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Banned in new builds and conversions. Though I wonder whether this applies only to builders and homeowners could install after purchase.
Must be off the back of this - while agriculture is the real low hanging fruit for particle emissions, everyone's scared of farmers at the moment. It seems reasonable to me - the ESS study showed that woodburners pump a lot of particulate matter into indoor spaces which is a real risk to health.
Good !
In Shropshire many housing estates are going up with wood burners as standard. Its wrong. If the houses are insulated correctly you wouldnt want or need a log burner.
Fine if the obligation is to insulate to passive house standard too.
Two wood burners is dead dodgy unless they both have independant air supplies from the outside. The draught from one chimney can pull air down the other chimney and draw smells and dust into the house. Worse still is smouldering combustion in one and a fire in the other which can draw CO into the building.
Any forced ventilation needs to be carefully thought out for similar reasons.
I don't mean, or want, to be argumentative, and I will be probably get flamed for this (see what did there?), but...
I wouldn't want to live in a place without a wood/multi-fuel burner.
I have one in my Victoria-era terrace, and while the house is as well-insulated as it can be considering its age, I still find the need to use the burner sparingly in winter. The heat it emits is a dry heat that seems to help a great deal with mould and the damp feeling we can get in the house.
But more than this, it provides peace-of-mind. Perhaps it's just my Canadian-ness coming out, but I hate the idea of the grid going down for some reason, and being unable to heat and/or cook in the home. When Eastern Canada suffered an ice storm in 1998, it brought down the power grid for almost two weeks, and people were forced to gather in neighbours' homes - those who had fire places - for days, as the temperatures plummeted.
I know that we don't get those sorts of temperatures in southern Britain, but with global climate change, things are shifting in a colder winter direction, and the idea of having no alternative to whatever the system can provide would make me feel quite vulnerable.
It's all psychological, I know, but building fires for domestic use seems as if it should be almost a human right.
Anyway, just my two pennies. Feel free to destroy me. 🙂
If the houses are insulated correctly you wouldnt want or need a log burner.
This. A new house built to building regulations simply doesn't need a cancer stove.
Is there an alternative? An environmentally friendly way to heat your house or a room if you have a power cut?
just a question I don’t have a wood burner and rely solely on electricity to heat the house (ashp).
but with global climate change, things are shifting in a colder winter direction,
The data says the opposite is true. Both cold and warm days are getting warmer in the UK Winter.
A house can always be better insulated. It's just deciding when to stop. For the extension I'm working on I've decided on roof R8, walls R4.5 and floor R3. That's slightly better than the main house when I renovated. It'll still need some kind of heating on the coldest days. Passive houses are only passive if you have an energy intensive living style or accept say 16°C in cold snaps which most people won't.
A dehumidifier beats damp better than a fire and provides slightly more heat/kW consumed than just plugging in a resistance. A heat pump nad heat recovery ventilation system will also do the job.
No reason for any house with central heating to need a log burner.
I wouldn’t want to live in a place without a wood/multi-fuel burner.
I have one in my Victoria-era terrace, and while the house is as well-insulated as it can be considering its age, I still find the need to use the burner sparingly in winter. The heat it emits is a dry heat that seems to help a great deal with mould and the damp feeling we can get in the house.
Well, you’ve just pissed all over your arguments for a wood burner in new builds yourself there haven’t you. I agree, I wouldn’t want to live in a Victorian house without a burner, but I’d much rather everyone lived in a modern, well insulated house or renovated well-insulated house that stays warm and damp free by means other than burning wood.
I take your point on the off-grid reliability though.
@SaxonRider I know where you're coming from. We live in a 200 year old house in a rural spot 900 ft ASL in the Shropshire hills. Our primary heating is via an oil fired boiler. When it's sub zero, the central heating struggles a bit without firing up the log burner every now and then. Also, although we have the boiler serviced annually, it has died on us a few times and typically this will happen at the most awkward time, in cold weather at a weekend or over the Christmas break when it's hard to get an engineer out. In those situations we'd be seriously lost without the log burner. Not everyone has them just for ornament/fashion.
what?The heat it emits is a dry heat
also you seem to mis-understand the concept of global [b]warming[/b] 😂things are shifting in a colder winter direction
regardless, absolutely no need for these in a new-build, so this is a step in the right direction IMO.
Winters are certainly not getting colder. Nor are they likely to in the future.
Sounds eminently sensible to me.
New build = properly insulated/proper heating/decent windows/doesn't leak like a sieve.
In reality, the shoddy enforcement of passably good building standards means that buyers of new builds will most likely end up spending a fortune on electricity to run their badly specced heating and have to watch as their hard earned cash disappears through the roof, walls, doors and windows of their overpriced shoebox...
FWIW, i have a log burner (two actually) as it gets cold here and the power goes out occasionally. For several days at a time. I also have few neighbours and a nice supply of dry wood.
No reason for any house with central heating to need a log burner.
In theory yes. Currently.......
I'm unapologetic in my use of a wood stove. I live super remote so there is no one to 'asphyxiate' locally. I'm not an idiot so I'm half reasonable at using a stove and it burning efficiently and cleanly. The wood it burns comes from managed woodland I can see from my window. The alternative I currently have available to me is LPG which is both expensive and a fossil fuel. I'm firmly in the camp that burning logs sourced locally and naturally dried is better environmentally than burning fossil fuels apart from the local pollution issue and in my situation I view that as a low risk problem. Long term when the electricity supplied to my house is all green (ironically the Beauly to Blackhillock SSEN transmission project, europe's largest pylons linking up the nation's offshore windfarms for the servicing of you urban folk, will pass less than a km from us) and I have the cash to do the major work to insulate the house better and then saved up up for an air source heat pump I'll definitely do it. For now, this is the best I can do.
The heat it emits is a dry heat that seems to help a great deal with mould and the damp feeling we can get in the house.
So does anything without a naked flame, like central heating.
And while I can see the point about some sort of diversity in fuel sources being a good idea:
A) One of those old ceramic gas heaters will do the job just fine for a few days, they're a bit condensation but you're only worried about a few days a decade.
B) You live in a terrace, which implies a built up area, which implies you'll get the power back on as a reasonable priority.
The terrace also means all the pollutants are in a built up area where people breathe them in.
My parents live about 5 miles up the valley from a small hamlet in the middle of nowhere. There the argument makes sense. But even then it'd probably be cheaper these days to fit a battery pack big enough to run the reyburns pumps for a few days than fit a woodburner.
Seems sensible to me.
If a new house is insulated and airtight, with MVHR and air source pump, you are good to go.
Then you are just exposing your household and a few streets around you to harmful particulates, while also dumping carbon and excess heat in the athmosphere.
Now old houses with existing stoves, in rural situations, that is a different kettle of fish. But, and it is a big but, I think even old houses should have to demonstrate lower energy use before a stove install is allowed, with one* allowance for listed property.
(*and of course mcmoonter gets a pass)
It’s all psychological, I know, but building fires for domestic use seems as if it should be almost a human right.
If I was making a list of new human rights - the right to clean air would be above the right to make fire!
@zilog6128 - just as a heads up, global warming isn't really the term used anymore. Climate scientists tend to use climate change because warming isn't all that will happen - some places will get colder, some wetter, some drier. While Saxonrider is wrong to state that winters are getting colder (they're currently getting warmer), in the UK there's a risk of cold water from melting Arctic ice flowing south and blocking the Gulf Stream, which could see us having much colder winters (remember, we're on the same latitude as some of Alaska, Canada and Moscow which have much worse winters than we do).
Makes sense to me. Assuming they've ignored what's happened down here, and haven't rowed back on stiffer insulation regulations for new builds. Gas boilers next... we shouldn't be building new homes that need or use those either.
in the UK there’s a risk of cold water from melting Arctic ice flowing south and blocking the Gulf Stream
sure, we'll all be long dead before that happens though (choked by the fumes of all the middle-class numpties with their log burners 😉)
I know that we don’t get those sorts of temperatures in southern Britain, but with global climate change, things are shifting in a colder winter direction, and the idea of having no alternative to whatever the system can provide would make me feel quite vulnerable.
Have a play with this and see where is getting colder in winter in the UK (hint: it is getting milder, not cold)
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/0295557a52b5446595fc4ba6a97161bb
Be more worried about overheating in southern cities for 2 weeks+, flooding regularly, high winds, drought and drinking water shortages, land slip....
thisisnotaspoonFree Member
So does anything without a naked flame, like central heating.
To be fair, ours does seem to dry the house out whereas with the central heating on it just stays warm and damp.
However rather than 'dry heat' being the cause, I suspect it's simply because it pulls fresh air into the house.
Could be wrong but wouldn’t IR be a better bet for helping with mould and damp?
Nah no thanks, I need the direct heat of a stove but I guess I’m an outlier
I think it's a luxury to have - well insulated should not need one, at all, but if all goes tits up on the energy grid (which is shifting towards just electricity) then it's feasible to have a resilient source of heating IMO.
Our electricity was off for 8 days following Arwen.
I wouldn't want to live in a house with only a single source of heat, totally reliant on mains electricity to run everything.
Isn't the big part of the story no oil or gas boilers, so effectively pushing heat pumps, which aren't a great technology just yet, woodburners are an old thing, and would only really suit the faux style houses being built new or converted, still doesn't stop external wood burners though, which is just as bad for posh style outdoor settings these days.
Assuming that there are no issues with the electricity grid then ...
No reason for any house with central heating to need a log burner.
Unfortunately, the rural areas where wood is cheap and plentiful and there are no areas of high particulate emissions are exactly those most at risk of grid failure. (FWIW we're on an estate-wide LPG grid and had an extended outage a couple of years ago when the delivery tankers were blocked by snowdrifts.)
It would seem that there was supposed to be some allowance made for wood stoves being used as back-up but that didn't make it into the legislation. Given some other recent policy decisions I think this will add to the call for some sort of Highlands and Islands party before the next Holyrood election.
Scotroutes- I think the concern that has led government to do this isn't outdoor air quality but indoor air quality. Environmental Standards Scotland (who are effectively the overseers of whether Scottish environmental policy is working now we're not in the EU) flagged indoor air quality as a potentially big health risk because of woodburners. Scottish Government have clearly decided that this is the way to deal with it.
I'm so glad I fitted my Morso inset stove back in October insulated between flue liner and brick with pumice as I've never used the central heating since
So easy to have 22° in the room slightly too hot but open the door and the rest of the house is 17°.
So efficient with ash rarely needing to be removed but the wood has to be bone dry, a Stihl moisture meter handy tool
Before everyone gets on their high horse about pollution take a look at how busy the council recycling is at the weekend, the amount of junk bought off Amazon, the IKEA throwaway folk with all that stuff shipped from China in those reeky ships
Don't get me started on how many planes fly from UK or the pollution cruise ships
Just watching the flames dancing here as I write. The stove was 2nd hand but like new
@munrobiker - fairysnuff. My other point, about grid resilience, stands though.
On the grid resilience thing … new homes in more at risk areas should be built with energy storage, surely?
Ok - that'll keep them warm for the first 2hours. Even with solar.
What they going to do for the rest of the outage ?
Don't get me started on the new bsi guidance that means it's impossible to have an storage in many new builds and or covenants on fitting of solar panels to the roof of the new builds as it's "not in keeping with the aesthetic of the estate"
You could do that but how many would be willing to pay the extra for it?
And no as a forum I don't think we can be classed as you're average home buyer
Sooo.... could you have a wood fuel boiler in a plant room type arrangement?
A house insulated to the latest building standards, and done properly, will take days to cool down. Not that I'm against people likely to suffer outages having a wood burner.
Sooo…. could you have a wood fuel boiler in a plant room type arrangement?
How ****ing big is your house?
We’re not talking about his house, we’re taking about rural housing not yet built.
See all other posts about people’s current situation. New homes are a chance to do things differently.
Re: rural grid resilience.
Cheap temporary heating source for a few days? £66 plus £60 gas bottle did us 10 days.
Or I guess you could spend £2-4k on a wood burner plus a fuel...?
To me, and I've owned wood burners before and love them, is like putting a solar panel on.. You just don't do it until your house is properly insulated. I'm not advocating pulling them out of buildings, just not installing new ones in new buildings.
Perhaps it's of more use to revisit a huge new build and thermal renovation programme in the rural areas?
Before everyone gets on their high horse about pollution take a look at how busy the council recycling is at the weekend, the amount of junk bought off Amazon, the IKEA throwaway folk with all that stuff shipped from China in those reeky ships
Two wrongs.
I thought infra red was better for "plants"
Matt, one of those gas bottle heaters inside the house..? Er no ta, I'd not want to breath second hand air after that thing has been using it. I'd rather have a stove indoors.
Logs burners are pretty carbon neutral. I get the move to electricity but the grid is probably decades away from being as carbon neutral. I totally get the pollution aspect and rightly it should (and it looks likely) to be limited but in rural areas this is the clearly the wrong decision at the wrong time. Scottish government trying to do the right thing but mangling the detail as usual.
@munkyboy - it isn't about pollution, or outside air quality, it's about indoor air quality and the impact that has on health. A review of research by the Scottish environmental watchdog showed the government that indoor particulate matter levels caused by woodburners is a major risk to health and needed acting on. The problem is the same whether you're in rural or urban areas. So the government have acted on it.
So the government have acted on it.
Whilst allowing fags to remain on sale?
Indoor air quality would be so much better if folk would open their windows more but can't see that happening unless it's warm outside. Damp air is the main indoor pollutant
Carbon monoxide 2m from log stove has never once gone off Uther than testing it
If resilience is an issue, why not spend the 2-3k on a generator?
Matt, one of those gas bottle heaters inside the house..? Er no ta, I’d not want to breath second hand air after that thing has been using it. I’d rather have a stove indoors.
Why? The gas fire will burn cleaner.
Whilst allowing fags to remain on sale?
Well I don't think they have a choice, pretty sure that's a reserved issue. Any more unrelated reasons to kick back on this?
pretty sure that’s a reserved issue.
nope. And I wouldn't call it unrelated - both apparently are about the air we breath in.
Any more unrelated reasons to kick back on this?
But to be fair - for new houses built to new regs it's not too stupid. My immediate neighbours (loose term) is a retired gamekeeper and built a new home on farm land with some sort of crofter's covenant without a stove. First house in his life without one. His wife was deeply sceptical but says she doesn't miss it and is lovely and toasty.
However- someone's going to have to do a better job at keeping developers on the straight and narrow with these new builds. Other people we know in the area moved into a £500K (that's lots up here) brand new 'executive' home with an air source heat pump. £500pm leccy bills revealed some pretty big issues both with the design and construction of the house and heating system. 2 years on they live in a cold house wearing those stupid telly tubby snuggie things with the heating turned right down and still impressively high bills whilst legal wrangles continue. It's putting me off being an early adopter.
Woodburning is not carbon neutral untill you plant more wood than you burn
Woodburning is not carbon neutral untill you plant more wood than you burn
Er, how do you figure that? Or are you talking about commercial crops? It can be depending on how you harvest and process your wood.
@convert when I visited Orkney they didn't seem to have the same fixation that we do with keeping old inefficient stock. I guess when every watt counts it focuses the mind somewhat. Agree developers and builders need to be reigned in, it's not hard to get right.
Whataboutery doesn't help though.
Ah, the power of sweet, sweet Koolaid!
The thought that this is anything to do with the government being concerned about air quality inside homes is hilarious.
Whataboutery toasters? Incense? Candles? Mould? Fags? Vapes? Open fires?
You can't meter a log pile and double the price of it when a war kicks off somewhere.
so effectively pushing heat pumps, which aren’t a great technology just yet
They are, it's just your houses are shit, designed around a cheap and plentiful energy source, rather than insulated properly and fitted with properly specced plumbing.
Sooo…. could you have a wood fuel boiler in a plant room type arrangement?
How **** big is your house?
I've got neighbours with wood gasification equipment in plant rooms. Mostly 200+ sqm houses. Or farmhouses connected to livestock housing.
it isn’t about pollution, or outside air quality, it’s about indoor air quality and the impact that has on health. A review of research by the Scottish environmental watchdog showed the government that indoor particulate matter levels caused by woodburners is a major risk to health and needed acting on. The problem is the same whether you’re in rural or urban areas. So the government have acted on it.
FWIW i monitor particulates and CO in my place. Generally speaking, having the kitchen door open or closed when cooking makes more difference than running/not running the log burner. Except when i light it or open it to add logs. Even opening the back door during pollen season makes more difference than running the fire.
I would suspect that a lot of the issues are down to shit wood, poorly used and installed fires. Or open fires, if they are included in the stats.
FWIW we’re on an estate-wide LPG grid and had an extended outage a couple of years ago when the delivery tankers were blocked by snowdrifts.)
Sounds like friends who run out of oil because they CBA to install a Watchman and/or note how much they've got left...
I have a watchman it's not reliable It always reads that there's a lot more in the tank than there actually is. Delivery drivers check my tank when they're in the neighbourhood anyway. Also I don't use that much oil as I have a woodburner 😁
Sounds like friends who run out of oil because they CBA to install a Watchman and/or note how much they’ve got left…
Oh, the supplier saw that the tank was running low, that's why they sent the tanker. When the tank was eventually replenished it then required a visit to every property to reset the supply before we were allowed to use any gas. Proper pain that was.
Re: rural grid resilience.
Cheap temporary heating source for a few days? £66 plus £60 gas bottle did us 10 days.
£10 a day for a 4kw single heat source is hardly cheap.
Those things produce loads of water when running, not good for your house at all.
Price of firewood has pretty much doubled over the last few years, especially anything remote seasoned/dried.
That wasnt war - that was government meddling again.
If you know where to look you can still get it without it having been through a kiln at a good price . You just wont get it chopped into fire sized pieces for you.
New houses built to current (English) Building Regs don't need wood burners, and I can't see an issue with following suit here, the fabric is good enough to not require a secondary heat source and those that do fit them do so for a 'focal point' or out of luxury, and tell me they rarely (if ever) light them.
But, air source heat pumps are crap, and only just suitable (with a huge cylinder helping them out) for the best new houses, preferably with MVHR. Trying to heat the UK's existing housing stock with ASHP's is a non-starter.
No reason for any house with central heating to need a log burner.
Except with a changing climate, storms are becoming more frequent. Many parts of Scotland have been left with no power for days or weeks in recent years (after Arwen especially). Wood burners are often an essential back up heat source if the power goes down, especially in rural areas.
Ah, the power of sweet, sweet Koolaid!
The thought that this is anything to do with the government being concerned about air quality inside homes is hilarious.
Whataboutery toasters? Incense? Candles? Mould? Fags? Vapes? Open fires?
You can’t meter a log pile and double the price of it when a war kicks off somewhere.
Oh aye, it's definitely a conspiracy. Nothing to do with local air quality.
Just like ULEZs forcing us to buy more, er, um...
But, air source heat pumps are crap, and only just suitable (with a huge cylinder helping them out) for the best new houses, preferably with MVHR. Trying to heat the UK’s existing housing stock with ASHP’s is a non-starter.
This isn't true any more. The latest heat pumps flow at much higher temperatures and can be successfully retrofitted to existing stock.
Just like ULEZs forcing us to buy more, er, um…
....cars.
The dry heat thing is not because of the heat, it's because the stove is pulling moist air out of the house and throwing it up the chimney. This is replaced with air from outside which is often less moist than the air inside. It's an inefficient way to heat space, as you're constantly pulling cold air in, but it does dehumidify things
This isn’t true any more. The latest heat pumps flow at much higher temperatures and can be successfully retrofitted to existing stock.
Source ? The only data I've seen on that highlighted that yes it flows at higher temp but it uses a correspondingly higher amount of energy to do so.
How **** big is your house?
Pretty big, 6 bed farmhouse and 1 bed annex, looking at a hybrid solar, hydro and boiler fed heat store but considering non-oil fuel sources for the boiler bit
" and had an extended outage a couple of years ago when the delivery tankers were blocked by snowdrifts.)"
we had one of them a few years ago, 5 miles from Guildford!
I miss the smoky old stove with the farting dog snoring by it!
And the clingfilm over the window frames...
Source ? The only data I’ve seen on that highlighted that yes it flows at higher temp but it uses a correspondingly higher amount of energy to do so.
Well, obviously the lower the better for efficiency, but current designs can flow at 50 degrees plus, while still hitting reasonable efficiency. That would be enough to keep my solid walled home warm. I manage teams delivering projects retrofitting heat pumps into hard to treat properties, and have previously worked on heat pumps supplying district heating. None of those schemes are running at 35 degrees or whatever supposedly they need to.
ETA: terraces only have two external walls, typically the narrower two, which makes them better candidates for ASHP than was previously assumed.
I have invested in a well insulated PV, Battery storage, and solar thermal powered house to reduce my carbon footprint (and cost!)... but the inverters and pumps need 240v mains. We had no power for nine days following storm Arwen. I don't want a generator big enough to start the heatpump (ie go off grid) that would be used once in a blue moon. Arwen outage with no mains electricity (and the next shorter two multi-day outages ) woodburner was a godsend ... as was VW camper with an eberspaecher and gas cooking. Over nine winter days the house steadily cooled down, and the woodburner in the living room was the only warm space.
Extreme situations apart I love the woodburner! Live a bit out of the way Aberdeenshire though so maybe not typical ...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cojacal/51776746921/in/album-72157718174605907/
I have noticed this week plumes of smoke sround the horizon as heather is burned on an industrial scale on the surrounding hills - the desolation of the eastern cairngorm grouse moors and the pointless 'common sense is it' wanton burning of the carbon store in them is surely a more pressing issue than folk enjoying heating their homes with logs ...
That would be enough to keep my solid walled home warm
Well yes without a doubt if it ran for long enough.
Any actual numbers on efficiency from your large team installing high flow temp heat pumps ?
Indeed - I'd like to know where the likely runnings costs might fall in comparison to say a well run (ie with a smart control system and trvs on all rads) like for like for a typical UK house in percentage terms.
Now old houses with existing stoves, in rural situations,
Should read in "isolated rural situations". A recent article in one of the papers (Guardian I think) pointed to a German study where rural villages had a greater problem with particulate pollution due to the number of woodburners in use.
Article is here https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/22/how-one-german-village-exemplifies-the-cancer-risk-from-wood-burning
Garbage study above.
Open fires or stoves?
Even the picture in the article has a wood stove running with the doors open 😂
Measure the pollution in a field, presumably almost zero. Twice as high in the village, so almost zero doubled.
I wouldn't be too worried about that personally.
Total bunk.
Well yes without a doubt if it ran for long enough.
Any actual numbers on efficiency from your large team installing high flow temp heat pumps ?
Same flow temperature as my condensing gas boiler. Not sure what point you're making.
You'll have to wait for efficiency data, I need it to go through a full heating season. So far, so good.
Extremely well insulated self build house and have a wood burner. Reason is it’s a lovely way to heat a house and is a great focal point. Same reason I’m having duck for dinner rather than beans on toast. It’s just nicer. Sorry.
Total bunk.
Tell me you have a wood-burner without telling me that you have a wood-burner.