No smokers in my neighborhood, but people use their goddamn fireplaces too much and it’s kinda impossible to get fresh air in winter evenings and often during the day. Not sure how to train them. And unfortunately, there are too many. Burning wood should be forbidden in residential areas. It’s similar to smoking in restaurants, except you can’t escape them.
My romantic views of wood smoke hit reality when I first camped in Canada's Banff-Jasper national parks, where you could buy unlimited firewood for the night for $5. Everyone bought it, it seemed. Trying to breathe downwind of a campground was a rude wakeup call. It should definitely be restricted in denser residential areas. I can't imagine some of the towns in Germany or Poland where residents depend on wood fires for heat.
Where they depend on wood for heat they are more likely to have efficient stoves that completely burn the wood. Smoke coming out of the chimney is "firing for the crows" and wasting fuel.
The stink remains even for efficient fires. Smoke is often correlated of course.
I'm in Christchurch, New Zealand which gets winter smog,. The city council enforces rules and woodburners need to meet strict emission standards. They regularly tighten the rules so that if you want a woodburner you need to replace it every 15 years or so.
But they do still smell.
The rules have radically improved the air quality here and we now get much less smog than when I was a kid.
Outright banning open fires and coal years ago made a big difference too.
I'm not sure what happens if you don't follow the rules. A neighbour can make a complaint and there will get taken seriously and I believe they have a van sometimes checking too. Although I've personally never heard of anyone actually getting caught.
It achieves cleaner air, which I personally like, and which is especially great for anyone with lung problems like asthmatics.
I suspect part of the rule tightening is to slowly squeeze to get rid of fires altogether (the outcome with the cleanest air).
> what do you do if you build your own woodburner/fireplace?
You couldn't afford to do it legally (I expect emissions testing is expensive). I don't know what the penalties are for illegal woodburners/fireplaces. My personal experience is that it isn't enforced. I'd guess penalties can be avoided unless you're a repeat offender with a complaining neighbour.
Note that outdoor braziers are legal AFAIK. Although Outdoor fires have some restrictions - especially if very dry and high fire risk.
Firewood is not cheap for heating. Even if you have free trees then it costs a lot of time (in my experience) and often equipment or transport is expensive too.
>You couldn't afford to do it legally (I expect emissions testing is expensive).
An honest answer at least and something i hope we don't see here.
But I think similar legislation is going to become common trough the EU (something is already on the books i believe) and is already a thing in Germany.
It's silly too in a time when most still heat with fossil fuels, pumping up more and more that could be avoided and i can build a fireplace with outside air intake or get a damn near ancient finish masonry heater that's far more efficient than anything one can get at the store.
>Firewood is not cheap for heating. Even if you have free trees then it costs a lot of time (in my experience) and often equipment or transport is expensive too.
I live in Western Europe but it's been cheap.
If I counted up the time invested and compared it to equivalent time worked for money to spend on other heating with fossil fuels then it comes out far far cheaper.
Even if i add some egregious estimates for the cost of a chainsaw, trailer and wheelbarrow it's still only a fraction of the cost.
Christchurch doesn't use much fossil fuels. Coal, Coal gas[1], Coke, and LPG were used in the past for home heating. Electricity generation can come from coal when hydro lakes get dry. Utility Solar will replace that usage.
I use firewood for heating when I'm using the living area but I'm not sure I'd replace the current woodburner. I currently use gas for hot water for showers but LPG is getting more expensive so when the gas califont fails it will be replaced with electric heating.
I have access to free trees, but I've been slowly finding that my "free" firewood is expensive (because I value my time highly). I'm not sure how to account for the risks of hurting myself, or the benefits of exercise!
We had a massive problem with smog, and although the regulations definitely have some bad side effects, the regulations have worked.
No one is forcing you to get/build one that doesn't far exceed the current regulations to the point where it is expected to exceed them until the end of its useful lifespan.
And the certification will cost almost nothing and take into account everything i presume?
Or will it center around the ones you can buy in a shop of the shelf like most regulation and be ridiculously prohibitive for everyone that goes off the beaten path?
We have a very nice Jotul stove that we use occasionally during winter to supplement our minisplits (e.g. when it drops to -10C or colder overnight). I've been told it's one of the best wood stoves you can buy.
But we burn Siberian Elm wood that grows (and dies) on our property, and even when the stove is working at its best ... jeez, I feel embarrassed for how much we stink up the neighborhood. Burning elm wood is just inherently nasty in terms of the smell.
It's particularly embarrassing because a lot of neighbors use pinon in their stoves and that makes parts of the village basically like walking into a cafe with the best smelling chili you've ever eaten (while remaining outside!).
People have romantic ideas about heating with fire and burn the most awful green wood in their fireplaces, stinking up the whole neighborhood. I understand burning bad wood because you have no options -- I witnessed a chimney fire or two as a kid that resulted from burning too much wet pine -- but I cannot fathom the mindset of someone who does it recreationally.
100% agree, many people don’t realize just how harmful wood smoke is. It’s also the main source of pollution in the Bay Area during the winter. Unfortunately energy costs are high enough here that people resort to burning wood to save money, so collectively beneficial policies are likely to face resistance (understandably).
The purpleair map has been awesome to at least make the problem visible. I hope they are using it to aid enforcement on spare the air days.
“domestic wood-burning is the largest source of particulate pollution in the UK. Only 8% of the UK’s homes burn wood, but this accounts for around 21% of the total PM2.5 emissions, whereas all traffic on the UK roads produces 13%” https://medium.com/the-new-climate/why-the-environmental-mov...
presuming your suggestion is correct (that forum goers are indistinguishable from walking echo chambers) , wouldnt screaming at forum goers just end up with a scream being returned right at you ?
> a full 1/3 of lifelong smokers never develop any kind of cancer,
That's "true" in the sense that it's the CVD (Cardiovascular disease) and COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) that are way more likely to take them out first.
Lifetime Smoking History and Cause-Specific Mortality in a Cohort Study with 43 Years of Follow-Up
Sure, you absolutely can be 98 years old sucking back on a deathstick, just like you might find yourself screaming "suck it" as you take home that giant lottery cheque with some winnings.
Pachinko's a hell of a game .. but still the house wins.
The atmosphere above Christchurch, NZ tends to form layers in winter that trap the smoke and make this worse, and new fireplaces have been restricted to clean-burning log burners and dry wood by law.
It seemed like the biggest change in air quality in recent years came from the tragic earthquakes in 2010 and 2011 knocking down all the unreinforced-masonry chimneys, though.
Well, it's not the burning of the wood as such, but the lack of flue gas treatment.
I too wish we had much stricter imissions rules for fires in residential areas.
> people use their goddamn fireplaces too much and it’s kinda impossible to get fresh air in winter evenings
Not a problem with a properly designed HEATAS approved wood burning stove and properly seasoned beach wood.
Being daft enough to buy an inefficient, unapproved stove and/or and burn unseasoned green wood is ridiculous. Not to mention its illegal to sell small quantities of unseasoned firewood in Blighty; large amounts to season yourself are fine.
EDIT: If you disagree with the above, then get off your arse and write a rebuttal saying why! Downvoting simply because you disagree (rather than because the text doesn't add to the conversation) simply turns arguments into a popularity contest and is turning this place into another Reddit. (A statement of fact, no matter what the old HN guidelines say about Reddit).
Good neighborhood = keep your emissions low. Be it sound, light, or smell. These rules apply to almost all public places. If you want to be loud, burn shit or have floodlights, move to a place outside of the city.
i see both sides, having lived with both super sensitive and petty neighbors, and also inconsiderate, loud neighbors.
There are definitely sensitive people who have either misophonia rage, or PTSD from something, and they can't handle normal levels of city noise.
on top of that, some apartments simply allow smoking inside. If they always use the balcony, they're really doing you a favor.
if you are worried about emissions, you really have to think about cars and refineries and jets, and even restaurants. These are incredibly out of control when it comes to pollution and disease.
in my experience, if you're buying machines and building devices, and your target refuses to play that game, then it's clear who the adult is, and who the child is.
I don't mind the gunshots near my house during hunting season, because I have good neighbors. Those shots mean my freezer is getting stocked with venison.
I live far enough out that the gunshots are usually people hunting NFS land.
A huge swath of it borders my property, as I'm the last house up the road on my mountain.
I don't mind 'em at all, though. I think it's locals, just folks I haven't met. They keep it clean and they go up far enough I can't hear anything besides the rifle crack.
