USA Today article on OWB's

[Burn-1]

Wood boilers fuel air quality debate
second part of article

Not really anything new for most of us here on the forum or in the Northeast but as soon as something like this gets national attention, there will be a call for some new standards but probably some unfortunate grandfathering too. My neighbor has one and except in the coldest weather it looks like he has the Cog Railway idling in his driveway.

 

[pdboilermaker]

Typical whine bags. These are the same people that whine that cars should get 60mpg but drive a Suburban.

 

[Nofossil]

This'll end up being Ash Can before long....

In my area, a high percentage of homes are at least partially heated with wood. A low percentage are heated with systems that are installed, design, or operated in such a way that they create lots of smoke. Most of these are not OWBs.

However, perhaps just due to the capacity, the really egregious offenders here are all OWBs. I suspect that a poorly operated OWB can out-smoke even the worst that a woodstove can do. In a county with 20,000 people, there are only two or three serious offenders. However, they are so severe that they create a truly intolerable situation.

I don't know if the cited examples are in that category or not, but I think it's fair to say that this is a pretty good example of a very small number of bad apples causing a heavy-handed response that may in turn create more problems than it solves.

But I can say that there is a real problem, and not all people who complain about it are hypocritical whiners.

I'd prefer the education and enlightenment approach to the legal / legislative approach. That's part of the reason I'm here.

 

[webbie]

I think the OWB's generally dug their own grave, and unfortunately they also hurt the industry as a whole. In order to prosper nationally, we must be good neighbors to folks who don't burn wood. That means burning clean...whatever the appliance. And, as I have mentioned before, the sales tactics and general marketing of the OWB's have encouraged their use for everything from stumps to trash.

If ANY neighbors have to smell smoke inside their homes and see a plume of haze over their hollow, then I say the offender is not being a responsible burner. It is no different than what would happen if we didn't have septic systems and just piled our waste in a heap....now, that seems silly...because we have better technology than that - and the same goes for wood burning.

I have no problem with the concept of OWB, just the execution. It isn't fair to get around laws (open burning, EPA, etc.) just to make some extra money easily (talking about the companies that make them...who have spent little on R&D;because they don't have to).