By eernest4

This thread inspired this article & will show you just what troble a smoke nazi can make.

http://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/15884/

We all know at least one,smoke nazi or other type of noisy neighbor that constantly complains & calls the cops on you. Examples are: that you have too many cars in your drive way & your nazi neighbor has the cops at your door asking you if you are running an unlicensed auto repair garage & you pull out all the registrations of all the cars & show then to the police and say “Sorry officer, I didn’t know it was illegal to repair my own cars, in my own yard, my self.” And you are putting up with This, while your nazi neighbor looks through his window at you & laughs at all the trouble he is causing you. Well, as soon as you get a wood stove, if this PITA nazi sees smoke comming out of your chimney, You can be sure he will be speed dialing the police to formally log his complaint. Here is what you can do about it, to stay off his radar & should he catch on,to be legally burning so that thecops can’t do anything to you about it. First, before you buy your wood stove, make sure to get either a epa secondary burn or a epa catalitic combustor stove. EPA rates the stoves that pass their least smoke licensing criteria tests. Any EPA rated stove will give you twice the heat for 1/3 of the wood burned as compaired to an old fashoned or airtight stove. Make sure that the stove is installed by a licensed installer & get a stove installation permit ,if required , & have the install done according to the stove installation safety codes, then after installation,have the install inspected by the town fire inspector,stove inspector or building inspector. Different towns have different job titled guys for the inspection, so that’s why i mentioned them all. NOW, HERE ARE THE TRICKS SO THAT THE NEIGHBOR’S DON’T CATCH ON THAT YOU ARE BURNING WOOD. iF THE DON’T KNOW,THEY CAN’T COMPLAIN.

1. buy both a pellet stove & a wood stove. Pellet stoves dont smoke, at least not smoke that can been seen, but the smoke can be smelled for about 80 feet. Run the pellet stove during the day & the smoke nazi wont have anything to see. He will look up at your chimney and see nothing.

You can ROTFLYAO at him while he shakes his head from side to side & mutters something like “ I know I smelled smoke comming from somewheres around here,but Joe Blow’s chimney is clear”.” Oh ,well,I guess I’l go snoop
in the other neighbor’s yard.”

Now you burn your wood stove after dark when smoke nazi can’t see your chimney. Smoke Nazi might still smell the smoke ,but he won’t know where it is comming from.

After dark is when it is coldest anyways, so that is the best time to burn your wood stove.

I run my pellet stove during the day, when it is warmer & i don’t use as many bags of pellets. While pellets are cheap compaired to fuel oil, $5.oo bag of 40 lbs gives 24 hr heat & compair this to a two hour run of my oil burner
which eats 1.6 gal/hr x 2= 3.2 gal for 2 hr x 3.20gal = $10.24 for 2 hr run =6 hr of heat

HERE WE SEE THAT 6 HOURS OF MONEY BURNER HEAT =48 HOURS OF PELLET HEAT

To be fair, the oil/money burner central heat, heats the whole house, while wood & pellet stoves are space heaters or spot heaters. They only heat the room they are in as well as several adjacient rooms. Depending on the size of your house & your floor plan, say a 1200 sq foot to a 1800 sq ft house, can be heated only with wood or pellet , if the floor plan is fairly open to allow air convection currents to distribute the hot air to all the different rooms & the stoves are properly sized ,before you buy them,to put out the heat that your house requires.

I have compaired the price of pellets to oil heat , now let me tell you how much money it cost for wood fuel,for me to heat a 3000 sq ft house with wood for 3 years.

Cost of wood fuel for 3 years. $0.00 Cost to cut down 8 trees on my property, $800.oo , that was just to have those fat boys felled & left as they lie. I cut them up with chain saws & heated my house with them for 3 yrs. Each tree yieled about 2 cords of wood, & i suplimented this by driving around on scrap pick up day & filling my car with whatever unpainted lumber my neighbor’s were throwing out.

Sometimes ,I drive to the dump with an empty trailer & wait for someone to show up with a load of wood that i put in my trailer. The dump workers won’t let you go in the dumpster’s ,no libality insurace to cover them if you hurt yourself, so you can’t & if you try to,the would call the cops. But ,the let you transfer wood from one vechicle to another before it is dumped.

If you have to end up buying wood,it costs 225.oo to 275.00 a cord, split & delevered & dont expect it to be dry ,one year seasoned wood. It most likely high moisture content & not seasoned, still partly green. So if the wood vendor can’t prove its dry 1 year seasoned wood,offer him the lower price.

You can buy the same cord of wood delevered, cut in 4 ft sections , but not split ,in the round for 160.00 to 200.oo a cord. if you are going to split, just get it over with & buy a 22 ton huskey from tractor supply co. for 1000.oo
+tax , ready to tow behind your car ,if you have a 2 inch ball.Anyplace else, you pay 1400.oo to 1600.oo for a 24 to 28 ton splitter, which is a bit more powerful,but you don’t need & probably won’t use the extra power. The huskey can do the job & save you enough to pay for 1/2 of your wood stove.

Think that you are going to split wood with a maul, a sledge & a wedge, AAAHHHHHAAAA haa— maybe about 10 or 12 rounds a week if that. if I could only burn the wood I split be hand, I would have frozen to death, 2 winters back.

When you burn 2 to 3 cords a month, you need a log splitter,just to keep up. Of course, I heat 3000 sq ft so,i bought an extra,extra large size wood stove. 12 cubic foot fire box.
Most large size stoves have a 2.8 to 3.5 cubic foot firebox.These stoves use less than 1/2 the wood i burn. Those toy electric splitters wont split much over 6 inch diameter,if that, & what are you going to do with the 24 in dia & 30 inch dia logs?? so unelse you look like arnould swartznieger, buy the huskee 22 ton.

Smoke nazi’s can be kept in the dark ,if,when you see them snooping around your house,you switch to oil or pellet.
For me,its not a problem, because I don’t burn wood at all until after dark. Daytime is is pellet or oil, mostly pellet.

I only burn the oil to warm up(not heat) those rooms that the wood & pellet heat can’t get to & then, not very often. Usually ,the heat from the wood & pellet will keep the cold storage rooms around 50 in severe weather & 59 in mild weather. I live in new england, so we get some cold & snowy ones.