health warning, according to scientists.

 

The sector producing the biggest proportion of PM2.5 is manufacturing industries and construction, which is responsible for 27%. But Fuller said: “Lots of people live closer to home chimneys than they do to industrial sources and major motorways. This leads to greater exposure to wood burning pollution than we find for many other sources.”

 

---------------

 

The biggest problem with woodburners is indeed in urban areas -- for example, the canals in London 😉 -- where there are more woodburners together with more people. A lone boater out in the middle of nowhere is not going to cause a problem to anybody else, though this doesn't mean the PM2.5 levels inside the boat are low enough to be ignored, whether or not a stove is new and DEFRA-approved or not. It's only become really apparent in the last few years how damaging PM2.5 pollutants are and the regulations haven't caught up with this yet.

 

Whether burning wood is CO2 neutral depends on how you interpret the numbers. Since it's not fossil CO2 (coal, oil, gas) it is just returning the CO2 to the atmosphere that was taken from it when the tree grew -- but that happened over the last 50 years or so and the CO2 is being released now, and it's now that we have a big CO2 problem not 50 years ago. The other question is what would happen to the wood if it *wasn't* burned -- if it was (for example) chipped and used for mulch/compost then the CO2 in it isn't returned directly to the atmosphere, it goes into growing other plants and crops, or stays locked in the soil.

 

There's no doubt that burning wood is less bad than burning many other fossil fuels (depending on what they are) and it's certainly convenient in remote and rural areas (e.g. boats) which don't have mains power, but it's definitely not a "clean" source of heat, especially where particulates are concerned.

 

The comment about diesel cars is a red herring -- if you drive typical distances, it's better for the planet to replace an old diesel with a (secondhand?) EV. The fact that this may not make financial sense for you doesn't change this fact, but it has to be recognised that going "green" is often not the cheapest option.

 

Of course this sums up the whole problem in a nutshell, nothing is as cheap and easy and convenient for heating or transport or manufacturing as fossil fuels, which is why there's so much resistance to getting rid of them. But unless we do the consequences for humanity will be catastrophic... :-( 

 

 

Edited by IanD
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