OWB Headaches Continue

The EPA

Feds should jump on this pronto before every town has different by-laws for different equipment.

Cant sell a woodstove that is a "dirty burner"
All cars have to pass emissions

YEEEESH, I cant believe they continue to turn a blind eye to these things.

The saddest part is that the OWB manufacturers didn't change their designs before it had to be taken this far. They have a serious black eye that will last a long time and they may never recover from even if they all changed their designs to meet EPA standards set up for indoor fireplaces tomorrow.

Next Wed a board of heath meeting is the open discussion wher OWB will be banned. allowed ones will have to be 1000' from the nearest home 1000 ' from a piblic way
restricted to burning seasoned wood (Even the moisture containt is spelled out) having an exit height 16' and limied to grams per hour emittaince.

Essentually this amounts to a total banning as only a few land owners could afford the setback distances and the grams per hour eliminates all know manufactures.

The head in the sand approach will ruin the industry these boilers are built to acept green wood in log length As longe as they do there will never be clean burning.
Admmitidly some owners have burned trash. Things with a real noxious to smell is it any wonder the complaints mount

Pretty soon the onlystate that will not bann them will be in the sun belt where there is no use for them. I would not want to be holding stock in any of the manufactures companies

Well, they'll make a fortune on retrofits if they can figure out a good way to do it.

Somebody with a $10,000 investment is going to spend plenty to keep it from sitting idle.

Corie, maybe?

Looks like the UP is starting to crack down also:
http://miningjournal.net/stories/articles.asp?articleID=9850
The nearby city of Ishpeming came down hard on some guy a couple of years ago for having one in a residential area.

These regs would still let a lot of people run them in the relatively sparse UP, just not the ones right in town. My parents have 10 acres outside Marquette, their neighbor has an outdoor boiler that takes 4' logs. Since he evidently doesn't split the logs, I'm sure they're not seasoned. It does smoke a lot, but it's far enough away that they don't notice.

I have seen 3 almost in a row inside a small village here. Everytime I seen them they had very little emissions. One evening I went past them on my way home, and I thought there was a house fire. Here one of those must have been loaded recently, or off cycle. We couldn't even see the road. Now where I live the nearest neighbor is a 1/4 of a mile away, all farmland. I would be pissed to have something like that billowing smoke on my freshly sided home. I do agree they should have regulations on them, and the people who own them should be taught how to properly operate them. Retrofits are a great idea, and if the companies want to stay in business, then something will have to be done. Out of those 3 there are only 2 now, and I think the 3rd one was disconnected and a prefab chimney put up on the side of the house with a wood stove inside. I have watched some woodpiles of the neighbor and they burn at least 3 times more wood than I do, and thats for an average 2200 square foot new home only. As much as I thought about them, I couldn't see using the amount of wood and the cost of them is pretty high. Someday when technology changes for them maybe more people will consider them, but its one of those things that to me is too good to be true. I also believe people should be notified about these things that way they are prewarned before a purchase.

I was considering a small one for winter only heating but then you have to go out in the cold to load it and keep it going so I decided to go with a forced air furnace ad-on.

bigNATE® said:

I was considering a small one for winter only heating but then you have to go out in the cold to load it and keep it going so I decided to go with a forced air furnace ad-on.

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That and there only around 20%-50% efficient at best .

hardwood715 said:

Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Amenia looking for help on outdoor furnaces



AMENIA NY - The Town of Amenia is seeking volunteers to advise the town board on legislation covering wood-burning outdoor furnaces.

Supervisor Janet Reagon said anyone wishing to serve on the Outdoor Wood-burning Furnace Advisory Committee should call 845-373-8860, ext. 105 by Dec. 29.

The board drafted a local law dealing with the devices and recently held a public hearing on it. The panel decided to study the issue further.

Appointments to the committee will be announced at the reorganization meeting Jan. 4 at 7 p.m.

At the meeting, the board will also hire professional consultants and contractors for 2007, and name an official newspaper in which legal notices are published.

The session will be held at town hall. Town hall is located at 36B Mechanic St.

Call 845-373-8860, ext. 101.

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I live about two towns away - it is a good trend to see in Dutchess County, but I am concerned that Washington township has not yet followed. I have been meaning to ask our town government about this and may start by forwarding the NYS report.

Thankfully, we don't have any by us yet, but better to stop them before they start.

-Colin

This is a nightmare - asking each town - tens of thousands in the USA...to come up with standards.
It needs to be addressed immediately either at the state or federal level.

Ideally, the regs should be for the manufacturers.....they must produce relatively clean equipment. This still leaves local jurisdictions to deal with the units already in use.

There is nothing wrong with the idea of these - it is just the implementation. The funny thing is, a properly designed unit would probably not have cost more. They used to make these out of regular steel, but they started failing very quickly because of all the acids which build up during slow combustion. So they went to stainless fireboxes, which cost big time.