I had a argument with someone the other day when he said I was polluting by using my dirty woodstove for heating my house. He said the smoke I create is worse than using gas or electric to heat my house. He also said that my heat is not carbon neutral since I am not growing trees to replace the ones that I burn. I heat my house with a modern EPA fireplace insert using wood from a local tree service. The stove creates very little smoke when it is up to temperature. Also, the smoke is no more toxic than a forest fire. That seems pretty pollution free and carbon neutral to me. Some people you just can't reason with.
Heating with wood pollutes more than any other heating method
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It probably depends on how your local grid mix is generated. A heat pump running off a mostly hydro, nuclear and NG mix is probably cleaner than a wood stove. Oregon has a large hydro generating capacity but also a lot of coal and NG.
EbS-P
Minister of Fire
I’m of the mind set that if everyone heated with wood it sure would be worse. But but many do and if you burn clean with dry wood in an area that does not have air quality issues It certainly is a green sustainable way to heat.
Re: “not growing trees to replace the ones you cut down”
It might not be true for trees cut down in the city, or “yard trees”, but for every tree I cut down in the woods, dozens try to take its place. And I don’t even have to plant them.
I’d bet more firewood comes from logging than anywhere else. And no not clear cutting, but selective logging.
I love my woodstove. It keeps me toasty in the winter. But if I could generate enough power to heat my house (to 75 degrees all winter) from hydro, solar, or wind for the price of a woodstove, I would consider that.
It might not be true for trees cut down in the city, or “yard trees”, but for every tree I cut down in the woods, dozens try to take its place. And I don’t even have to plant them.
I’d bet more firewood comes from logging than anywhere else. And no not clear cutting, but selective logging.
I love my woodstove. It keeps me toasty in the winter. But if I could generate enough power to heat my house (to 75 degrees all winter) from hydro, solar, or wind for the price of a woodstove, I would consider that.
Replanting after logging is required by law here in Oregon. The tree service trees that I use for firewood are mostly problem trees from homeowner's yards.
hickoryhoarder
Minister of Fire
Air pollution-wise a natural gas furnace running well is easily cleaner than one of the cleanest wood stoves burning well seasoned wood at hot temperatures. That said, I would not call such a stove/home "dirty." It'll tend to be 10-20 times cleaner than fireplaces and old stoves, with less attention to getting wood internally dry.
So it makes a difference which wood-heated home we're talking about. Maybe by a factor of 10 or 20.
Firewood discussed in these forums is generally not obtained by clear-cutting. Nature plants trees, and does it better than we do, as Peter Wohlleben points out in the Hidden Life of Trees. It does tend to be carbon neutral to burn wood in U.S. homes, unless somehow one is going into a woodlot and preventing new tree growth. Firewood can come from only downed trees in a woodlot. I would not want to take all of the downed trees out of a woodlot, which interferes with natural cycles.
More impressive is fuel (gas, wood, or whatever) not used -- energy efficiency. Better stoves, better insulation, not over-heating a home, etc. The nega-therm is very clean.
I have a few very good, kind friends who are kind of knee-jerk about wood-burning. One should never do it, in their eyes. But they live afar and have never been to our house, which uses wood heat about 15% of the winter days. From the doorstep or yard you cannot tell whether we have a fire in the stove or not. And that is an explicit goal -- to protect the area. Most of the air pollution from burning in our small city neighborhood comes from fireplaces and old stoves that carry less of the heating load for their homes -- pure recreation. But what I like is that no one uses the fireplace a ton, and overall the air quality is good. Nevertheless, our house is creating more air pollution on the evenings we use the stove.
The amount of smoke and smell from a stovepipe or chimney is a good indicator of pollution.
While natural gas is relatively clean at the exhaust pipe, it is not especially clean in the extraction process, even minus fracking. Can we assume your critic's home is heated by passive solar and a solar-powered heat pump that works at zero degrees? Even so, he seems more critical than helpful.
So it makes a difference which wood-heated home we're talking about. Maybe by a factor of 10 or 20.
Firewood discussed in these forums is generally not obtained by clear-cutting. Nature plants trees, and does it better than we do, as Peter Wohlleben points out in the Hidden Life of Trees. It does tend to be carbon neutral to burn wood in U.S. homes, unless somehow one is going into a woodlot and preventing new tree growth. Firewood can come from only downed trees in a woodlot. I would not want to take all of the downed trees out of a woodlot, which interferes with natural cycles.
More impressive is fuel (gas, wood, or whatever) not used -- energy efficiency. Better stoves, better insulation, not over-heating a home, etc. The nega-therm is very clean.
I have a few very good, kind friends who are kind of knee-jerk about wood-burning. One should never do it, in their eyes. But they live afar and have never been to our house, which uses wood heat about 15% of the winter days. From the doorstep or yard you cannot tell whether we have a fire in the stove or not. And that is an explicit goal -- to protect the area. Most of the air pollution from burning in our small city neighborhood comes from fireplaces and old stoves that carry less of the heating load for their homes -- pure recreation. But what I like is that no one uses the fireplace a ton, and overall the air quality is good. Nevertheless, our house is creating more air pollution on the evenings we use the stove.
The amount of smoke and smell from a stovepipe or chimney is a good indicator of pollution.
While natural gas is relatively clean at the exhaust pipe, it is not especially clean in the extraction process, even minus fracking. Can we assume your critic's home is heated by passive solar and a solar-powered heat pump that works at zero degrees? Even so, he seems more critical than helpful.
hickoryhoarder
Minister of Fire
My critic lives in San Diego, CA. He uses solar for all the electric, but heating is natural gas. Funny, when I lived there I never found the need to do any heating. There were a few chilly nights here and there, but I never found the need to do anything other than use a couple more blankets. Now that I live in Oregon, the need for heating is obvious, but it is nothing compared to what many in this country face.
brenndatomu
Minister of Fire
Send them this
Drop in air pollution has INCREASED global warming, study reveals
The team found there is less haze in the atmosphere, which means the air is cleaner. They also uncovered less light is being reflected from Earth, which is adding to global warming.
If he’s arguing carbon, burning trees is a carbon loop. Trees cut down and burnt. New trees grow in its place. Nothing added, nothing removed.
Natural gas carbon isn’t in a cycle. It’s just pulled from the ground and stays in the air once burnt. I think your friend should feel horrible. About their life choices.
Natural gas carbon isn’t in a cycle. It’s just pulled from the ground and stays in the air once burnt. I think your friend should feel horrible. About their life choices.
Technically it is, but the cycle is much longer than humans have been (or will be) alive. One of the most productive times in our planet's history was when the dinosaurs were alive. Carbon dioxide levels (and temperatures) were much higher back then. This productivity allowed animals to become huge.
I am not suggesting that we keep dumping carbon into the atmosphere. We have built our civilization around a brief stable time in our planet's history and we should do what we can to preserve that stability. Just pointing out that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant as some have said. Keeping our human activities as renewable and waste free as possible is always the best plan.
True but there is a time offset. CO2 in firewood is released all at once and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years or so, it will take many years for a new tree to absorb the same amount of CO2.
If you’re on Earth’s time line, that’s an instant cycle. You’re not going to get much better than that.
Heating with wood is not carbon neutral. It is better than most alternatives but not perfect. You still have fuel used to process and transport the wood. And left to rot much of the carbon would not be released into the atmosphere it would be returned to the earth or transferred into organisms who eat the wood.
Electric heat especially heat pumps are definitely better when it comes to carbon as long as the power is generated without burning fossil fuels.
Electric heat especially heat pumps are definitely better when it comes to carbon as long as the power is generated without burning fossil fuels.
My wood collection and processing is mostly electric. Electric chainsaws to cut down and buck, my electric 6x6 to drag logs and pull wood trailers, and I converted my wood splitter to electric as well. The NY State grid mix is pretty clean with hydro, nuclear, and NG. Theoretically it could all be fossil free.
brenndatomu
Minister of Fire
Electric motors don't require maintenance, my bar and chain oil is plant based, there are plant based hydraulic fluids, and by "disposing" I assume you mean recycling. Production facilities run on electricity which doesn't need to be fossil fuel powered and eventually trucking and mining will be electric as well. We are in the early stages of the end of the fossil fuel age.
No absolutely nothing is totally fossil fuel free at this point. And I doubt ever will be completely when you factor in the manufacturing. But if that's the only part consuming fossil fuels our consumption and emissions will be a tiny fraction of what they are now.
Simonkenton
Minister of Fire
brenndatomu
Minister of Fire
Agreed...can we affect things to some degree (especially locally...think the Cuyahoga river on fire) but globally, nope, not buyin it.
Who would be the most "carbon neutral"person? Is there a questionnaire online somewhere? I think we all have some strong points, but also fail in the grand scheme of things
Caw
Minister of Fire
This is why I went with the setup I have. My solar panels power the heat pump for AC and any backup heat needed on the coldest nights in the winter (I'd say it comes in 3-5 times a year for 1 or 2 hrs at night on average) and I burn wood for my primary heat. I get all my wood from local tree jobs, stuff that was coming down anyways, so the only fossil fuels used are to run my power tools and to fuel the power tools/trucks the tree company used to cut it down and transport it to my house. For living in the suburbs it's about as carbon neutral as I can possibly get. I really enjoy living that lifestyle.
Prof
Minister of Fire
Whether you think it is real or a hoax reducing consumption of a finite resource is a good thing. And developing renewable alternatives is good for everyone. Especially our economy if we commit to being the leaders in it.
The physics of the CO2 molecule are not in dispute. It's a heat trapping gas, as is methane, CH4, and we've been putting massive amounts of both into the atmosphere for the last 100 years or so. Basically denying human influenced climate change is akin to saying if you build a house out of glass you didn't create a greenhouse.
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