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  • From: "Dean Brock" <deanbrock2 AT gmail.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] outdoor wood furnaces
  • Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:03:36 -0500

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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