Talk Morgan Forums Thread Like Summary - Woodburners not so healthy after all..

Generally seen as the must have when marketing houses I have to say we in our village are surrounded by stinking chimneys in our small village, anyone else ?
The advantage we do have is we are 500' amsl and not in a valley and avoid walking out of an evening.

An interesting study.

Chaps, it's a simple equation'

If we didn't all have these log burners how would we dispose of all the trees that the local authority and government are allowing to be felled to make way for all the new houses and solar panels that we apparently need?

God bless Minibrain !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's madness isn't it. I'm happy to say it will be a venison haunch for us on Christmas day. Though much to my South African BiLs dismay it's roasted on a gas BBQ and not wood fired.

Probably going to alienate some here.When I was growing up in the North, everyone had coal fires. We had one main fire fireplace and the bedroom ones only got lit very occasionally . I think my parents got central heating when I was a teenager .
I just love the smell of coal burning in the morning - don’t you !?
I love my wood burner,, it is stunning and a pleasure to watch and enjoy.i It is DEFRA approved, triple burn and gives little in the way of emissions and no smell outside , I know there is a new updated rating body for wood burners but no doubt they will get banned in London by 2030 . I use expensive well seasoned low moisture content logs . Wood in Europe is half the price of the U.K. but much is imported from Europe.
I also know it will emit micro particles that might affect my health but I can live with that (sic).
Peter the glass should not get blackened , that is the sign of ‘wet’ wood. I clean mine once a month with wet newspaper and dipped in the ash , clean in 30 seconds
I also have an old Villager, a staple fire of the south and south west - all the houses in TV s
Escape to the country seem to have a Villager ?

I appreciate some fires may offend , may annoy, but where do we draw the line in either being offended or being righteous .
I hated smoking , meetings in rooms with smokers, I hate smoking in pub gardens, I hated eating food in restaurants when people smoked. I hated sitting close to the smoking section on planes. I’m not keen on diesel car or petrol particles. Let those who want to complain, complain, it’s their right . We will all see the error of our ways in time but I will throw a log on to stay warm and cheerful and crank up my reasonably new 42 kilowatt gas boiler . I assume my decision to replace not with a heat pump will annoy some folk !?
MM
PS I don’t think I know anyone in London who doesn’t have a wood burner ? Oh and many of you who wear fleeces or hoodies are putting micro plastic particles into the rivers and sea when you wash them . I hate that thought when I Scuba/dive.

We burn wood but at 200 metres ASL we have to have a certified closed fireplace that is pretty efficient. We would have to be above 300 metres ASL (1000 feet amsl) to be allowed an open fireplace. Ours was open up until about 8 years ago but we then fitted a closed, fan driven, insert. It is not as nice as an open fireplace but it burns much less wood and helps to keep our gas heating bills down. The only downside is that I have to clean the glass every day. The wood we burn is very well seasoned
I think a lot of our neighbours still have open fireplaces, and yes, of a cold evening there is a lot of smoke smell outside.

Wood burners are the blight of rural villages (and the suburbs) here in the East Midlands.

The sooner they are outlawed, the better. It wouldn’t be so bad if they burnt well seasoned wood, but they seem to always buy the cheapest they can find - with the inevitable consequences.

I can understand it being an issue in densely populated towns and cities .... out here where I can sit on my roof and count on my fingers the number of houses within sight (most being a mile plus away) and having chosen the place to be Off-Grid (small-scale Wind, Solar and sustainable wood from our own managed forest) so as not to use polluting (certainly at the time) 'grid' electricity for the last 35 years, I don't feel inclined to give my woodburner and Rayburn up for something driven by unreliable mains power we can't access anyway. The last three decades have built us up a pretty hefty 'carbon halo' compared to if we'd been grid connected when most of that time grid-power was still using historically dirty fuels like coal.

My wood cutting/drying/storage regime has popped up on a couple of threads here already in passing 🙂

K

Hello Richard, we have lived here since the early 1980's, invested a lot in an old house and its garden, as the location for us was great. When I open the curtains in the morning and look out over the main valley toward Exmoor I can only see two houses in the far distance ( the local villages are lost in the small valleys inbetween ), that view and the feelings that go with it are good for the soul... keeps us going.

Clemens it will be a Condensing Grant Oil Boiler such as we have now, gas is not an option here in the village.

Ironically wood supplies are plentiful from our local farmers and tree surgeons many of whom are friends, Heather doesn't fancy cleaning a fire grate any more than I do


This was Christmas Day in 74 on the beach at Port Elizabeth, me on fire building, we just carried the bricks and grid around in the boot as we toured RSA for a month whilst working out there.
Whole fillet steak, chicken and baked potatoes.
Never bought a bag of charcoal out there just picked up the very dry brushwood as it made perfect charcoal and was highly combustable.

She has been on about an upgrade on those facilities so I shall succumb soon I expect

I remember those days growing up outside Manchester. Sometimes you couldn't see the bus in front of you,the smog was so bad. In the 1960's we went smokeless on Merseyside...coal was banned and we had to use coke for our kitchen stove/ water heater. It was lit by a monster hair dryer which frightened my mother

Now I live on the East coast US and we are chopping trees down by the acre to provide wood pellets for UK power stations. There's a port in my area where they ship them from.

Natural gas is also sent to UK, US is the biggest source after Norway. With Trump the trade will increase and hopefully, given increased supplies, the price will drop.
So the well meaning idiots, in Westminster and the green press, better be careful what they wish for, for without pellets and gas the future of the UK energy industry looks a little dicey!!

They are lucky the farm is over the Pakhuis Pass from Clanwilliam, it's an idyllic area.