Wood stove

[willin woodworks]

Logging can be done responsibly but hardly on a large commercial basis. When you take down big trees you open up the canopy and allow sunlight to reach lower. The small trees grow when the big trees are gone. Being selective about which big trees come down and only taking what you need promotes new growth and a decent sized woodlot can yield a lot of wood sustainably over a generation.

[Garret]

This is just silly. They grow right back. At least where I live. It takes a lot of work to keep them from growing right back if you want to do something else with the land.

Indeed it is. Leave a field unmowed for 5 years & see how big all the saplings are. Give it 10 & you won't be able to mow it without removing trees.

At other comments made here:

If smoke and/or gasses are getting from the stove into your house, you need to shut down the stove & repair/replace it immediately. But I guess people are too stupid nowadays to figure that out for themselves.

Does burning wood have environmental impacts? Of course. Does heating with propane, natural gas, or oil have impacts? At least burning local wood there's little transportation involved.

Damage to the woods: bad logging practices do damage the woods, but careful logging & managed forests can improve them. Much of the logging out west for lumber is destroying forests & washing topsoil out into the ocean - but few complain about that.

[Johan R]

Logging can be done responsibly but hardly on a large commercial basis. .

There is a country called Sweden. They grow more each year than they cut down. A large portion of the GDP comes from sawn lumber and wood related products, including a lot of paper. Whole industries survive on logging on a commercial basis.

[Garret]

Logging can be done responsibly but hardly on a large commercial basis. When you take down big trees you open up the canopy and allow sunlight to reach lower. The small trees grow when the big trees are gone. Being selective about which big trees come down and only taking what you need promotes new growth and a decent sized woodlot can yield a lot of wood sustainably over a generation.

That's simply not true. I'm not saying the irresponsible logging doesn't happen, but managed & responsible logging is done all over New England. It's rare to see a clear cut*, just as rare to see steep slopes logged & very common to go on a logging site to see carefully built roads with temp. bridges over streams and trees marked for selective cutting.

* There have been clear cuts for infestations - like pine borers - but that's to try to save other trees, not a normal logging practice.

[Breakaway]

Some here are saying burning wood is better than burning fossil fuels. No evidence has been presented to back that up.

Certainly, I am not claiming fossil fuel heat is better. I believe both wood burning and fossil fuel burning are bad for the environment.

As for regrowth, it takes decades before the habitat and carbon capture of a mature tree is replaced. Eight saplings dont equal one big tree.

Cutting carefully eg to allow sunlight etc is not good for the environment. Its just the least bad way to log. Saying otherwise is like saying killing a lion saves all those gazelle and wildebeast.

Wood seems to get a pass for being local, aesthetically pleasing or old timey. Thats not evidence of good.

Kevin






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[Paul Pless]

I'm not saying the irresponsible logging doesn't happen, but managed & responsible logging is done all over New England. It's rare to see a clear cut*

perhaps because southern pine plantations have come to dominate the part of the industry that benefits most from high volume clear cutting operations - pulp, chip, and crap softwood lumber?

[birlinn]

The UK has rules- luckily does not apply to those stuck in the sticks.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64261624

[Breakaway]

^ Quote from your link

In recent years, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has cracked down on log burners and coal fires as, according to the government, they are the largest source of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) - small particles of air pollution which find their way into the body's lungs and blood.



Around 1.5m homes use wood for fuel across the UK, however burning wood and coal in open fires and stoves makes up 38% of the UK's emissions of PM2.5.


By comparison, 16% come from industrial combustion, 12% from road transport and 13% from the use of solvents and industrial processes.


This means a wood-burning stove emits more particles per hour than a diesel lorry.

[Canoez]

If smoke and/or gasses are getting from the stove into your house, you need to shut down the stove & repair/replace it immediately. But I guess people are too stupid nowadays to figure that out for themselves.

^^^^
THIS!

When I bought my first house, one of my buddies stopped by to check it out. As we looked around the house, he was looking at the electric baseboard radiators and then at the thimble into the chimney that was in the basement.

The next weekend, he arrived with an old cast iron stove in the back of his truck that had seen better days - I'd seen it out in one of his sheds. Also in the back was a right angle grinder with various wire brush disks, a couple of cans of stove paint, joint mortar, new hardware and fiberglass packing - oh and a six pack of beer. For the rest of the afternoon, we dis-assembled the stove, wire-brushed all the parts back to bare metal. Painted with stove paint and then sat back with the beers. The next day he showed up and we re-assembled the stove, mortaring the joints and installing the packing. I'd never owned a stove before, so he showed me the ins and outs. That saved me lots of hassles and kept me from making dumb-bunny mistakes. When we fired it for the first time, it worked well, was tight and very efficient. We also went up to his woodlot later that spring once the woods had dried out and cut standing deadwood together, cutting and splitting for his house and mine for the next winter.

That stove bought me time until I could afford to get the Jotul which was better sized for the house. It saved me thousands of dollars in electricity bills, too. Probably one of the best and most thoughtful gifts I have ever received.

It takes a bit of learning and practice to use a stove well.

[Garret]

perhaps because southern pine plantations have come to dominate the part of the industry that benefits most from high volume clear cutting operations - pulp, chip, and crap softwood lumber?

It is crap lumber, but isn't plantation pine really more of a crop - like corn or soybeans - that takes longer to grow? I guess I see it as very different from maintaining what is/was a natural forest. After all, harvesting a field of corn is clearcutting, no?

@ the environmental issues mentioned in other posts - for sure all heating sources in cold climates have issues. I've read studies comparing the impacts of different fuels & they conflict. The common theme seems to be that they promote the fuel sold by whoever paid for the study. Me cynical? Nah...

Here in VT, a lot of firewood comes from maple syrup production. Sugarmakers have a crop that they harvest (maple) & to promote the crop, they remove non-maple species. The wood I can see burning in my stove is from a sugarbush about 10 miles from me. No clearcuts, just non-maple hardwoods that the sugarmaker removed from his bush to allow the maples to grow better. Another source is the tops from trees logged for lumber. When a tree is cut for lumber, only the main trunk is used for saw logs. So - what's commonly done is to get the lumber logs, then cut up the larger limbs for firewood, and then leave the small branches (3-4" and down) in the woods to rot. This brush provides wildlife habitat, cuts down on erosion, and then disintegrates into the soil over time.

Are the forests degrading over time by removing the trunks & big branches? Maybe. However, it's been done around here for several hundred years & the state is 80% forested.

[bluedog225]

We all need to go out and plant some trees.

[Canoez]

We all need to go out and plant some trees.

Absolutely.

[Garret]

We all need to go out and plant some trees.

To make up for the 100's of saplings I cut with a bushhog this fall?

I've got enough trees. This is (very roughly) my property:

Property.jpg

[Paul Pless]

We all need to go out and plant some trees.

we all need to pool our money and convince the brazilians to not slash and burn any more of the amazon

[Dave Hadfield]

I supplement the house-heating with an efficient zero-clearance fireplace. It's not as efficient as a stove, but lovely to look at, and heats the house down to about -15C if I keep it stoked. There's a propane furnace for when I don't. And, in the shop, I keep the temp just above freezing with electric, and use a wood-stove to bring it up when required.

I have 10 acres of maple bush, and never cut green healthy wood. Just taking the deadwood and deadfall, and broken or diseased trees, I can't keep up. This is 45 miles N of Toronto.

The economics are that if you have to buy your wood, you don't save any money on the heating bills. If it's free, then you do save.

OTOH, if it prevents your pipes from freezing during a power outage, that saves a lot of money. And the pleasing nature of the heat, and the ambience of watching the flames on winter nights, is worth quite a bit.

I cut pass-throughs for the warmed air into the upper floor bedrooms. And I can run the furnace on fan-only, to spread it through the basement.

And the processing of firewood is good healthy exercise.

IMG_2220.jpg

[John Meachen]

The UK has rules- luckily does not apply to those stuck in the sticks.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64261624

Interesting reading.It wasn't so long ago that I read that even a woodburner that conforms to the latest regs will emit several hundred times more particulates than a 44 ton Euro 6 compliant truck.I wonder how they will fare in the brave new era when we can no longer install gas fired boilers.

[LeeG]

Get one with a water jacket and you can also have free hot water while ever you're using the heater. Dunno about over there but here electric hot water heaters are one of the biggest chewers of electrickery.

Ditto on thermal mass. I have a simple small rectangular box stove that was designed for mule camping. I’ve lined the bottom and sides with fire brick and it has a 4 gallon stainless water tank hanging on the side. That water tank holds heat better than the tile around the stove.

[Garret]

Ditto on thermal mass. I have a simple small rectangular box stove that was designed for mule camping. I’ve lined the bottom and sides with fire brick and it has a 4 gallon stainless water tank hanging on the side. That water tank holds heat better than the tile around the stove.

I had a soapstone stove (heavy!!) that definitely evened out the heat. Problem was, I had it in a passive solar house where I really needed a stove that'd put a quick shot of heat into the house. That big old Hearthstone took an hour to even get warm on the outside.

Years ago I had a welded box stove that had slabs of soapstone in brackets on each side. That was a wonderful setup, as it'd heat up fast, but continue to radiate for a while when the fire got low. Wish I still had it, as it was one of the first stoves with recirculation for the smoke & was therefore pretty efficient.

The stove I have now is a Hearhtstone hybrid cast iron/soapstone that works very well. It has the air pipes in the top that inject air though small holes into the exhaust gas. I can often see little blue flames at the orifices as it burns off what would have otherwise been wasted. It's efficiency rating was (bought it 5 years ago) higher than most catalytic stoves - with no need to replace the convertor every 2-3 years.

[Chris Woodward]

we all need to pool our money and convince the brazilians to not slash and burn any more of the amazon

Stop using tropical hardwood plywood to build epoxied fiberglass non degradable boats.

[Rich Jones]

I have a Woodstock Soapstone stove that I bought 25 years ago.
It's got a catalytic burner that burns the gases in the smoke.
I replaced all of the guts a few years ago when they either rusted or got distorted from the heat.
It is centrally located and keeps my not-too-small house warm in Vermont winters.
I used to burn 4 cords per year before I put in my electric heat pumps.
Now I depend on them a lot and only burn two cords.
That stove will be chugging away tomorrow when the temps fall to -20F with 30mph winds.

[Tom from Rubicon]

High Efficiency Wood Stove | Blackcomb II | Drolet
Pacific Energy Alderlea T4 Wood Stove - pricing and online sales (hearth.com)

Drolet is same bang for less bucks. Got mine six years ago clearanced at Fleet&Farm $700.

[Ted Hoppe]

There is a country called Sweden. They grow more each year than they cut down. A large portion of the GDP comes from sawn lumber and wood related products, including a lot of paper. Whole industries survive on logging on a commercial basis.

we all need to pool our money and convince the brazilians to not slash and burn any more of the amazon

Seems Sweden should be looking to offset the export of CO2 by pushing their wood burning and lumber related products (which is discussed as unsustainable). Perhaps they should be front runners in paying to offset their profits by paying Brazil for not slashing their wild rain forests.

https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/st...widget%3DTweet

FoB2E7-XkAAVGq1.jpg

[Ted Hoppe]

Forests are not renewable. Hmmmmmm

Ain't that a suck. Folks do feel free to rationalize a managed natural resource; it depends of what one considers a loss.

[heimlaga]

There has been lots of debate in Sweden recently because modern forestry practises aimed at maximising the production of pulpwood have proven non-sustainable.
Of cause the debate has in part derailed with extremists claiming that no kind of logging is sustainable and the pulp mill lobby claiming that tey are saving the environment by growing lots of pulpwood which sucks up carbon dioxde and that they could do it even better if every piece of woodland in the country was turned to pulpwood plantations.
Honestly both sides are sticking their heads in the sand and market their own wiews without regards for reality.


JohanR knows nothing about it because he isn't in Sweden despite his false claims.