popular mechanics January article on woodheat

[dvellone]

http://www.popularmechanics.com/hom...t/is-wood-the-best-renewable-fuel-for-heating

 

[duke52]

Interesting article and makes sense. Thanks

 

[Renovation]

Popular Mechanics 1, New York Times 0

Thanks for the article. It was actually reasonable, positive to wood heating, and informative, so it didn't get much comment.

The values in the chart seem fairly accurate.

It's interesting that they included masonry heaters, and rated their efficiency at 80%, versus 70% for wood stoves. Any guesses how they got that? Maybe the value for wood stoves is an average? I think cats can get as high as 80% efficiency, no?

 

[woodgeek]

Agreed, George. The Times article about wood heating: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/garden/20fire.html?_r=1&hpw; was written by someone unclear on the concept, seems to confuse inserts with glass doors. For those of you not living in NYC (I have a lot of relative there), it does capture an anti-wood attitude in the younger, greener folks there.

The PopM article did confuse electric resistance heat with air-source heat pump heat in their chart--grrr--but at least they added a correction. Sad that the error rates in journalism are so high--but I guess it IS balanced--just between right and wrong.

 

[firefighterjake]

Not a bad article . . . although I would take issue that secondary burners are "improved" from the cat stoves . . . to me they are simply just another way of getting a clean, efficient burn.

 

[DanCorcoran]

Observations:

- peculiar economics on the masonry heaters. They only show annual fuel and maintenance cost, which makes them look competitive with woodstoves and natural gas. They completely ignore the comparatively huge upfront investment;

- they mention that wood pellets have an infinite shelf life. Well, okay, but only under ideal conditions. We had three pellet stoves for 6 years and had continuing problems with pellets absorbing moisture (either before we got them, or if we accidentally allowed water near them). They swell up, turn to mushy powder, clog up a pellet stove, and must be discarded or used for mulch;

- a much more balanced and informed article than the NYT article.

 

[dvellone]

Observations:

- peculiar economics on the masonry heaters. They only show annual fuel and maintenance cost, which makes them look competitive with woodstoves and natural gas. They completely ignore the comparatively huge upfront investment;

- they mention that wood pellets have an infinite shelf life. Well, okay, but only under ideal conditions. We had three pellet stoves for 6 years and had continuing problems with pellets absorbing moisture (either before we got them, or if we accidentally allowed water near them). They swell up, turn to mushy powder, clog up a pellet stove, and must be discarded or used for mulch;

- a much more balanced and informed article than the NYT article.

They do address the expense of masonry heaters. Here's the quote:

"They are efficient and clean-burning and require less stoking, though they are expensive because they are almost always custom-built. Installed prices range from $13,000 to well above $20,000."

 

[DanCorcoran]

Yes, I saw that, but I was referring to the table. It reads left to right, with the implication that the right-hand column is the number to compare. No biggie...

 

[Renovation]

Agreed, George. The Times article about wood heating: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/garden/20fire.html?_r=1&hpw; was written by someone unclear on the concept, seems to confuse inserts with glass doors. For those of you not living in NYC (I have a lot of relative there), it does capture an anti-wood attitude in the younger, greener folks there.

The PopM article did confuse electric resistance heat with air-source heat pump heat in their chart--grrr--but at least they added a correction. Sad that the error rates in journalism are so high--but I guess it IS balanced--just between right and wrong.

Thanks WoodGeek!

Don't get me started on the public's unwarranted faith in the accuracy of the news and politicized science. Who's going to publicize it? At least it's in the ballpark and captures some of the flavor and attitude of wood burners.

Yes, I saw that, but I was referring to the table. It reads left to right, with the implication that the right-hand column is the number to compare. No biggie...

Hi Dan,

Agreed--it would be nice if they included a column that estimated the overall cost/year over the lifespan of the heater.

Not a bad article . . . although I would take issue that secondary burners are "improved" from the cat stoves . . . to me they are simply just another way of getting a clean, efficient burn.

Yep, that just seems confused--saying that secondaries are enhancements to cats.

On the positive side, for a mainstream article about something I know something about, it was pretty reasonable.

This part was pretty cool:

Jerry Whitfield, a former Boeing engineer in northern Washington, is tackling the price problem by improving stove technology. Whitfield is researching a next-generation stove that burns a variety of pellet types and grades, including pelletized grasses, straws, hay, rice husks, sugarcane bagasse, corn stover, even poultry manure.

"I can envision a future," Freihofer says, "where there would be the equivalent of a local community pellet mill. It would recycle everything from newspapers to yard trimmings to waste wood, the way a grist mill might have operated 150 years ago."

That sounds awesome. You could leave a "bio" bin out by the curb containing your burnable garbage, and buy it back cheap as fuel--bio bricks included. Between that and traditional recycling, almost nothing would go in the landfill.

 

[webby3650]

Did anybody read the comments below the article? Some people have no clue, wood burning is too often associated with "thick clouds of smoke". My neighbors seem to think so too, everyday their OWB is crankin out the grey fog. :sick:

 

[Renovation]

Did anybody read the comments below the article? Some people have no clue, wood burning is too often associated with "thick clouds of smoke". My neighbors seem to think so too, everyday their OWB is crankin out the grey fog. :sick:

Sympathies Webby, that really sucks.

IMO those early OWBs continue to hugely damage woodburner's image. My neighbor had one, and its cool water-jacketed firebox just belched out the smoke, and he said it ate wood too. Fortunately for us both, the firebox rusted out, and he replaced it with a new clean-burn one from something like Central Boiler, and it was much cleaner, and he says it burned about half as much wood. That is, until his wood shed caught fire, and all 20 cords burned like a midnight sun (five, count 'em, five fire trucks), taking his OWB with it. He's a devout Christian, but a few cuss words escaped his lips when he woke up and saw what that strange glow was. Now he's waiting for furnace number three.

So I guess we can hope all those old-tech OWBs will die eventually. There are still a number in my area.

 

[jlove1974]

I wouldn't line my birdcage with the NY Times or the Sacramento Bee lol.

 

[webby3650]

Did anybody read the comments below the article? Some people have no clue, wood burning is too often associated with "thick clouds of smoke". My neighbors seem to think so too, everyday their OWB is crankin out the grey fog. :sick:

Sympathies Webby, that really sucks.

IMO those early OWBs continue to hugely damage woodburner's image. My neighbor had one, and its cool water-jacketed firebox just belched out the smoke, and he said it ate wood too. Fortunately for us both, the firebox rusted out, and he replaced it with a new clean-burn one from something like Central Boiler, and it was much cleaner, and he says it burned about half as much wood. That is, until his wood shed caught fire, and all 20 cords burned like a midnight sun (five, count 'em, five fire trucks), taking his OWB with it. He's a devout Christian, but a few cuss words escaped his lips when he woke up and saw what that strange glow was. Now he's waiting for furnace number three.

So I guess we can hope all those old-tech OWBs will die eventually. There are still a number in my area.

This boiler is my closest neighbor, bout 600 yards away, it belches most of it's smoke on his nieighbor only 50 feet away. It is a Hardy stove, (the original) :sick: what a turd.

 

[CarbonNeutral]

Added a comment to the end of that article...

 

[RNLA]

I have been brought to a new level of "accurate burning" if you can call it that. I moved into a 1940s neighborhood and the houses are 15-25ft. apart. My next door neighbor's wife has asthma and is intolerant of any smoke or any irritant air quality. So in a move to make it clean I burn a little hotter and use a bit more wood. so far the only feedback is she doesn't sleep with the window cracked anymore. I may be overly concerned but I believe she is not too happy with me, I stopped asking for opinions and just go ahead and light it up, get it hot as quickly as possible, then burn as clean as I can... I was amazed at the responses to the article some of those were very unfriendly, almost militant. It just goes to show WE as a community of wood burners need to keep it clean to keep it alive... ;-) It also shows there are still lots of people who make us look bad with there burning habits... >:-(

 

[Backwoods Savage]

I find it amazing who they use for an example (but I have not yet read the entire article so there may be more). This guy lives in Virginia, not necessarily a very cold state and he buys his wood for $1,200.00 per year. Oh, he could do so much more....

 

[Renovation]

I have been brought to a new level of "accurate burning" if you can call it that. I moved into a 1940s neighborhood and the houses are 15-25ft. apart. My next door neighbor's wife has asthma and is intolerant of any smoke or any irritant air quality. So in a move to make it clean I burn a little hotter and use a bit more wood. so far the only feedback is she doesn't sleep with the window cracked anymore. I may be overly concerned but I believe she is not too happy with me, I stopped asking for opinions and just go ahead and light it up, get it hot as quickly as possible, then burn as clean as I can... I was amazed at the responses to the article some of those were very unfriendly, almost militant. It just goes to show WE as a community of wood burners need to keep it clean to keep it alive... ;-) It also shows there are still lots of people who make us look bad with there burning habits... >:-(

Thanks RNLA, your consideration makes it better for all of us. What state are you in?

 

[ControlFreak]

Interesting that the article compares all the sources of heat but leaves out coal. Though I heat with wood, if I had to start over I would at least give coal a looking at. I've seen info that suggests coal is the most cost-effective heating fuel of them all. It would at least merit some comparison. Maybe the author ran out of time to research another fuel source.