Sad About Outdoor Boilers...

[Rob From Wisconsin]

Lots of them popping-up in our rural neighborhood.
Four (4) within a 1 1/2 mile radius.
Neighbors say they "love" them. Use "only" 10 - 15 cords of wood
per year to heat their houses. Both in-laws also have them.
Have same "issues" of wood-waste. Burned five (5) cords of hard
maple in a little over a month. That would have lasted me an entire
year & then some on my standard woodstove.
And their popularity is growing immensly.....
Seeing all kinds of them appearing on my daily drive to work.
One particular farmer has a huge, ugly pile of wood pallets littering
his entire yard. I didn't have the nerve to tell him that they would
only last him maybe a month or two at most. Not to mention also
the nasty abundance of smoke...

Are Outdoor Boilers becoming the "SUV"s of the woodburning realm,
possibly making it bad for everyone in the end (rising wood prices)??

Rob

 

[Eric Johnson]

Hey Rob,

Did you ever get your add-on cat to work? I think mine is doing alright.

I don't think outdoor wood burners will drive up the price of wood, mainly because anyone who burns that much firewood is not going be buying it, IMO. Smoke issues aside, they're a good alternative for people who have an abundance of free or cheap wood, like the farmer with the pallets.

But I do think the smoke problem is going to cause them to be legislated out of existence in pretty short order. Already up here in northern New York State several townships have quit issuing permits for their installation, largely because of concern over pollution. Let's say I lived downwind from one of those and I realized one morning, coughing from the smoke as I get into my car to go to work, that I'm paying an arm and a leg to stay warm this winter burning gas and the guy with the wood burner--isn't. Meanwhile, I'm eating his smoke, and he's not. How much sympathy do you think the guy with the outdoor furnace is going to get?

Too bad, really. They have their place, but not in populated areas. You'll eventually see a shake-out similar to what you saw with wood stoves when the EPA regs went into effect, i.e., only a handful of manufacturers survived because of the technological challenge of making them burn cleaner. Hopefully they can perform a similar engineering miracle on outdoor, hot water boilers to what happened with wood stoves.

I'm afraid that the virtual explosion of outdoor furnaces on the scene could cause some sort of state- or nation-wide ban on non-EPA regulated wood burning appliances. Since wood-burning central heating appliances are not regulated by the EPA, that would effectively ban wood-based central heat, including those that would pass current EPA standards if they were regulated. Usually that sort of stuff is grandfathered and phased in over time, but who knows? Any outright ban on their sale would put an entire industry with a potentially bright future, out of business. The prospect brings out what little Republican there is in me.

 

[begreen]

From the research I've done all I can say is thank goodness for this site and others that are having a dialogue about these smoke pots. The sooner the EPA can step in and regulate them the better. The more I read, the more I find about how bad neighbors these make. There is simply no excuse for this except for really bad design.
(broken link removed to http://www.woodheat.org/q&a/qaoutboiler.htm)
very candid user experiences:
(broken link removed to http://www.woodheat.org/technology/outrickperth.htm)
(broken link removed to http://www.woodheat.org/technology/outbobpen.htm) (read the update too).

 

[HouseCrusher]

Go on YouTube. There are a bunch of videos of people who are being smoked out by these things.

 

[fossil]

Thread's 5 years old. :roll:

 

[begreen]

Whew, I thought I was having deja vu all over again! hh: