Fair enough, but it does take many years for that carbon to be re-sequestered. When I said ‘dirty’, I was thinking also about soot, carcinogens, etc.
Further to my comment about the wonderful ambience of a wood-burning fireplace, your comment about a wood stove is also evocative. We had a wood-burning stove in our summer cottage when I was a kid, and it was the only source of heat both for cooking and warming the house. And it really was just as lovely as you describe, and the memory is very nostalgic. My Mom would toast big thick slices of French bread – delivered daily from the village bakery – right on the hot stovetop, or make French toast with it in a big frying pan over the fire. The ritual of my dad firing up the stove on a sometimes chilly morning is one of my childhood memories. It was always sad to get back to the city where everything was “civilized”, up-to-date, automated, and boring.
We have a wood stove fireplace insert at our cabin. There is other heat but we use and love the insert. It’s warm and homey and the dog likes it.
Yes, this. It is in some way a touchstone, to a less civilized, back in time place. Having travelled through a lot of rural developing countries, I am ever reminded of the remarkably large number of people in the present world who still awaken, arise and light a fire, for start of day. It is both of the past and the very real present. (Perhaps I was just a fire worshipper in my last life?)
I only recently learned that, if using a hatchet to split kindling, you should kneel, which will make a missed swing or overswing still hit the ground rather than your body. I’ve been fairly self-taught in these matters, so I don’t always find all the advice in one place. I do know how to baton a knife through kindling, but hadn’t picked up the hatchet safety.
Huh. Thanks for info! I didn’t know that. – I’m trying to think, now, how that works out. I might need to split something with a hatchet in order to get the feel for it.
I rarely split kindling; I can generally easily find more than enough dry dead branches that are small enough just to break into pieces in the woodlot or hedgerows or even dropped on what passes for a lawn. Gives a good excuse for a bit of a walk, too.
Of course, that doesn’t work if one hasn’t got my sort of woodlot and hedgerows.
Yeah, we pay for firewood. If there’s been a windstorm, there’s plenty of sticks of small size from the yard, but I also like some bigger pieces that are between sticks and full size firewood. So, I sometimes split a bit of the firewood down into smaller pieces. Usually I do it with the mail at my chopping block, but I sometimes have a hatchet on the back porch to use for just a pice or two when I’ve run out.
I think this video is the one where I learned to kneel down when using the hatchet. To hit your block, rather than your body (not the ground, like I said earlier, but it’s the same idea).
Hello OP, I have a wood burning stove, and am in the UK, like you. I bloody love it, and it warms up my living room lovely. I get kiln dried logs delivered about once a quarter (costs about £125 a go), which I keep in a log store in the back garden.
There’s been lots of mutterings in the press about the pollution these are causing, and my local council (Bristol) has been issuing guidance on what you can burn, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they tightened the rules on that, so that’s something to think about - romantic ideas about picking up sticks in the woods might not be sustainable. We’ve been told we should only burn wood which carries Woodsure ‘ready to burn’ certification.
So just a watch out, particularly if you live in a large town or city - I imagine legislation is only ever going to get stricter.
Oh, and you also need to get the chimney swept once a year - our chimney sweep charges about £80-100 for this from memory.
This is now off-topic, but here in the US (and I assume in the UK as well) many new stoves are coming with catalytic converters- just like what your car has. My stove has a small chamber just behind the flu, and there’s a secondary burn back there. There’s a ceramic-like brick that has the catalyst. In addition to burning cleaner, it gets you more heat from your wood.
Here in the US, generally speaking, new rules only apply to new installations. So, for instance, even if they outright ban wood stoves in my area, they can’t come take mine away. At least, not until I modify it, at which time there would be a new permitting process.
Just wondering if it’s different in the UK?
Who knows what they might do! I doubt they’ll outright ban them in the near future, but they are bringing in rules about what you can, and cannot, burn in them - coal and ‘wet wood’ are being banned, although I’m not clear on the timelines.
I bought and use this for splitting small to medium wood.
When we built our house 25 years ago, the builder put in a gas fireplace as standard. My husband really wanted a wood fireplace - I didn’t. I grew up with them and with the cost of wood, the mess - all for a few fires. (I don’t think anyone has yet mentioned the issues with animals who take up residence in your cord of wood.
We use the gas fireplace almost every day in the Winter. Flip a switch and its on. The cost of gas is tiny. It adds cheer to the room. My husband loves it and is very happy I talked him out of the wood fireplace.
We do have a solo stove for our patio - so when he gets the firebug urge, he has a way to meet the need. But that’s a few times a year, with small amounts of wood.
If you are concerned about the surprise cost of gas at the end of the month, you do not want a wood fireplace. Wood is expensive (unless you have land with trees and can create your own, in which case, its time consuming). You’ll have to have your chimney cleaned every few years to prevent the possibility of fires. Plus the cost of the heat leaving your house from the fireplace.
And they are lousy for the environment.
I’m just imagining John Cleese showing up with a wood moisture meter and declaring the material contraband.
Ha, yes, I’m not quite sure how they’ll police it. Probably rely on neighbours complaining about the smoke. I suspect they’ll rely on our cultural habit of general rule following.
That’s really neat.
Now I’m wondering if I could retrofit my ineffcient recreational fireplace into something cleaner that generates a net increase in heat. There’s not a ton of room in my living room to build it into…
Thanks – nice video, and it does make clear what you’re talking about.
Neat!
– though I’m a little thrown by the assumption that Dad will be using the axe but Mum needs to be protected from it. I mean, it may be true for her particular parents, but the article seems to give it as a general rule that the father will be the one doing the more hazardous pre-splitting.
My cats are in favor of this.
I myself am not particularly bothered, perhaps due in part to the presence of the cats keeping the population levels of other creatures down; but I like seeing the cats sitting on the woodpile. Less so if I’m trying at the moment to take an armload from where the cat’s sitting, of course.
Cost of wood relative to other fuels depends a lot on where you are.
The chimney should be cleaned, or at least checked to see whether it needs cleaning, every year, not only every few years.
A crappy fireplace may well pull heat out of your house. A properly installed wood stove or fireplace insert doesn’t.
Gas is also lousy for the environment. It looks nice and clean where you burn it but the production and transportation processes can do a lot of damage; and it’s nonrenewable, and puts greenhouse gases into the air that (unlike a woodlot) it’s not simultaneously taking out. Whether gas or wood is doing more environmental damage in the case of a particular household depends a whole lot on where that household is, where the fuel’s coming from, in the case of wood how the harvesting’s done and regrowth provided for, and how efficient the stove is.
Missed that.
Search on “fireplace inserts”. You might find something that’ll fit.
And I should note that my stove is only 5 months old. The catalytic stoves are very new, and as I found out when I bought mine, there are new EPA rules that have dramatically reduced the number of models available. Although, as I understand it, it’s just while the manufacturers design the stoves to work with a catalyst.
The 13 girl won a design award and has a neurological disorder. It doesn’t get more empowering than that. I wouldn’t get hung up on some words.
FWIW: I used to have a catalytic stove, a Vermont Castings. It needed a new catalytic element every year or so and major repairs every few years. I got rid of it and replaced it with an about equally efficient stove which works by forcing the exhaust back over secondary air inlet tubes to burn it a second time; that has held up much longer with only minor work needed.
That was years ago – I bought that catalytic stove back in 1987. (They may be new in the EU, I don’t know, but they’ve been available in the USA at least since the mid80’s.) They may have solved the problem since.
It’s not her words but the reporter’s or possibly editor’s words I was grumbling about. There are direct quotes from the inventor in that article, but the part that bothered me wasn’t one of them.