What is the Environmental Impact of Burning Wood?

[RoyJackson]

I have a Sierra 8000 TEC, which I mail ordered and installed. Its a big sucker and weighs over 400 lbs all put together and takes a 28 inch log. It's a great stove for its size and price. I have a minor complaint about the quality of the hinge welds, but overall we're very pleased with it.

Chinese built?

I am seeing wood stoves in a couple of the local hardware stores (Ace, Aubuchon) that are Chinese manufacture. These aren't "furniture" like Vermont Castings or Harman, but I reckon they're serviceable.

 

[Coyote machine]

Steam? I think the poster meant to say water vapor?:confused3:

The EPA should be more focused on the industrial and other industry polluters and spend more time prosecuting the BPs of the world. Making outdoor wood boilers more efficient and less polluting is to everyone's advantage. Prohibiting the use of chimneys and/or wood stoves is a fool's errand. How about holding the wing nutz that start forest fires due to ignorance or intent responsible?! Fine them into oblivion along with life in max security kick-azz prison? That would be a start in the direction of saving lives and homes, and firefighters and taxpayer $$$$$.

 

[Katahdin]

Yes water vapor, sorry for the confusion! I have not heard of the EPA moving to prohibit woodstoves, can someone point me to any examples of this?

I ordered the Sierra stove from an online merchant in northern Idaho, not knowing much about it. From the labels and docs it appears to have been made in Southern California, which I thought was a little odd for woodstoves. I dug a little deeper and found a woodstove company of that name and similar boxy design from the hills of North Western Virginia that had been sold off and the original employees were laid off--a sign of the times I guess. The current owner of the Sierra name claims to be founded in Nevada.

Anywho, yes I would agree about picking a serviceable stove over something that looks like furniture! The internal parts of the my cat woodstove are pretty simple, there is not much in there that someone with a welder and grinder could not reproduce. It wouldn't be difficult to modify the stove either to take a different sized catalytic combustor, or even one of the new types made from steel instead of ceramic. You could also throw out the EPA parts if you wanted to and put in a simple damper, but I wouldn't recommend that except for in an emergency because of how well the woodstove runs when the catalytic combustor is doing its job.

 

[RoyJackson]

Yes water vapor, sorry for the confusion! I have not heard of the EPA moving to prohibit woodstoves, can someone point me to any examples of this?

Not yet...there are EPA requirements for wood stoves (developed in the late 1980's, IIRC). The comments about the EPA increasing scrutiny are opinions and supposition, at this point.

I ordered the Sierra stove from an online merchant in northern Idaho, not knowing much about it. From the labels and docs it appears to have been made in Southern California, which I thought was a little odd for woodstoves. I dug a little deeper and found a woodstove company of that name and similar boxy design from the hills of North Western Virginia that had been sold off and the original employees were laid off--a sign of the times I guess. The current owner of the Sierra name claims to be founded in Nevada.

Anywho, yes I would agree about picking a serviceable stove over something that looks like furniture! The internal parts of the my cat woodstove are pretty simple, there is not much in there that someone with a welder and grinder could not reproduce. It wouldn't be difficult to modify the stove either to take a different sized catalytic combustor, or even one of the new types made from steel instead of ceramic. You could also throw out the EPA parts if you wanted to and put in a simple damper, but I wouldn't recommend that except for in an emergency because of how well the woodstove runs when the catalytic combustor is doing its job.

Most of the high end (read $$$) stoves are quite attractive and available enameled in several colors. They're still very serviceable stoves and they look quite nice (which is part of the sales appeal for a $2500 to $4000 wood stove). How the stove fits the decor is important to some people (mostly the wives, BTW).

 

[Redneck in training]

I didn't read all the posts so I might repeat something already said. When plant grows it uses sun energy to power photosynthesis used to build the plant body. When you burn wood you get the same amount of energy the plant used to grow the piece you burned. The wood breaks to original components such as CO2 water and minerals from soil etc. When you throw the ash out you recycle the minerals that can be used by plants to grow.
Theoretically burning wood is carbon neutral as long as the mas of plants stays more or less constant. In other words plants would add the volume we burned.
Burning fossil fuels adds carbon (that was formerly plant or animal material) to the system. Doing so we might return the Earth to the state it was in millions years ago when CO2 content was higher and O2 lower than today. It was time of giant plants. As the plants stored carbon faster than it was returned back to the system and some of the carbon became coal, natural gas or oil. Content of CO2 decreased and O2 increased making the planet habitable to animals. It is reversible process though. If we burn al the fossil fuels we will return the planet millions years back. It will be great for plants and bad for animals such as us. The good thing is we can't destroy the planet. The bad thing is the planet can destroy us.

 

[buickanddeere]

The best conclusion in that article is this, " The only thing we can say with certainty is that emissions are reduced by improved combustion conditions and that we are thus exposed to smaller amounts of particles when new stoves are used.".

Meaning if you have an outdoor wood boiler that sits there damped down most of the day, then belches smoke for 10 minutes each time heat is demanded, your neighbors downwind will complain and lump you in with "those stupid wood burners" and eventually work for a law banning such devices. Whereas if you have a clean burning EPA rated wood stove or boiler that you rarely see smoke coming out of, very few neighbors will ever complain.

X2....

 

[MossRoad]

Yes water vapor, sorry for the confusion! I have not heard of the EPA moving to prohibit woodstoves, can someone point me to any examples of this?

I ordered the Sierra stove from an online merchant in northern Idaho, not knowing much about it. From the labels and docs it appears to have been made in Southern California, which I thought was a little odd for woodstoves. I dug a little deeper and found a woodstove company of that name and similar boxy design from the hills of North Western Virginia that had been sold off and the original employees were laid off--a sign of the times I guess. The current owner of the Sierra name claims to be founded in Nevada.

Anywho, yes I would agree about picking a serviceable stove over something that looks like furniture! The internal parts of the my cat woodstove are pretty simple, there is not much in there that someone with a welder and grinder could not reproduce. It wouldn't be difficult to modify the stove either to take a different sized catalytic combustor, or even one of the new types made from steel instead of ceramic. You could also throw out the EPA parts if you wanted to and put in a simple damper, but I wouldn't recommend that except for in an emergency because of how well the woodstove runs when the catalytic combustor is doing its job.

Geez they have a lousy website. No good pictures. Anyhow, I'm pretty sure my in-laws have a Sierra wood stove that they've been heating their house with for close to 30 years. What I do not like about it is that it gets very hot very fast. To me, that means it has no mass. And once the fire is out, the stove cools off very quickly. It will handle much larger logs than my Napoleon, but consumes wood almost twice as fast. What I do like about it is.... it gets very hot very fast! :laughing:. Its great if you are cold and want instant heat. It is also built well. It loads from the side, which is nice, but that means if you stack it full wood is going to hit the glass, whereas a stove that has the window in the door has less of a chance of wood hitting the glass. Their Sierra burns so fast, they had to put a damper in the chimney to slow it down. But again, it did serve them well and no repairs for 30 years.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Thanks for reminding me, I have to stoke the wood stove before bed.

 

[Cat_Driver]

Between the Government saving out forests so well that MILLIONS of acres burn every year, Volcanoes, War, Every other Country that has NO pollution laws, ...anything we burn will have absolutely no effect on this planet. Considering most of this planet was on fire and every Volcano was burning we turned out just fine after BILLIONS of years.

There is nothing a human can do to harm this planet that this planet can't cleanse itself from, including HUMANS.

 

[RalphVa]

Think most of us who've burned wood mostly used wood that would have not been used otherwise. It would have just rotted somewhere, maybe pile up in a creek and caused some problems with water backup.

One way to eliminate some of the pollution problems is to use one with a catalytic converted on the stack. Never used one; so, I have no idea how long they'll last, etc. One would have to probably be sure and keep a fire going all the time so the stack wouldn't cool down much. I know I always got a fair bit of loose creosote every year that was easily dislodged with a section or two of tire chain raked around inside.

Ralph