wood burners

[Johnsond]

21 minutes ago, Steven P said:

If I remember right from a couple of years ago when the Tories wanted to do the same

?? More relevant to those of us whom live in Scotland including yourself SP, your SNP during their most embarrassing period when they shared power with some green lunatics just to keep a majority position, actually went ahead and did it only to reverse it when the reality of their stupidity became clear. 

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The SNP government has reversed a ban on log burners in new-builds in Scotland, allowing them as both main and secondary heating systems in new homes. This change, effective from April 2024, followed concerns from rural communities who relied on them for heat during power outages. While log burners can now be installed in new buildings, the ban on mains gas and oil boilers as a primary heat source in new builds remains

Edited 12 hours ago by Johnsond

[Tree monkey 1682]

10 hours ago, Alan Smith said:

Definitely not good, but your average suburban dweller with the designer wood stove is not burning painted scrap treated/painted wood are they?  It's the suburban/urban areas that the government are looking at with regard to wood smoke pollution. 

And the poor people or people who think they're clever going through skips , burning things like creosoted /tanalised/painted stuff because they are too tight to pay for wood.  That happens alot near me and the chimneybsweep now asks what your burning before sweeping the chimney , as he will walk away if its anything bar clean wood burned !

[GarethM]

2 hours ago, Tree monkey 1682 said:

And the poor people or people who think they're clever going through skips , burning things like creosoted /tanalised/painted stuff because they are too tight to pay for wood.  That happens a lot near me and the chimney sweep now asks what your burning before sweeping the chimney , as he will walk away if its anything bar clean wood burned !

And what do you think happens to all this treated timber once the skip is collected?.

 

As usual it's how it's burnt, providing you've a modern stove and not some coal burner from the 40s.

Edited 2 hours ago by GarethM

[Dan Maynard]

11 hours ago, openspaceman said:

cotton reels (who can remember making  little machines to race with from a wooden cotton reels, lolly stick, rubber band and a disc cut from a candle?) ,

Yep. Think it was in Berry's Book of Cunning Contraptions along with Go karts and candle powered boats.

[Muddy42]

I also think its a shame that regulations have gone against back boilers.  Ive always dreamt of having a massive 20kw stove that would heat hot water, radiators, towel rails.  Maybe I should learn to braze copper.

[sime42]

10 hours ago, Steven P said:

Jumping back on topic for a moment, for which I do apologise. 

 

Back of my mind from last time around. The issue with the wood burners are the fine particulates in the soot, not carbon and so on. These are like what comes out of diesel exhaust fumes, get into the lungs and that causes the problems. Greater issues in towns of course - as mentioned above, the once a year fires on Christmas day using petrol station 'dry' logs that have sat in the rain for the last 6 months, waiting.

 

So more efficient combustion means there are few fine particles up the chimney. If I remember right from a couple of years ago when the Tories wanted to do the same, it is more of an issue now that car exhausts are cleaner, catalytic converters, and electric cars where the combustion is a long way from towns in the power stations, that the wood smoke particles are becoming more significant in the mix. Not more than there were 10 years ago, just everything else is reducing.

 

With micro plastics, once in the body we don't know what will happen with them but we have had centuries of experience with smoky fires.

 

 

 

Digression to the topic, but micro plastics... every plastic thing that wears out leaves micro plastics. I wonder how long the world would clean itself though, for example this generation of fish consume great numbers, die, fall to the sea bed taking the plastics with them, gets buried with sand. Same with us, we consume them, die, get stuck in a hole somewhere and they are buried. So if we fixed the problem today even if they have a 'half life' of a thousand year a good portion might be under ground by then... though what cost to wildlife between now and then?

 

 

I like your thinking here. So the new plan is: we all, alongsides our friends the fungi, set about devouring as much plastic as we can, before Alzheimer's sets in. We then take it six feet down with us when to depart, to leave a clean world for our children. Worth a shot I suppose.

My brother once suggested that we could bury all the plastics deep underground, to one day revert back to something akin to crude oil and coal. That still seems like a sensible idea to me. It's got more legs than trying to pretend that we're recycling it, which is in reality just a mugs game. 
 

 

[GarethM]

25 minutes ago, Muddy42 said:

I also think its a shame that regulations have gone against back boilers.  Ive always dreamt of having a massive 20kw stove that would heat hot water, radiators, towel rails.  Maybe I should learn to braze copper.

Or just build a boiler room for a eco Angus 18/25kw and relax with 90% efficiency instead of it mostly being wasted.

[sime42]

29 minutes ago, Dan Maynard said:

Yep. Think it was in Berry's Book of Cunning Contraptions along with Go karts and candle powered boats.

 

Brilliant, that's going on my/my son's Christmas list. Thanks. We made lots of things like that as children, but I don't remember ever seeing a book of ideas.

 

 

[Muddy42]

51 minutes ago, GarethM said:

Or just build a boiler room for a eco Angus 18/25kw and relax with 90% efficiency instead of it mostly being wasted.

 

Where is the fun in that.  If only eco angus made a nice looking indoor version with a glass door and a quieter fan!

 

[GarethM]

10 minutes ago, Muddy42 said:

Where is the fun in that.  If only eco angus made a nice looking indoor version with a glass door and a quieter fan!

They aren't designed to be a poncy room feature, they're designed to burn hot and hard and store the heating efficiently out of sight.

 

That's partly why back boilers were stopped, it can't burn clean just ticking along slowly.