I really like our woodburner, it's a great place to while away an evening with a book and glass of wine, but...every time I light it, I'm conscious of just how polluting the thing is and it makes me feel guilty and thus reluctant to light it except on special occasions.
We're not on the gas main here, and electric is just silly, I guess the only option is bottled gas, perhaps with the permanent connection through the wall to a bottle outside?
Where are you?
what fuel are you burning and how?
middle of a city burning crap wet wood is obvs rather different to dry, seasoned wood burnt hard in the middle of nowhere.
What about a pellet stove? 5%< moisture, efficient burning (90%+), reliable fuel quality, nice to look at, controllable, low ash (<1%)
Small village in the coutryside - maybe 50 houses.
kiln dried hardwood, mostly stored outside, but in a shed shielded from the elements. The wood we burn has usually been inside the house/garage for months before it's burned, so is dry. It's lighted using 20mm^3 of firelighters.
Regardless of where it's burned, it's still releasing a lot of nasty particulates, far more than from hundreds of diesel cars...
it's still releasing a lot of nasty particulates, far more than from hundreds of diesel cars...
Really? I have never looked into the science, but I can't help but wonder if this isn't one of those things where we will discover next decade that everything we thought in this one was wrong. Kind of like we've just done with diesel cars, and margarine as opposed to butter in the 70s/80s...
I just have a hard time believing that something human beings have done since we developed opposable thumbs could be so intrinsically damaging, especially when compared to the processing involved in allowing you to burn a non-renewable fuel.
We have an electric 'woodburner', it fools no one on close inspection but does the same job by providing a focal point and the flames are realistic enough if you're not looking directly at them.
I doubt bottled gas is cheaper than electric, last time I looked it was about 3x more expensive.
Burning wood is Carbon neutral 🙂
Shipping Gas around the world, transporting it, putting it into large Steel bottles etc... probably isn't 8)
Link to one of the most recent articles:
[url= https://www.newscientist.com/article/2119595-wood-burners-london-air-pollution-is-just-tip-of-the-iceberg/ ]https://www.newscientist.com/article/2119595-wood-burners-london-air-pollution-is-just-tip-of-the-iceberg/[/url]
you could buy an electrostatic flue filter
Link to one of the most recent articles:
That's all about pollution in large cities, not a small village.
Really? I have never looked into the science, but I can't help but wonder if this isn't one of those things where we will discover next decade that everything we thought in this one was wrong. Kind of like we've just done with diesel cars, and margarine as opposed to butter in the 70s/80s...
You're kidding?
1) For millennia there were a fration of the current population. London, pre industrialist and subsequent population boom was about the size of Reading.
2) It still (when it grew) eventually lead to the clean air act being introduced.
The word 'smoke' scientifically means a suspension of solid particles in air. There's steam as well in smoke, but if you're burning solids in a relatively uncontrolled way (i.e a woodburner) it's going to be pumping out 1000's of times more particulates than even a crappy old diesel.
That's all about pollution in large cities, not a small village.
So even in a city with (tens, hundreds of?) thousands of cars, and relatively few woodburners, the woodburners are causing a significant problem?
That's all about pollution in large cities, not a small village.
But the principal is the same...if everyone doesn't do their bit for the environment...what's the point?
particulate suspension is temporary. Out in the sticks it poses far less risk as concentrations are much lower, dispersal happens faster and the opportunity for harm is massively lower. Particulates do not represent a permanent environmental damage. Gases might though.
TINAS, that may be so, but what I am saying is that we always seem to discover later that the cumulative effects of some new-fangled alternative to what we used to consider normal end up being more destructive than, well... what we used to consider normal.
In any case, what about Stoner's suggestion of a filter, above?
EDIT: Actually, see both of Stoner's posts, above!
But the principal is the same.
It's not though is it?
You have to "burn" something to heat your home. The main problem with woodburners is when there are a lot of them in a relatively small area causing localised pollution.
Although using bottled LPG may cause less local pollution I think it may be worse for overall carbon footprint. Think of offshore installations, high tech ships with huge stainless steel tanks, road transport and gas cylinders.
particulate suspension is temporary. Out in the sticks it poses far less risk as concentrations are much lower, dispersal happens faster and the opportunity for harm is massively lower. Particulates do not represent a permanent environmental damage. Gases might though.
I actually get a sore throat visiting my parents during a winter high pressure. They live in a very middle class village* in the midlands that happens to be in a slight bowl. It's definitely in the sticks, the nearest postbox is a mile up the road, the nearest streetlamp and bus stop is 2!
*the kind of place you'd advertise your house (with it's wood burner) for sale in country life rather than on purple-bricks
But the principal is the same...if everyone doesn't do their bit for the environment...what's the point?
Swapping a wood burner for fossil fuels wouldn't be a clear cut positive step for the environment. Less particulates, but more CO2.
You live in the country with limited fuel options, if you use bottle gas it with probably be delivered by a diesel lorry. Under these circumstances I can see no problem with burning wood.
You live in the country with limited fuel options, if you use bottle gas it with probably be delivered by a diesel lorry. Under these circumstances I can see no problem with burning wood.
And if you burn wood......
Someones cut it with a chainsaw (2 stroke, probably running rich and/or hot for added environmental crappyness).
Maybe it's been kiln dried.
It's been delivered by a truck, and it's nowhere near as energy dense as gas so it's probably making a dedicated trip.
If you coppice your own wood around your house and don't own a chainsaw you may have a point, otherwise.
Stoner - thanks for the link, that might be an ideal solution.
You live in the country with limited fuel options, if you use bottle gas it with probably be delivered by a diesel lorry
That does make a difference but relatively few of the people burning wood are burning stuff hand gathered from their own land. A lot get it delivered
Given you already have the woodburner, surely the environmental cost of manufacturing and installing the new heat source, plus removing even for re-sale the woodburner, far outweigh the cost of using what you have?
True, but I'm also actively poisoning the people of my village...
True, but I'm also actively poisoning the people of my village...
You're not. 🙄
I'm also actively poisoning the people of my village...
Chances are at least some of them are dicks...
Ive just farted.
My neighbours are done for I tell ye!
Go round collecting all the plastic rubbish in the village and nearby then torch that. Everyone wins.
Chances are at least some of them are dicks...
😆
And if you burn wood......Someones cut it with a chainsaw (2 stroke, probably running rich and/or hot for added environmental crappyness).
Maybe it's been kiln dried.
It's been delivered by a truck, and it's nowhere near as energy dense as gas so it's probably making a dedicated trip.
If you coppice your own wood around your house and don't own a chainsaw you may have a point, otherwise.
+1 I agree with spoon.
However, given the choice I'd rather heat my place with wood just for the cosiness.
If you want to reduce your impact upon or save the planet kill yourself now.
We're not on the gas main here, and electric is just silly, I guess the only option is bottled gas, perhaps with the permanent connection through the wall to a bottle outside?
I live in a 1960s bungalow in a small village (25 houses and pub). It has cavity wall insulation, but loft insulation is just fibreglass. We have central heating running off bottled LPG.
The first winter we lived here (moving from a large, uninsulated terraced house with mains gas) we went through £2000 worth of gas from November to February. We weren't excessive, and we used the thermostat and boiler timer sensibly (we're out all day at work). That's right: two thousand ****ing pounds. And that doesn't include the autumn and spring.
As soon as the weather improved, I had a log burner installed. We still use the central heating, but now it does morning only duties (and hot water), with the log burner providing enough heat through the house during the winter.
You buy bottled LPG in pairs of bottles. A single LPG bottle weighs 47kg and holds 92 litres of LPG. Current pricing is £120/pair delivered. That's 65p/litre of fuel. And at full chat in our house in the depths of that first winter, we went through a pair of cylinders every week for 4 months....
Here's what the OFT had to say about bottled LPG:
(Taken from [url] http://www.gocompare.com/gas-and-electricity/lpg/#egLFcjYj6xtA2PRK.97 [/url].)In summing up the state of the cylinder LPG market, the OFT concluded that: "Cylinder LPG users may have only a limited number of local suppliers, may pay higher heating costs on average than any other off-grid consumers, may be less able to readily switch to a different fuel type and are susceptible to road delivery disruptions."
I buy dried wood. Because our stove isn't our main heating resource - but is still significant - I use only 1.5 tonnes per year. The last order cost me £400. This might be expensive for wood, but it's a drop in the ocean compared with the cost of bottled LPG.
EDIT: the wood I buy is sold by a chap who runs a tree surgery business - he's recycling the wood into fuel for me (and more money for him). It's all air dried.
That new Sciencetist article isn't that great, it's hardly better than the daily mail version. I have read some good scientific papers, just facts and analysis, no journalistic twist, which do show particle emission is significant but much, much smaller with modern stoves and good burning practice. I would struggle to find them again but if i can I'll post the link.
Processing by chainsaw doesn't polute much. I processed about 10m³ of wood using 2 litres of chain oil and 5 litres of fuel mix. Modern saws are set to run lean for emissions, which is stupid, as it will kill the saw much faster and the energy required to replace it should be considered.
OP, have you considered a modern and efficient stove? Maybe one with a catalytic element? The Americans seem ahead of us here, their EPA regs are tight and there the modern stoves use catalytic elements for very very high efficiency and clean burning.
Overall burn dry wood, burn hot, hot, hot and never slumber, never overload and things are clean. There is also a trade of local and short term pollution Vs worldwide and long term global warming. How you make that assessment i don't know, but it should be made. I've burnt 6m³ of wood this year, around 3 tonnes, produced around 6000kwh of heat and not burnt about 1.25 tonnes of carbon from natural gas. I must accept I've poluted my neighbourhood, although since i burn well, you never see smoke or smell anything coming out of my chimney, I'm sure it's not so bad as some suggest.
Have you looked at air source heat pumps? Run off electricity and are cheaper to run per kW of heat than mains gas combi boilers. Massively come down in price in the last few years too
Go round collecting all the plastic rubbish in the village and nearby then torch that. Everyone wins.
Pretty standard in Africa, either that or dump it in the local river....
If you only burn your woodburner when it's raining does that make it ok? The rain will take all of the carbon particles out of the air very quickly.
Pellet stove + RHI
Oh and the wood i burn is local arb waste. I drive about 3.5 miles to collect it, about 10 trips for a winter's worth. So ought to factor in 2x3.5x10=70 miles in the car, a little under 3 gallons of fuel. Balance against the tree surgeon making a couple of extra 5 mile ish journeys to the recycling centre, the wood then going off to Drax along with lots more. There's probably little in it but my feeling is local use probably saves energy.
Run off electricity and are cheaper to run per kW of heat than mains gas combi boilers.
Where's teh figures for that?
When I looked at these, they were only a sensible option if you had no mains gas.
Have you looked at air source heat pumps? Run off electricity and are cheaper to run per kW of heat than mains gas combi boilers
unless recently someone has defied the laws of physics they dont.
The v best that can manage a COP of 3-4 in ideal conditions, and more realistically an SPF of 2.5-2.8, and Electricity costs at 16p/kWh (all in, incl standing charges), the net unit cost of energy at a generous 16/2.8 = 5.7p/kWh
With mains gas costing 4.6p/kWh it is 20% cheaper
However, it does produce slightly less net CO2/kWh which is why it's eligible for RHI as long as it has a sufficiently high SPF.
Sources:
http://www.nottenergy.com/energy_cost_comparison/
http://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2014/06/air-source-heat-pump-performance
Oil?
We're moving from a house with an oil/wood burner/solar thermal combo to mains gas.
I'm looking forward to not having to cut wood - it was an itch I had to scratch, but I'm happy to hang the chainsaw up for now.
what happened to you man?
You sold out!
My brother has an air source heat pump, installed about 3 years ago iirc. He saves money Vs the oil fired boiler he had before, but fairly sure he still would rather be on mains gas financially?.
much as I love my axe, I confess I too would like to be on mains gas, clean efficient, cheap and with new CHP combi boilers home electricity too.
You need a nicer axe? 😉
In honesty, having the wood burner has made me really appreciate the mains gas and combi boiler Ch all timer controlled. Adore the stove too though.
Have any of the people posting here with x£000 p.a. Heating bills considered improving their insulationa and airtightness?
Stoner That link states electric is 16p and gas is 5.2p as a combi is 90% efficient so your % figures are are a bit out but I take your point, I was thinking of fitting one and was looking at manufactures figures for COP which is foolish. I do still like the idea of them though. Just for the lack of need of a gas fitter.
Still makes sense for the OP though
quite right, I used the figure from the wrong column, should have been the 5.19p/kWh having adjusted for efficiency.
But I stand by my view that heat pumps are never the solution if the question is gas or not.
There's nothing quite like coming home from a day in the city ripping people off, parking up the Range Rover in front of someone else's dropped kerb and firing up the woodburner with some kiln dried imported hardwood from some virgin Russian forest. It creates a warm feeling like nothing else...
😆 😆
More time to ride bikes innit.
And not [i]working[/i] from home anymore means I don't have as much time.
Already sold the truck 🙁 I'm more sad about that than anything else.
The new place does have a flue - lets see how things look in 12 months 😉
Apols for doing what I hate in others and not reading the thread.
The particulate/pollution thing is all about population density and the problems of having many burners in a small area. Over any distance, the particles drop out of the atmosphere (and get rained out) and cause no significant harm. It's not fossil fuels, so keep on burning.
At least, that's my excuse.
I just thought of a way (not the only way, just a way) to balance the affects of local pollution vs global warming benefits of sustainable heat.
a quick google gets the figures of 9500 early deaths each year from london air pollution. It also gives me figures between 300 000 and 500 000 deaths a year from global warming around the globe. Obviously we also need to consider how much each burner affects each, but I put it out there to show there is a balance to be considered
Crackers. You are doing the traditional, default, almost natural thing. Man had used wood for thousands of years. Later forms of pollution thus should be reduced first. No idea how you live but maybe fly less, drive to MTB ing less, go to the pictures less, or electrical goods less. Don't up grades the bike so often. All of these are modern pollution creators, they story first. Buy a coffee out? Don't. UK food before imported. I bet you could negate your wood burning "pollution" easily and hold the moral high ground by avoiding modern rubbish.
http://woodheat.org/emissions-testing.html
https://www.des.nh.gov › ard › ard-36
http://www.hetas.co.uk/sia-update-sep16/
A few, more scientific papers, to help determine just how bad it is.
Look, wood is short cycle carbon capture, fossil fuels are long cycle. That is all that matters. Stay on wood; if you want to clean up your urban air reduce car use.
You are doing the traditional, default, almost natural thing
I don't understand the idea of "good, old fashioned, natural" pollution and "modern, bad" pollution. Everything we do has an environmental impact and you can't negate the pollution and other effects of wood burning, no matter how much discretionary consumerism you forego. There's no moral high ground here, just a lot of hard choices about how we try to manage the long term impact of how we live.
There was an interesting paper referenced on here a while back, which demonstrated how gas could be carbon negative compared to renewable timber, because you get roughly twice as much energy output for the same carbon emission. So instead of burning and replacing timber (carbon neutral at best) you burn gas, capture the carbon emitted with half of the timber growth you were previously burning, and sequester the carbon by using the timber for building and other products. Then you can take out some extra carbon with the other half of the timber growth that you were previously burning. That paper was written by a couple of guys who admitted they were keen log burners as well!
There are people who are sustainably hand harvesting and drying their own wood in rural areas and using nothing else to heat their homes, but the fact there is a market for kiln dried logs in neat plastic bags suggests a lot of people don't use log burners that way. I think most people use them because they like the cosy effect of burning wood.
I can't see how log burners could be a sustainable, energy efficient heat source on any major scale in modern society. The harvesting, storage and distribution of timber would be impractical, and there would surely be a major negative effect on air quality in urban areas.
The only sustainable energy source that's capable of supplying a significant proportion of the uk's energy demand is solar. That doesn't mean that other things can't make a useful contribution in some areas.
The industry thinks it could contribute 10% of the Ukcarbon reduction. http://www.stoveindustryalliance.com/newsarticle.aspx?LatestNews_ID=10000&pPK=618f83d6-c438-4b35-9515-8c3b1aa76bf9
Exactly, 10% of sfa isn't much 🙂
Have any of the people posting here with x£000 p.a. Heating bills considered improving their insulationa and airtightness?
Poss refers to my post above? You'll note that was the first winter in a house where we'd lived in a completely different type of property.
In reality, you're absolutely right: better to reduce overall heat requirements first. The house is having an extensive renovation this year, and lots of insulation is high up the list..!
Of course the wood stove industry claim 10%, its a typical bit of marketing guff... selective quoting an attribute that fits their marketing narrative
I find it distressing when people intelligent enough to write as well as kcr write stuff so obviously flawed.
In the first year I owned this house I burned though about 1000e of gas at current prices. All that CO2 went up with no sequestration of carbon by me or the gas company.
The last year I was on gas we burned 300e of gas (mostly hot water), because as Simon Nicolai notes the first thing to do is sort out the insulation, sealing and ventilation of your house.
We cut off the gas and replaced the CH with a wood burner and thermal solar panel and fitted PV which produce nearly double the energy we consume.
Wood comes from trees felled locally and I transport it in a barrow. There are just as many trees that need felling as when people first knew I take wood away for free (you get billed extra to have wood taken away when you have a tree felled around here). More than enough wood is produced in the area I live to fuel all the wood burners in the area - the proof being that the wooded area is constantly increasing and unwanted wood is transported away to be turned into pellets or fire wood elsewhere. Previously it was burned in the incinerator as nobody wanted it.
I fail to see how me burning the wood with zero transport is causing anymore pollution than taking it away to be incinerated.
Wood rotting on the forest floor produces exactly the same amount of CO2 as burning it. It's perfect. The downside is the labour, and the fact wood rotting on the forest floor supports lots of life.
I've got 12m^3 of hardwood and 2m^3 of softwood in the shed at the moment.
Climate change is real; we've all got to get away from burning fossil fuels. It's fundamental. Do it whatever way you want; insulation, renewables, just reducing consumption of anything and everything. Particulates and air pollution are important but less so.
My heating bill isn't nuts, but 1930s solid wall house so not the best. I have however added 6" insulation in the loft, adding 2*3"studs to the joists to to it and board after. I've replaced all the windows and doors and just last week pulled down some more ceiling that i knew had no insulation, and added 100mm Kingspan beneath the tiles. Ventilation wise I've put back some airbricks that had previously been blocked up, to improve Ventilation and air for the stove, i don't get condensation anymore.
Climate change and air pollution are both real, what we need to remember is there is no silver bullet, no single answer. A combination of things, with different answers in different scenarios, having balanced the pros and cons is better.
Oh and wood in the pile supports life too, judging by the wasps I've found and the wood pecker I've seen feasting in my shed!
Here's the original article from the Association for Environment Conscious Building:
http://www.aecb.net/publications/biomass-a-burning-issue/
It's an interesting read.
As I said in my original post some people do harvest, burn and replace local wood sustainably, just as you describe, and if the wood was going to be burned anyway, that makes sense. That can only be an option for a relatively small amount of the total population, however, and if everyone was using log burners in a more densely populated community, there would surely be an impact on local air quality.
I have a log burner in the house myself. It can't heat the whole house or water, so it can't serve as a primary heat source, and there is no practical source of sustainable local wood. I think it is just impractical and ornamental.
A 5kW wood burner heats our whole house for the day with a four-hour burn when the outside temperature is around zero. That's in a house with retro-fitted insulation. A passive house would do better.
You can buy a stove with a water heating circuit.
If there is no local supply of wood or you live in a city with air pollution issues then I agree that a wood burner is not the best option.
Where I strongly disagree is with the pseudo science that says burning wood or pellets is worse in terms of CO2 than burning gas. Because burning sustainable wood in the country it is grown produces less CO2 than any fossil fuel and people that claim otherwise are using grossly misleading calculation methods.
Removing the wood burner you say? You'll have to leave STW.
Just to leap to the defence of heat pumps - they absolutely make economic sense off the gas grid, iirc that includes boreholes. And as far as only viable source goes, GSHP is just as good, there is a long standing district heating proposal in Glasgow that uses the heat from flooded mine workings in the same way as those in Southampton.
The important thing to consider is sustainability, which in the big picture goes hand in hand with diversity. There is no single solution, anyone who says otherwise hasn't done their homework.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39115829
This article was really interesting. Nice town in the French Alps with chronic air pollution problems (as in the kids can't play outside at school for part of the year bad).
The cause? Industry in the Rheine-Ruhr region of Germany? Nope. Truck traffic transversing the alps? Nope. Deforestation in Indonesia? Nope.
Wood burners.
We need to do up our living room in the next year or so. We thought about a woodburner but not doing it now. We have mains gas so it'd be purely a lifestyle accessory but 4 of our immediate neighbours have and the air quality is already suffering. Wood burners will be clamped down on at some point.
Reading the equivalent report in French the problem in Sallanches is that wood is being burned in open hearths. A 1000e grant is available to anyone who wants to change to an efficient closed wood burner. The France 3 report quotes nearly half the fine particles coming from wood. Most of the pollution coming from diesel vehicles on the way up to the Mont Blanc tunnel.
In terms of health I suspect benzine ring chemicals in diesel soot are more likely to cause health issues than wood ash. Yes, there's a problem but banning burning wood isn't the answer as the authorities recognise with incentives to update equiplent. The answer is to burn it efficiently. Nox levels are definitely diesels and that's the main killer in Paris.
Where I strongly disagree is with the pseudo science that says burning wood or pellets is worse in terms of CO2 than burning gas.
I don't think there is any pseudo science in the article I linked to, and it makes an interesting case for alternative ways of using wood to capture carbon emissions. Which parts of the authors' argument would you disagree with?
The paper is right, if you draw the system around the boiler/stove then wood emits carbon approaching coal levels. It is, i agree, wrong to always draw the system around the imaginary field growing trees to feed the stove, but sometimes it is. The UK has a greater area under forest than for a long time, and other then the last few years we've also been planting at high rates. Are these trees fuel? No, they aren't, IF there is a higher monetary value in another use. This gets really screwed up when we do things like convert Drax to biomass. Now you've got such a huge demand for wood fuel there is value in wood where there wasn't before and it can drive some really bad and unsustainable practices.... Felling unmanaged forests in the US and shipping it across the Atlantic.
Logs for stoves come from so many sources, and some aren't sustainable, but since there are so many 1 man band log producers using perfectly sustainable sources that would probably be ruined if some kind of fsc like scheme for log fuel were enforced I'm not sure I'd favour that approach. While those guys can't supply a huge demand, the current demand they supply, often with logs from arb waste probably can consider the fuel zero carbon. I even wonder if it is sometimes carbon positive. If a waste material being processed and dispose of another way would release more carbon then local processing to fuel logs is it carbon positive to burn it? Confusing. What this shows is, agreeing a carbon accounting mechanism is not easy, and I'm not surprised that the DECC carbon calculator is often chritisised.
neilnevill - RHI, as far as I'm aware, now requires the fuel to come from BSL registered sources. The chain of custody is easier to prove if the raw material comes from an FSC registered holding. This means that where I work we have no issue selling chip for good money as we are FSC accredited. Something that as an organisation we complete, but having had an inspection a couple of years ago, would be an utter pain for smaller or private woodlands considering the benefit.
Chip prices are keeping the market up, so good for industry, even if not the best use of timber. Certainly encouraging the management of more blocks. Felling licence comes with a condition to restock. Whether the right thing is restocked is another discussion.
Waiting for the OPs next post, "I'm selling my VW Transporter/Cotic/On One/Pashley and shaving my moustached".
Life's too short to try and have the absolute calculated minimum environmental impact possible.
OP, Just get a Kachelofen if you don't want to use a log burner. I put 3 logs in mine in the morning and it will keep my kitchen and living room warm all day. If I'm cooking, I'll use a bit another 2 logs.
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Exactly timber, the government are trying to do a good thing with rhi but some of its implementation has distorted the market and encouraged/created some odd practices that weren't intended and may not help,. Running a pellet boiler to kiln dry logs and making more on the rhi than the sale of the logs for example. I'm not saying kiln drying doesn't have it's place, but the rhi distorts the market and the small guys that aren't big enough to invest in a boiler and kiln, that are producing a more carbon neutral air dried log, make less money, odd. However there have to be guidelines for people to meet/be assessed against for any incentive, which then means they are frequently too simple to account for all scenarios.
Anyways, I'm just a householder who has found a local and very friendly small tree surgeon business that don't have the space to dry logs themselves and just want to dispose of the arb waste cheaply and usefully if they can, so with just an ms180, stihl pro cleaving hammer, fiskars x27, sledge, 4 wedges and a hookaroon I can process as much wood as i can store/have time for/sweat for for free. Then burn it safe in the knowledge that is dry and is as carbon neutral as possible, possibly even lower carbon than the alternative which would be local recycling centre-transport to Drax-process to chip and burn. I burn as hot as i can to keep pollution down, keep my flue clean, and to reduce my gas consumption as much as possible.
it's still releasing a lot of nasty particulates, far more than from hundreds of diesel cars...
Really? I have never looked into the science, but I can't help but wonder if this isn't one of those things where we will discover next decade that everything we thought in this one was wrong. Kind of like we've just done with diesel cars, and margarine as opposed to butter in the 70s/80s...
As an auld asthmatic I can confirm that the "fashion" to install or resurrect old fire places is having an adverse on my health when out cycling, especially at night. I have a short 4ml commute through town, on a frosty morning there is the "blue haze" of death i.e. Coal/log smoke(smog). I alleviate this by covering my mouth with a Buff or other necker.
Gave up night riding for this reason...
