[Market-farming] outdoor wood furnaces

Dean Brock deanbrock2 at gmail.com
Sat Dec 27 16:03:36 EST 2008


I completely understand Pat's concerns.

The reason the majority of outdoor wood furnaces smoke as they do is because
all they are is a firebox with a water jacket.  These furnaces are basically
non-pressurized hot water heaters.  The firebox being surrounded by water
stays well under the temperature where wood burns cleanly, so you get a lot
of smoke.  You just can't run them hot enough not to produce smoke.
i.e. http://www.woodmaster.com/

There are some that have a noticeably different design like the ones by HS
Tarm at http://www.woodboilers.com/  These are supposed to be very clean
burning having a special combustion chamber like they do, but I don't have
any first hand experience with them yet.

One thing that might be a bit better than the regular outdoor furnaces, and
cheaper than the HS Tarm could be a well designed masonry stove built into a
green house.  Here's a plan I've been dreaming about building for a few
years:

http://www.lsuagcenter.com/NR/rdonlyres/974F0BFC-2AB1-47DD-81AC-965698AB1F7E/14528/4802FlueHeatedGreenhouse.pdf

If anyone has built one of these, I'd love to hear what you thought of it!

Cheers,
Dean


On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 2:53 PM, Pat Meadows <pat at meadows.pair.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 27 Dec 2008 11:59:20 -0500, you wrote:
>
> >
> >Another issue that is surfacing in our area has to do with zoning laws.
> Some communities are prohibiting outside wood burning stoves. Our township
> is still very rural, by SW Michigan standards, and one wouldn't expect it to
> be an issue, but a prohibition has been discussed by our planning
> commission. Townships on the west side of our county already have ordinances
> prohibiting them, however those townships are more densely populated. I
> don't know how things work in Vermont, but I think it would be a good thing
> to check on before buying a furnace.
>
> Our town, in a *very* rural area, now has an ordinance which regulates new
> Outdoor Wood Furnaces (OWFs) heavily; very heavily, so heavily as to just
> about eliminate the possibility of any new ones being installed.  (Although
> it left the existing OWFs pretty much alone - there are, at present, only
> 12 in town.)
>
> My husband and I worked hard to get this ordinance adopted (especially my
> husband) because we live here and we breathe.  Our town is mostly in a
> bowl, ringed by hills.  Any pollution that gets into the bowl tends to stay
> there a long time.
>
> OWFs are - by their nature - much more polluting than traditional indoor
> wood stoves. (I'm sure they could be made to be less polluting, but so far
> as I know that has not happened yet.)
>
> Unfortunately, wood smoke is very far from benign (which of course is why
> so many areas are regulating OWFs).
>
> Wood smoke can (and does) cause lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease,
> heart attacks, strokes, and death.  It also worsens asthma and causes
> asthma attacks, as I know to my cost (I have asthma).  The most vulnerable
> are infants and young children, the elderly, and people with existing
> respiratory conditions. But everyone is vulnerable to some extent.
>
> The small particles in wood smoke enter the lungs and then the bloodstream,
> and this is what causes most of the harm.
>
> The page cited below is out of date, I haven't had time to update it since
> the ordinance has been adopted, but it gives you the references you need to
> evaluate the situation knowledgeably.
>
> http://betterwellsboro.org/cleanair/cleanair.html (scroll down for URLs)
> (One of the URLs is an explanation of why the current OWFs are more
> polluting than indoor wood stoves.)  Note that the URLs given are state
> environmental agencies and the like - reputable.
>
> I would not buy an OWF for these three reasons:
>
> 1.  My area might adopt regulations forbidding them (which our particular
> area already has done, as have the entire State of Washington, and
> many towns and counties across the USA.)
>
> 2.  They are expensive, some are around $10K or more.
>
> 3.  Most important:  I would not myself or my family (or my neighbors)
> exposed to the smoke from an OWF.
>
> A friend of ours, 62 years old, slender, never smoked, very youthful and
> vivacious, died after suffering a stroke caused by a neighbor's OWF pumping
> clouds of smoke right outside their bedroom window for a number of months -
> before their town adopted an ordinance regulating OWFs.
>
> She didn't live in our town, but came to one of our Town Council Meetings
> with her husband to give the Council the benefit of their experience (their
> town had already adopted an ordinance).
>
> Ironically, she died five minutes after the meeting. My husband was at the
> meeting; I wasn't.  He (and the Town Council) were, I believe, quite shaken
> by her death.  I was too. I don't consider 62 to be 'elderly' and Tina was
> young in her mind, spirit, and body and could easily have passed for 50.
>
> I'll be 65 in two months and I don't consider myself to be 'elderly'.
>
> Pat
>
>
>
>
> --
> In Pennsylvania's Northern Tier, northeastern USA.
> Website: www.meadows.pair.com/articleindex.html
>
> What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide
> what kind of difference you want to make. - Jane Goodall
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>
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