New Paper Undermines Stove Industry Variability Study

[Huntindog1]

Check out the latest on the subject:

http://forgreenheat.blogspot.com/2014/08/new-paper-undermines-stove-industry.html


I think if they are going to go extreme with the emissions rating that it should be held off for the next round. That for this round of making stoves cleaner they should just set the standards to be the best level that each technology can obtain. Setting the level to one set standard looks like the end of non-cat stoves.

I think there is fear that is running in the back of some industries peoples minds that wood stoves could be banned all together. So its the we have got to clean up our own act or we might not even be able to burn wood in the future. It seems like in everything in the United States the radicals make the most noise and the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

I think the real issue is not the clean stoves we are currently burning but its all the smoke dragons out there still being burnt today. I think there are a higher number of smoke dragons out there than there are clean burning stoves. Thus the main objective would be to get stoves changed out with bigger incentives.

Banning the more economical non-cat stoves is actually gonna make people keep their old smoke dragons even longer. You can catch a non-cat stove on sale for $600 and if we can get the government to raise their incentive from $300 to like $500 thats gonna get some people changing out those old stoves. But to tell them to change out their stoves and they need to go out and buy a $2000 to $3000 stove, I just dont think thats helping the cause. I would much rather get people burning a 4 grams emissions non-cat stove than burning a smoke dragon . To take the leap and say its vitally important to get them into a 2.0 gram stove rather than a 4.0 grams stove is to me is not a practical idea. As a 4 gram stove burns clean you cant even see smoke coming from the flue or smell anything. Its all those stoves smoking like a freight train thats getting most people bent out of shape and wanting wood burning banned completely.

I am not saying ban the smoke dragons but we should promote affordable solutions for change out, as putting our money were its most effective.

 

[DougA]

Years ago in our area, the gov't offered a rebate on new fridges to encourage people to replace old ones that consumed more than twice as much electricity. Great idea but most people just took the old fridge and put it in the basement and used it as a beer fridge. The power consumption increased, not decreased. Recently, the incentive was changed so that they paid out only when you turned in your old fridge and someone comes to your home and hauls it away. Much more expensive but very effective.

Wood stoves have to one of the most misused items in a house. Far too many people have no idea how to properly and safely use a stove.

 

[pwaggs]

I can't pull the article where I am. Maybe in a few hours.

Government regulation aside (It really rankles under my skin), wouldn't we encourage ANY new stove use over just a simple fireplace? Any secondary burn stove must be more efficient than throwing green wood in a fireplace and lighting. Not to mention the more efficient transfer of that energy/heat into your room and not up the chimney. Why isn't the effort about encouraging more use of inserts in existing fireplaces than trying to get a much smaller number of wood stove users to upgrade their stoves?

 

[begreen]

More efficient stoves on the market do not necessarily clean up the air. This has been proven in New Zealand. They've set a high bar for smoke reduction but still are seeing bad local woodsmoke pollution. Why? Because some folks cling to their old stoves, burn in fireplace and burn trash outdoors. Evidence shows a lot more could be accomplished by replacing and destroying old stoves, restricting open burning and fireplace use, educating the public to burn dry wood and encouraging wood sellers to sell seasoned wood. In New Zealand communities where they have taken this tack they are noting a decrease finally. Pellet stoves have also helped with their pollution situation.

 

[stoveguy2esw]

Years ago in our area, the gov't offered a rebate on new fridges to encourage people to replace old ones that consumed more than twice as much electricity. Great idea but most people just took the old fridge and put it in the basement and used it as a beer fridge. The power consumption increased, not decreased. Recently, the incentive was changed so that they paid out only when you turned in your old fridge and someone comes to your home and hauls it away. Much more expensive but very effective.

Wood stoves have to one of the most misused items in a house. Far too many people have no idea how to properly and safely use a stove.

there have been several "changeout" programs for stoves done at local levels the most notable is probably the Libby Mt. program . its my opinion that federal funding to buttress the local governments funding of such programs would go a long way towards reducing carbon emmissions from wood burning. especially when the units replaced in this manner would have a much higher improvement than the few grams per hour between phase 2 and the new proposed levels.

the fridge example you mentioned is pretty close on to what you have with woodstoves as well, especially when a lot of folks who do upgrade when their old stove is still functional they in a lot of cases would sell the old stove which wouldnt really help anything in the "green" department as it would simply be reinstalled in another home and as in your "beer fridge" descriptive, emmissions would actually rise due to the new st0ove being put in (even though it burns quite clean by comparison) with the old stove not being taken out of commission nothing is gained.
several states have helped to reduce this effect by not allowing "new" installs of non approved stoves, but there is a long way to go in that respect as well.

one of the real issues making this such a slow process is the "durability" factor, take the lightbuilb as an example of how it has transitioned rapidly as old bulbs are no longer allowed the newer bulbs are replacing them rapidly as they (the old bulbs) do not last all that long, with your old fishers and the like , they were built to last for decades, and folks who have have them look at them as perfectly functional so why replace it. this is where the incentivation comes into play. even with that though , folks are going to be less motivated to replace an expensive item when its still doing what they expect it to do and has done so since new.

 

[begreen]

Yes, Libbey, MT, Pittsburg, PA and Darrington, WA come to mind. Here's more info on stove changeout programs:
(broken link removed to http://woodstovechangeout.org/index.php)

 

[ddahlgren]

How many months out of a year there are forest fires volcanos etc? The EPA is why the price of most anything is so much! Even worse they are not elected and like a government jobs almost impossible to rid of them. Where in the world are they going to put all the batteries for electric cars? Do the people that own them that a large percentage of the electricity they use is from a coal fired power plant. The real problem with the EPA is the attitude of what we do will clean up the world and it is not going to happen, we make up a very small amount of the people in the world and the less developed a country the more they add to pollution per capita.

 

[stoveguy2esw]

oh i dont know, IMHO the EPA as an idea is not such a bad thing , remember also that Congress is charged with oversight on all executive branch departments as well as advising and consenting to the appointments of the agency's director. looking back the advent of the EPA has been key in reducing pollution to air and waterways (think "love canal")

OTOH, as with anythig else when dealing with government , the Congress should be able to rein in these agencies when they over reach. without that check the EPA could become draconian.

 

[Huntindog1]

ddahlgren,

I hear your pain but we cant talk politics on this forum as its not a forum for that. So lets all agree the EPA is for real and go from there or this post will be in the trash can for ever gone.

What we can do is forward these EPA updates to others you know to keep people informed.

 

[John Ackerly]

I really don't see wood stoves being unfairly targeted by government. It is so well documented that in towns and valleys all over the country, a lot of wintertime air pollution is from wood stoves and outdoor boilers. So I just don't see how the wood heat community can say its the wildfires, or its the diesel trucks or whatever.

The 1988/1990 NSPS and this one is an investment in the future. It takes 15 - 30 years to really see the benefit of these regulations. I think we are definitely seeing the benefit of the 1988/90 NSPS today in many communities, even though outdoor wood boilers caused a lot of backsliding in lots of areas. And, I think we will also see the benefit of the 2015 NSPS down the road. One of the biggest improvements of this NSPS could be eliminating how emission numbers are averaged and requiring that they burn clean and all 4 burn rates. So whether they lower it from 4.5 to 2 might not be so important than requiring the low burn rate to be under 4.5, for example. But ultimately this switch to cord wood that hopefully will take place between 2020 and 2025 will start getting stoves to be built differently and perform better on cord wood.

 

[Huntindog1]

I think John has a point in that there are communities that are not in wide open spaces but rather could be in a valley with hills on all sides. Get a few smoke dragons and the weather is just right and the whole valley fills up with smoke and hovers low to the ground rather than floats away and disperses. All over the country there are different terrains and weather conditions. Most likely the state of Washington has tighter emissions standards for a reason. The wetter rainier conditions and lots of hilly mountainous terrain. I am sure in that state smoke hangs around for long periods of time. I have never been there and have never walked in their shoes but there is usually good reasons for why they made the emission standards tighter.

(broken image removed)

 

[begreen]

In this case note that EPA takes action after lawsuits are brought against it by states, health and environmental protection lobbyists. They didn't just dream up things to clean up the world.

Correct Hd. It is not just communities, but whole regions that can be affected by temperature inversions and geography. In the Puget Sound region you are talking hundreds if not thousands of poor burning practices that add up to a smog covering an area 40-60 miles with a population of a couple million. Ironically it's not during rainy days that we get burn bans, but more likely on the non rainy, but cloudy very cold days when a stagnant low parks over the area. Likewise, for Denver, or on a smaller scale for Libby, MT.

 

[stoveguy2esw]

In this case note that EPA takes action after lawsuits are brought against it by states, health and environmental protection lobbyists. They didn't just dream up things to clean up the world.

i'd be curious why a state which has the authority within their state to sue the fed over this (as washington state did to tighten their own standards) , as i type this i suppose it would be if it had to do with the practices in another state , like polluting a river shared with another state for instance.

 

[stoveguy2esw]

I really don't see wood stoves being unfairly targeted by government. It is so well documented that in towns and valleys all over the country, a lot of wintertime air pollution is from wood stoves and outdoor boilers. So I just don't see how the wood heat community can say its the wildfires, or its the diesel trucks or whatever.

The 1988/1990 NSPS and this one is an investment in the future. It takes 15 - 30 years to really see the benefit of these regulations. I think we are definitely seeing the benefit of the 1988/90 NSPS today in many communities, even though outdoor wood boilers caused a lot of backsliding in lots of areas. And, I think we will also see the benefit of the 2015 NSPS down the road. One of the biggest improvements of this NSPS could be eliminating how emission numbers are averaged and requiring that they burn clean and all 4 burn rates. So whether they lower it from 4.5 to 2 might not be so important than requiring the low burn rate to be under 4.5, for example. But ultimately this switch to cord wood that hopefully will take place between 2020 and 2025 will start getting stoves to be built differently and perform better on cord wood.

im still on the fence on the cordwood thing John. my thought is this, if the crib wood is burned to a certain level and emmissions based on this test , would not cordwood essentially do the same thing? especially when "cordwood" is such a broad descriptive, would the cordwood have to be a certain species with a certain weight to mass ratio and moisture level? IMHO it would have to be in order to maintain the "control" of the test, the "variable" being the unit to be tested. so , as in the case of the crib wood, in order to get the actual "tested" results one would be restricted to having to burn that species at that same set of parameters, right?
its obvious that the levels shown by the cribwood are not reflective of the numbers given by cordwood per se, but a unit burning cribwood at 1GPH by extrapolation should burn cleaner than one which burns the same charge at 5GPH. while they may not hit that same number with cordwood the results are most likely to reflect a similar disparity.

 

[Huntindog1]

Yes, Libbey, MT, Pittsburg, PA and Darrington, WA come to mind. Here's more info on stove changeout programs:
(broken link removed to http://woodstovechangeout.org/index.php)

BeGreen,

Thats a pretty cool website and program they have come up with. Even a page on starting your own change out program in our own communities.

I think this stuff is gaining momentum.

Here is a nice Video clip from that site:

(broken link removed to http://www.woodstovechangeout.org/fileadmin/templates/clearing_the_smoke.html)

 

[John Ackerly]

In this case note that EPA takes action after lawsuits are brought against it by states, health and environmental protection lobbyists. They didn't just dream up things to clean up the world.

For this NSPS, states urged the EPA to do another NSPS, and industry also urged the EPA to regulate OWBs, but there weren't any lawsuits until well into the process. And by the time states sued, the EPA had been delaying the rule for so long that everyone was pretty much ready for a bit more certainty about what was going to come next. States and enviro groups sued to keep the EPA from delaying further. But I suspect that a substantive lawsuit about the standards will come from industry, after the rule is finalized. But EPA may get it from both sides.

 

[John Ackerly]

i'd be curious why a state which has the authority within their state to sue the fed over this (as washington state did to tighten their own standards) , as i type this i suppose it would be if it had to do with the practices in another state , like polluting a river shared with another state for instance.

Good question. It probably has do with benefitting from national regulations, rather than each state establishing their own test method and emission standards based on that method. Can you imagine if cars or refrigerators or any number of other appliances each had their own rules? I think it also has to do with specific rights others have to hold government accountable to what they are mandated to do. So if a Congressional bill said EPA has to update the NSPS every 8 years, states and non-profits can hold them to it - no matter whether its a challenge from the "right" or "left". Maybe I missed your question?

 

[ddahlgren]

Good question. It probably has do with benefitting from national regulations, rather than each state establishing their own test method and emission standards based on that method. Can you imagine if cars or refrigerators or any number of other appliances each had their own rules? I think it also has to do with specific rights others have to hold government accountable to what they are mandated to do. So if a Congressional bill said EPA has to update the NSPS every 8 years, states and non-profits can hold them to it - no matter whether its a challenge from the "right" or "left". Maybe I missed your question?

CA has different standards than the other 49 states for cars and trucks. That seems to fly just fine.

 

[blacktail]

You can give some people the cleanest burning stove in the world, and they'll still load it with crap wood and choke it down.

 

[blacktail]

Yes, Libbey, MT, Pittsburg, PA and Darrington, WA come to mind.

I think John has a point in that there are communities that are not in wide open spaces but rather could be in a valley with hills on all sides. Get a few smoke dragons and the weather is just right and the whole valley fills up with smoke and hovers low to the ground rather than floats away and disperses.

You can't see it, but Darrington is way in the background of this pic. Right about where it starts to look a little hazy. When it's cold with little air movement the smoke is thick around town.

 

[potentialburner]

Here's an example of local conditions being a problem. In the winter one of hte most polluted cities in the world, up there with Beijing, is Fairbanks, AK. Yikes. http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/16/nation/la-na-fairbanks-air-pollution-20130217

 

[John Ackerly]

CA has different standards than the other 49 states for cars and trucks. That seems to fly just fine.

True. CA does seem to play a unique role for the country in this way! With stoves, a different emission standard can work - like Washington requiring up to 4.5 grams an hour, but if Washington had different test methods than MA and ME and CA. That was partially why the first NSPS happened because more states were about to do just that. Still, we face that situation a bit, with NY state having their own test method for boilers with partial thermal storage, and ME and VT accepting the European EN303-5. And, if the next NSPS isn't strict enough, states are thinking about doing more of this, and setting stricter standards, or even requiring variations in the test method. Funny that California has not really played this role with wood stoves, as they have with cars. Instead, some of the air districts just ban things. This may be because with stationary pollution sources like wood stoves, there are no state wide standards in CA - just lots of individual air districts.

 

[midfielder]

About every other year or so when it gets dry in Ontario and some good thunderstorms come through, the forest fires get going. You can track them on the (broken link removed to https://www.ontario.ca/law-and-safety/forest-fires). We'll have a cold front come through here in NH with low-dew point air from the NW and it looks like a run of bluebird weather. But if the air flow is right, it brings the smoke from the fires in and sometimes you can see the haze even on the near tree lines, the sky's white, and you can smell the smoke. Happened this summer once already. Regulate that.