In home air quality

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Light in the Dark

Light in the Dark

Feeling the Heat
Jul 24, 2011
327
In the slight space between dark and light
So with modern wood stoves, do the same in home air quality concerns persist as there used to be?

We have been through three months of renovation hell, and currently our baseboard heat is truncated. Well the temps have dipped and I have fired the stove up to keep the kids (youngest 15 months) warm at night. One of my girls, my wife, and my baby, have all come down with a 'chest cold'.

Might be a coincidence... might not be. I am 99% sure that my modern Jotul is not a fault for poor air quality in the home, but what do you all think? I do run an OAK too, if that factors into your thought process.
 
I'm not sure when wood stoves started producing viruses that cause upper respiratory infections.

Its far more likely your girl, assuming she is school-aged, picked up something at school and brought it home.
 
My wife says the house is dustier with the woodstove in operation . . . maybe due to the air currents generated from the woodstove, but we don't notice being sick more often.

In truth, I think that the only way burning wood can be a health hazard is when you burn pine since it leads to males going bald . . . or so I've been told.
 
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"Researchers discover wood-stove use causes Erectile Dysfunction"

I'm surprised the American Petroleum Institute hasn't released a study yet :)
 
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More likely coincidence. Almost as bad as the wives tale of going outside with wet hair will give u pneumonia........LOL
That said there are inherent particulate matter involved with wood burning that would, likely, act as irritants if inhaled. Same as dust would :p. This, however, would likely not persist outside the residence.
 
not sure about your families cold, but its a yes to more dust when stove is operational. more everything, since you are constantly bringing wood in.
 
All of the above answers are spot on.
 
I found my old VC caused a lot of dust in the room but my new Hearthstone is much, much better. It has everything to do with your draft and how much smoke does or doesn't get in the room when you open to load up. Even emptying ashes now causes less dust than it did.
I've come down with a wicked cold in the last few days and feel like I was run over. I just started burning a few days ago too. Complete coincidence only. I called my daughter this morning and they all have new colds and no wood stove.
 
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firefighterjake said:
My wife says the house is dustier with the woodstove in operation
Click to expand...
Same here and I think shes right.

firefighterjake said:
In truth, I think that the only way burning wood can be a health hazard is when you burn pine since it leads to males going bald
Click to expand...
Hey I burn pine and Im loosing my hair! This must be true!

In all seriousness I think the dust and or smoke can be minimized. When opening the door of your wood stove do it gently so that you get little if any back puffing. Also get good at start up fires so you minimize the amount of times you smoke out the house (I like a well built top down start up fire). When we have visitors come to the house they are surprised that the stove is on as they say they don't smell any smoke. When I was a younger man we were told by family that we smelled like smoke. This was when we had a pre epa stove (not sure it was at fault) we also didn't follow good burning practices I guess. Keeping winter humidity up in the house is important as well.
 
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In the winter when the stove in full 24/7 mode I run a humidifier to keep humidity in the house. I don't know if its true or not but if the house is to dry it can cause your mucus membranes (sinuses) to dry out and little cracks can form allowing any bacteria or viruses easy entry into your system via blood. Again don't know how true it is, but I do not like waking up in the middle of the night with severe dry mouth or sinus pain and the humidifier helps keep that from happening.
 
One think I did to tremendously reduce dust in the house was add an ashpan to the Progress. It was not cheap but worth every penny in lower dust and much easier ash removal.
 
We get worse dust in the house during the summer from pollen and dust from our gravel driveway. Winter air quality can be poorer, even without a wood stove. There is much less outside air exchange. Also, outside air can often be poorer due to temp inversions, greater particulate accumulation close to the earth, exhaust from thousands of other heating systems nearby, etc..
 
The other thought is that the air in your house may be very dry. When My kids where babies my son used to get a cough ever winter that my wife blamed on the stove. I shut it down for weeks and the cough didn't change. Got a bigger humidifier and the cough went away.
 
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kennyp2339 said:
In the winter when the stove in full 24/7 mode I run a humidifier to keep humidity in the house. I don't know if its true or not but if the house is to dry it can cause your mucus membranes (sinuses) to dry out and little cracks can form allowing any bacteria or viruses easy entry into your system via blood. Again don't know how true it is, but I do not like waking up in the middle of the night with severe dry mouth or sinus pain and the humidifier helps keep that from happening.
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This is definitely true, up until the bacteria entering the blood. That would be septicemia, a very bad reaction to wood burning indeed. The humidification makes a lot of sense, as a main function of the nose is to humidify and filter air before passing (eventually) into the lungs. Dry air, dry nose, free passage to the lungs!
 
Seanm said:
Same here and I think shes right.


Hey I burn pine and Im loosing my hair! This must be true!

In all seriousness I think the dust and or smoke can be minimized. When opening the door of your wood stove do it gently so that you get little if any back puffing. Also get good at start up fires so you minimize the amount of times you smoke out the house (I like a well built top down start up fire). When we have visitors come to the house they are surprised that the stove is on as they say they don't smell any smoke. When I was a younger man we were told by family that we smelled like smoke. This was when we had a pre epa stove (not sure it was at fault) we also didn't follow good burning practices I guess. Keeping winter humidity up in the house is important as well.
Click to expand...

I'm also a huge fan of the top down fire. Build it right, light it once and you're set. Plus it seems to me, the "top down" fire warms the chimney quicker from a cold start.
 
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