Hi, the house I moved to 4 years ago was pretty cold during winter. We get below zero fairly regularly from May - Sept Oct. Frost when not raining. The house has a fire box and a split system in lounge only. U shaped house so not all areas warm equally. Last year I finalised the ceiling insulation so most of the ceiling has R4.1 rating. This made an immediate difference of around 5 degrees C. The rear is unknown but appears to be around R2.5 and this shows in room temps below. Anyway, as there are solar panels on roof, I use the split system when sun is shining in afternoons, making it warm for the evening, figuring this is cheapest way out, otherwise the power generated goes to the grid with a $ return that is nothing short of an insult. I buy wood and use the firebox in the coldest of nights which does warm the house better, over all. To be honest, I am starting to think that with wood resources becoming less sustainable and more expensive, we who live in cold climates should seriously consider techniques of coppicing trees in back yards to create our own fiire wood. It is an old technique used in UK and works best for certain species which grow fast and are best suited for burning (less tanins ?).
I agree with your comment about control, although not so much Governments as multinational energy companies. To me fire used to be a basic human right for cooking and heating, despite other views of ignorance and old habits. (In fact I didn’t live with electricity until I was around 8 years old and instincitvely taught my kids how to build a fire and cook with a fire responsibly for survival purposes, from a young age) I suspect many of us, myself included would use more clean heating if we live in larger cities (which I do not) and if we didn’t feel so squeezed and manipulated by the energy companies.
I agree that access to cooking and heating is basic and something everybody ought to have but I don’t see why that cannot be updated to work with more modern methods of doing so that have a much lower risk to health of those enjoying those things and their neighbours who breath in the smoke whether they benefit or not.
The health consequences of breathing air pollution are real and significant. Burning wood (or other fuel) is a major cause of air pollution around the world.
It is one thing to be concerned about government over reach it is another to think that major public health and climate change issues can be dealt with other than through government action internationally.
If I had a fuel stove I would probably burn wood during power outages during winter but I don’t see that as a reason to burn wood frequently when other methods of heating are available.
I have spent weeks in the past doing most of my cooking on a wood stove. It is kind of fun for a while but a real PITA in the long run as you have to arrange what you cook and when you cook around controlling the fire box and the very slow response to actions that initiate temperature change. Not to mention the lack of attraction or splitting wood and cleaning out the ash tray.
As for doing it commercially - it can be done. I knew a woman who was a genius at running the huge fuel stove at the local pub (which had several fire boxes). She could keep several ovens and many pots going and bark orders at her offsiders at the same time while providing dozens of meals three times a day. The food was very basic and I doubt there is anybody left who could do it. It is a skill of a bygone age.
On a routine flue cleaning of our old wood heater just after we moved into this house, it emerged that our wood fire was missing a baffle plate, that there had been a fire in the flue and that it was their opinion that the heater was unsafe. After a lot of research we purchased a new wood heater. I was dissatisfied with it for a number of reasons, amongst which were the noise the fan made, and the amount of grey dust that was evident on tables, kitchen bench top etc. I did more research to discover that wood heaters that comply with relevant Australian standards still belch out considerable amounts of pollutants. Wood was getting more and more expensive, we were worried about out contribution to greenhouse gases, etc., and I was very concerned about the quality of air within our house and so switched to a reverse cycle air conditioner. With lots of rooftop solar, it seems to be a lot cheaper…but more significantly, there is no soot being blown around the house.
Welcome to the community @Pierre. A good find, and a question as to why the baffle plate was not replaced. Without putting a case for wood or electricity, it looks like poor advice by the person doing the clean. That your new wood heater created a layer of grey dust suggests there was a further issue with the quality of the install or its operation.
Noted your switch to Electricity which is cleaner for the home and less demanding to operate. Were you able to compare the relative costs of the two - running cost per month (wood vs electricity) and capital cost (new wood heater vs RC Air con)?
I’ve used a wood heater in the suburbs for decades. At first it was all I had but later it was supplemented by r/c air cons.
For most of that time the electricity was produced by burning dirty brown coal which had documented health effects in the area surrounding the power station.
So in the Choice article we hear that woodsmoke is bad for the lungs too. I expect that’s true for asthmatics and folk with compromised lungs in other ways but for the rest of us there’s Toxicology 101: the dose makes the poison.
There’s an Australian air quality standard for very small particles (PM2.5): no more than 25 micrograms per cubic metre averaged over 24 hours. The expert quoted in the article made no mention of dosage.
It may be that the standard is too high. That’s both an empirical matter and one of judgement. There are risks everywhere - how much are we prepared to tolerate?
You seem to be suggesting that for those who do not have compromised lungs achieving the specified standard and surviving unharmed is not a problem. How do you know this?
In focusing on PMs you are ignoring gases that are generated by burning wood, some of which are carcinogenic.
I accept that you are entitled to make decisions about what risks you are prepared to take. How much risk is it reasonable for you to take on behalf of your neighbours, family and house guests?
I didn’t suggest that at all.
I said that the expert provided no evidence of the level of exposure in relation to the air quality standard.
Which of the gases are carcinogens? At what level of exposure?
Banning woodheaters on the grounds of health risk is a public health measure. It needs to be based on basic epidemiology. Where is it?
Choice is championing electricity use in place of gas and wood. What’s the evidence on the local and global harms it causes compared with wood?
Yes, you can buy electricity from renewable sources, as I do, and generate some yourself. I don’t recall the article mentioning this.
From Wood heaters and woodsmoke - DCCEEW
“ Impact on human health
Woodsmoke contains a range of pollutants that are harmful to human health, such as particulates, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Some pollutants from wood heater smoke, such as particulates and formaldehyde, are carcinogenic. Chronic exposure to woodsmoke can also cause heart and lung disease. Pregnant women, children, older people, and people with respiratory illness are especially vulnerable to the health impacts of woodsmoke.”
Also see
I don’t think it is sensible to ask Choice to publish epidemiological studies to justify taking a given policy direction. Even links to same would be ignored by most.
I see grahroll has responded with a lot of references that will get you started on the science and save me some trouble. I have others if that is insufficient.
As a general observation the fact that air pollution is a major cause of morbidity and mortality world wide and the fact that smoke from wood fires is a significant contributor to that pollution (and not just in third world countries where there is much less choice) has been known for years.
My guess is that along with similar health effects from gas stoves this problem is getting a run in the media now as these activities produce greenhouse gasses as well as PMs and toxic gasses and because technology has provided good cleaner alternatives that were not there a generation ago.
Oh, and I haven’t seen Choice or anybody here advocating banning wood heating. It is a complex problem. I addressed some of it here.
“Impact on human health …” from grahroll.
See the terms used here: ‘may’, ‘can’, ‘risk’, ‘potential’ etc.
To return to Toxicology 101: the dose makes the poison.
You probably add poison to your food every day - plain old salt - but it’s not toxic because the dose is below the harm threshold.
Under current air quality standards, PM2.5 (or very small particles) aren’t a health risk for a healthy person until you reach the specified level of exposure.
There’s been a panic about the polluting effects of cooking with gas indoors. Yes, it releases a range of things including PM2.5. I took measurements close to a big burner on my stove and the level was 6-8 micrograms. That’s a third or less of the standard and is present for maybe 30-60 minutes per day; not 24 hours.
You might say that I should go cold in winter because my wood heater may affect others in the neighbourhood. It’s likely that there are asthmatics in the area. How many I don’t know. How many are triggered by smoke rather than mould, house dust, allergens and all the other triggers I don’t know. I might kill the fire but the total emissions reduction given the many other wood burners in the area is likely to be small. That’s why it’s a public heath issue: clean air is a public good par excellence. Any change to be effective will apply to all who share in the air and it will be based on data.
I would say that quoting an expert who fails to provide even the most basic and obvious caveat from epidemiology isn’t resonsible journalism, and it looks like panic mongering to me.
See an earlier post: the heaters produce smoke which is bad, so the heaters are bad.
Banning wood heaters is the end point of panic mongering. The council in the area I used to live in flagged banning them several years ago. I don’t believe they pursued it.
See my previous post on cooking with gas.
Yes, we have cleaner power. I pay a 12% premium for electricity from renewable sources so that I don’t create a worse problem for the people living in the Latrobe valley. Many Victorian users would be unaware of the dimensions of that problem, with a NIMBY attitude. Many have cost of living pressures in any case that reduce their capacity to pay that premium.
Insight?
Consumers are part of a transition. We are not all at the same point. The challenges faced differ, due to circumstance and where we live. For many it’s a question of short term economics because there is nothing more in the kitty.
One can look to the carbon footprint of one’s choices or the health and shared environmental impacts. The context varies and the relative impact is not always shared equally. Also relevant to the OP which asked.
Our environment is more rural than urban. In context we’re less concerned about the impact of our wood burning stove, or LPG use than that of our petrol guzzlers. It’s accepted they all have a finite future. All our summer cooling and most of the winter heating already comes from RC AC, with a mix of rooftop PV and grid generation. There is only a small incremental benefit in no longer burning wood or LPG but a high cost to convert.
Organisations like Choice have a responsibility to give fair and accurate advice as well as they can. That does not mean they have to be experts in every technical area or delve deeply or perform their own analysis - unless it is an area where they hold the expertise such as household goods testing. You are setting the bar excessively high.
A much better way to judge specialised issues on public health is to consult experts in public health. This is what any professional journalist does.
Here is a detailed paper hosted by the ACT Dept of Health where you can go into as much detail as you like. The upshot of it is the same as you have been getting here and from Choice. The equivalent departments of health in both Vic and NSW have public articles that say the same and other States and Territories may also - I haven’t looked.
Perhaps you want to tell us that all those papers and the public health officials who published and recommend them in their professional roles are all panic mongers too. I see no point in continuing this as you have made up your mind and will not budge.
Whilst you are correct that doses affect whether something is good or bad (even drinking water at high doses can prove fatal), in a domestic environment it is difficult to ascertain if and when doses or levels of exposure which may cause health impacts will occur.
I have worked for local government preparing user guide and enforcement tools for wood fired heaters. These documents ended up being shared amongst many other councils which were struggling with how to deal with the legal right to install and operate a wood fire heaters and complaints from their operation (often operated poorly). Some wood fire heaters are also run only because they are there, not necessarily because heating is needed (in the local government area it was found that regular users opened windows because their houses became too hot as they were mainly operated for ‘ambience’) - this can cause unnecessary emissions and increase complaints (especially where neighbours are likely to also have their windows open receiving the unwanted emissions).
The user guides and enforcement tools were prepared were in response to an action group lobbying Councils to ban wood fired heaters (stoves/pizza ovens and BBQs) and also to provide guidance on how to operate wood fired heater to minimise emissions which may give rise to complaints.
Unfortunately most users of wood fire heaters don’t know how to use wood fire heaters and maintain them so that they burn efficiency, to minimise emissions. The type of materials burnt (a wood fire heater isn’t an incinerator were almost anything can be burnt), seasoning of wood materials and the amount of air allowed to burn wood significantly impacts on emissions.
We use a wood fired heater to warm the house in winter as it is the cheapest form of heating where we live (Tasmania). On moving here, I was surprised the number of ‘old timers’ who didn’t know how to use wood fired heaters to minimise emissions. They subscribe to the view that jest before heading to bed one should load up the heater with wood and stifle the air intake to let the fire smoulder overnight. While this might keep the fire burning overnight, it does contributes to significant emissions. In relation to seasoning, there is also a belief that if the wood is dry on the outside, it must be dry on the inside. External drying can occur quickly where full seasoning can take year(s). Many consumer where we live buy their wood after the first cold night when it is poorly seasoned and often stay wet for the duration of the winter, even if stored undercover.
Well, I’ve really mucked myself about, this year, in attempting to reduce my electric bill (bear in mind I am not able to afford to get solar or a split system) so turning heating off when I leave a room (or the house) etc etc. So with the cold this year I have pretty much been unable to keep warm. At all. Even my bones have been cold and I am just going into week three of a serious chest infection (which is in recovery but not there yet) So I have reluctantly broken out the oil heater again. It will not be switched off, now, until the cold weather leaves, and in the meantime I will attempt to get all leaks sealed or at least reduced.
Quelle dommage!!
