Burning Buffalo Chips

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Its takes all kinds of folks and expect some folks are sucking this right up.

England attempted to ban coal stoves due to air pollution several times and most recently had air worse than Bejing. http://www.historytoday.com/devra-davis/great-smog

Vermont reportedly has localized pollution issues that were made worse by converting local schools to biomass chips. Most of the schools are down in valleys and if there is temperature inversion the fine particulate in the air is an issue.
 
Wait a minute . . . hold the phone . . . stop the presses.









The police are going to force me to wear pants in public now in the winter? OUTRAGE I say . . . an outrage. If I want to go to my woodshed or mailbox in my boxer shorts or long johns I say I should have every right to do so.

My neighbor may not agree with my opinion though . . .


:) ;)
 
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Dunno guys, 2.5g/hr is pretty stringent. Many of our EPA stoves don't meet that criteria. Maybe rather than an outright ban, encouraging the purchase of a new stove with a tax credit would be cheaper and less damaging to the needy.

A consequence of this will be a bunch of people burning EPA stoves incorrectly,
 
"Starting October 18, 2018, the city will extend the ban to all devices that emit more than 2.5 grams of fine particles an hour. Any fireplace, furnace or stove that does not meet that standard will be banned, and there is no grandfather clause."

I really don't see a problem with this at all. There are currently wood burning stoves on the market that can go as low as .5 grams for emissions. I have a neighbor that has an outside wood boiler and doesn't have "dry wood religion" he gets his wood dropped off around august and burns it that winter. On a cold, damp, fall morning it looks like a fog has rolled in off the ocean when that thing runs. I guess common courtesy isn't all that common. You get a couple people like this and it's what everyone thinks of when you say you heat with wood.
 
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I have a neighbor that has an outside wood boiler and doesn't have "dry wood religion
See that's the problem, fuel... the rule should be if you are a already split wood dealer then you apply for a permit to sell, part of the process is selling only wood below 25% moisture content, 20% is better but 25% is reality. I would really help with cutting down smoke emissions.
As far as using smoke dragons, I personally like newer stoves and I don't feel comfortable telling someone what they can and cant do in there own homes.
 
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the rule should be if you are a already split wood dealer then you apply for a permit to sell

he gets his wood in log length just as i do, but what i cut this year i'm not going to burn until the year after next.

I don't feel comfortable telling someone what they can and cant do in there own homes.

building codes already do this, having to upgrade to something that is cleaner burning really isn't that bad. there are quite a few choices out there.
 
I really don't see a problem with this at all. There are currently wood burning stoves on the market that can go as low as .5 grams for emissions. I have a neighbor that has an outside wood boiler and doesn't have "dry wood religion" he gets his wood dropped off around august and burns it that winter. On a cold, damp, fall morning it looks like a fog has rolled in off the ocean when that thing runs. I guess common courtesy isn't all that common. You get a couple people like this and it's what everyone thinks of when you say you heat with wood.

So how many grams per hour do you think he's emitting to cause an issue like that? I would guess it's in the 100's, but I don't really know. I would think that a 5 g/hr limit would ban the really visible polluters just as surely as the 2.5. And maybe let a few more little guys go that aren't really causing a problem.

It's really just a matter of where you draw the cost/benefit line.
 
Dunno guys, 2.5g/hr is pretty stringent.

It's also inside a city with a smog problem. Cities in China where you can't see or breathe on a normal day are taking all kinds of measures to try to make their concrete wastelands marginally more habitable.

If you think all this is a recent development:

In 1943, Los Angeles suffered a gas attack, which was eventually blamed on a local chemical plant. The plant was shut down, but the gas attacks continued. By 1945, they had figured it out, and the health department had a Bureau of Smoke Control.

I'm going to skip a lot, but by the 1970s we had recognized (despite lots of resistance from those who had financial interests in denying the obvious) that air pollution was in fact a thing and were trying to fix it a little. California was 30 years ahead of most of the country. Here's some photos:
http://m.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/12/smog-photos-1970s-america
http://m.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/12/smog-photos-1970s-america

Today we laugh at China for being as backwards as we were 45 years ago, but we are in turn the laughingstock of most of the developed world.

Even China is slowly getting this stuff figured out, because people get complainy when they can't breathe.

I hope China catches up to us soon, and I hope we slip Exxon's stranglehold on our government and catch up to the developed world soon. I like breathing too.
 
As far as using smoke dragons, I personally like newer stoves and I don't feel comfortable telling someone what they can and cant do in there own homes.

I agree with this statement fully in most instances. However, when it comes to smoke dragons and wood burning in general...we must never forget that when we burn wood/coal/etc. the resulting smoke/particulates/etc. >ALL< end up outside of our home and can easily affect others.

If the smoke stayed inside your house...yeah...folks would be bigly out of line telling you what to do.

Happy burning, all......
 
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"Starting October 18, 2018, the city will extend the ban to all devices that emit more than 2.5 grams of fine particles an hour. Any fireplace, furnace or stove that does not meet that standard will be banned, and there is no grandfather clause."

I really don't see a problem with this at all. There are currently wood burning stoves on the market that can go as low as .5 grams for emissions. I have a neighbor that has an outside wood boiler and doesn't have "dry wood religion" he gets his wood dropped off around august and burns it that winter. On a cold, damp, fall morning it looks like a fog has rolled in off the ocean when that thing runs. I guess common courtesy isn't all that common. You get a couple people like this and it's what everyone thinks of when you say you heat with wood.

Unfortunately there's a lot of lower income people who can't afford to upgrade and who will go cold other wise. So there's a problem you don't see.
 
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I agree with this statement fully in most instances. However, when it comes to smoke dragons and wood burning in general...we must never forget that when we burn wood/coal/etc. the resulting smoke/particulates/etc. >ALL< end up outside of our home and can easily affect others.

If the smoke stayed inside your house...yeah...folks would be bigly out of line telling you what to do.

Happy burning, all......
I agree here Kenny and MTN burn Main reason I swapped my stove out its just the right thing to do.
 
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Stove sales will increase everywhere then this subject will go away. Remember the leaded unleaded gas days. Moving some of my stock to stove sales
 
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Unfortunately there's a lot of lower income people who can't afford to upgrade and who will go cold other wise. So there's a problem you don't see.

people who are truly that destitute i'm sure can get some form of public assistance. the rest of the "poor" just might have to go a few months without cable and internet to come up with the funds. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2013-08/documents/certifiedwood.pdf is the list with emissions. Englander has a few models on there that meet or exceed the requirement and we can all agree that they are a decent affordable stove.
 
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people who are truly that destitute i'm sure can get some form of public assistance. the rest of the "poor" just might have to go a few months without cable and internet to come up with the funds. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2013-08/documents/certifiedwood.pdf is the list with emissions. Englander has a few models on there that meet or exceed the requirement and we can all agree that they are a decent affordable stove.

You are completely right in that statement. Englander Stoves are a huge/big example. Plus i am sure government agencies will be helping those with low income, etc. I am sure it will be many ways of getting it done.
 
......The police are going to force me to wear pants in public now in the winter? OUTRAGE I say . . . an outrage. If I want to go to my woodshed or mailbox in my boxer shorts or long johns I say I should have every right to do so.

My neighbor may not agree with my opinion though . . .

Lady: Officer, my neighbor goes out to his woodshed in just his underwear.

Officer (looking out window): Lady, your neighbor's house is a half mile away - you can't even see what he's wearing from here!

Lady: You can with these binoculars!
 
Lady: Officer, my neighbor goes out to his woodshed in just his underwear.

Officer (looking out window): Lady, your neighbor's house is a half mile away - you can't even see what he's wearing from here!

Lady: You can with these binoculars!

Actually she's pretty handy . . . older, single, retired teacher who is home a lot of the time . . . it's like having a Neighborhood Watch and a monitored Burglar Alarm all wrapped up in one tidy package. Nothing escapes her notice.

She was the one who informed the town that a large, dead elm on my property seemed dangerous and made the town take it down . . . and she was the one I went to when I noticed a lot of the wood was gone after they had cut it up -- and of course she knew right away who took it, when he took it and all of the other pertinent details so I was able to reclaim part of my wood.
 
I suppose this all depends where one lives.

I grew up and live in a rural area where the people are far enough away that one person's smoke doesn't really affect another. If someone wanted to regulate wood burning here, I'd think they were being absurd.

The 6 years I spend in Pittsburgh; I can see how a few pre-EPA stoves fed wet wood on a block might give some neighbors a legitimate complaint. I'm surprised that no one complained about my neighbor across the street. He put in a woodburner, although it ran rather cleanly. I enjoyed the wiff of woodsmoke I would get every now and again.