Dealing with neighbors' wood fireplace smoke (stove, smells, convert, room)

[harry chickpea]

Originally Posted by Filet Mignon

The truth is, unless a fireplace has an insert, it will actually increase your heating costs instead of decrease them. You're sucking warm air out of the house and sending it up the chimney.

You obviously haven't been to our house. Somehow, putting logs in the fireplace and lighting them with a match keeps the heat pump from going on in 20 degree weather. Must be the lighting of the match that does it.

[ferretkona]

Originally Posted by pitt_transplant

,,,,,,,If anything people should be looking into putting money into solar panels for the home instead of burning their money with firewood.

Been burning wood for over 30 years and never paid a dime for it.
Firewood needs to be stacked to age and good wood barely has smoke at all.
I only burn cedar and oak with the occasional bit of almond. Pine and fir will build up flammable creosote in the flume.

We are building a cabin and yes we do have solar panels, not cheap at $30,000 either. Heated only by woodstove at that.

My thought for the original poster is to make sure the neighbor is up to code on the height of the firestack. Differs by county, but it has to be taller than the owners roofline by a specific height. Take a peek over the fence and make sure he does not have a bunch of railroad ties to burn.

[Threerun]

Originally Posted by pitt_transplant

Fire places are not actually that effective as far as efficiency to pollution goes. My ancestors also did laundry by hand and succumbed to wasting and ate tapeworms for thinness....probably not the BEST idea to repeat things from the past.



If anything people should be looking into putting money into solar panels for the home instead of burning their money with firewood.

Hmm- my firewood (or source of heat) was free AND carbon neutral. Combined with an EPA certified woodstove, it heated my entire house, including greatroom, for FREE.

(oh yeah- and it didn't matter if the sun was shining or not, hehe)


How's that smell for a bargain?

[Threerun]

Originally Posted by Filet Mignon

The truth is, unless a fireplace has an insert, it will actually increase your heating costs instead of decrease them. You're sucking warm air out of the house and sending it up the chimney.

Technically true, however a smart burner will close off other areas of the home, crack a window closeby, start a roaring fire in the FP and keep it that way until the mass surrounding the FP is heated. Then radiant heat takes over and *voila!* you've got heat w/out draining your inside air.

Sometimes you have to be smarter than the average bear.

[Gaffer]

You wouldn't want to live on either of the two blocks my home sits in the middle of, each of which is 8 to 10 miles around. There's about 52 homes on those two "blocks" and probably 45 burn wood. Many cut there own as I do, some have logs delivered,
block and split.
My fireplace is an insert with glass doors and duct work that sucks air from the outside, a plenum and fan to blow the heated air into the room. I only use: When it gets really cold, (below 0) as it will be for the next few days - supposed to be 20 below tomorrow night; When the power goes out. My place is a 900 sq ft ranch so if I close the bedroom doors and can bring the temp from 50 to 70 in an hour or so. Or just because I like the ambience of a fire in a fireplace.
It is illegal to burn anything but wood or paper up here, no plastics and no treated wood which gives off arsenic when it is burned.

[DesertRich]

Most likely they are using a low quality wood. My neighbor burns scrap construction wood, that stuff smells terrible, and burns in a short time. It's the only time FP smoke has ever bothered me. I burn a well seasoned hard wood and never smell it outside.

[TexasHorseLady]

I had a client that was selling their 3,000+ sq. ft. home with a huge two-story great room that had a fireplace in it. A very special fireplace, that heated the entire house for 12 hours with one load of firewood.

So the blanket statement that fireplaces are inadequate sources of heat is just that, a gross generalization and thus not entirely accurate.

As for the statement regarding not repeating what was done in the past, that's another gross generalization. What we should do is not accept blindly everything that was done in the past OR toss it out because it was done in the past, but examine it for its intrinsic worth and make our decisions that way.

For example, the house I live in was built in the first part of the last century, pre-central air and heat, in Central Texas. It was built for its climate, with windows that open that are placed so that, with the house placed properly on the land, we don't have to turn the AC on until late June/early July - and then it's window units for particular rooms, not central air. We shouldn't throw out designing houses for where they are, as was done in the past out of necessity - we should return to doing that, if we're really going to pretend to be "green".

We should also use a variety of means to heat and cool our homes, some older, some newer, depending on the circumstances, not on whether they're the latest bells and whistles or not. "Fashion" and "latest and greatest" should not be our rule of thumb.

Oh, had you heard that physicians are returning to the use of leeches for some conditions, because they do a better job than the "modern" alternatives?

[anifani821]

Well, thanx, y'all. I'll remember all this (the negative comments) the next time my power goes out, LOL.

And yes, I have had both fireplace inserts and wood stoves. The point is - for many of us, it is a back up system - a widely accepted addition to a home and shouldn't be something that sends people into paroxysms of environmental disgust b/c someone is burning wood in his/her fireplace.

[sunsprit]

During the winter months, I'll assume that the OP has closed their windows so that they're not bringing in fresh air.

Which means that the smoke coming from a nearby chimney must be drafting downward in certain wind conditions AND that the OP's house is going "negative" ... pulling outside air (and that smoke with it) into the house.

IMO, this may be the truly dangerous condition happening here. Going "negative" to pull in outside air means that combustion sources inside the OP's house are potentially creating carbon monoxide sources inside the house instead of putting it safely up the stack because they have an adequate combustion air supply. I'd be getting the local fire department out to do a safety check on the furnace and hot water heater in this house ASAP, if not a qualified HVAC/plumbing contractor. This condition is very dangerous ... I've know a couple of households to get carbon monoxide poisoning from the house "going negative".

As far as using woodstoves to heat a house, I use a emission certified compliant wood cookstove, which not only heats our house in the winter months, but gives us a place to cook, too, without using our propane. Proof of the rated 78% efficiency of the woodstove is that I can run it about 18 hours per day (it won't burn overnight) and my propane bill/consumption has gone down by 66% this winter compared to last winter when I only ran my wood cookstove during power outages or infrequently when I was spending the day in my house. If I start a modest fire in the stove and damp it down ... it's an airtight firebox ... as soon as I can get it to make coals, it burns cleanly and without any outside odor. The only time I smell neighbor's fireplaces ... old style open fireplaces ... is when they are starting a big log pile in the fireplace, which is more decorative than functional; the closest one is over a mile away, and I can only smell it if the wind direction is just right and I'm outside on the ranch.

[London Girl]

Originally Posted by Greenchili

This is true. A FP really doesnt heat all that well. And its a stinkin
mess to boot! This is 2009, and there has to be better
ways to heat homes than a FP.

Greenchili

Our woodburning stove has saved us HUNDREDS of dollars in heating bills

As DesertRich said, the important thing is to burn properly seasoned dry wood.

A simple fireplace however is inefficient and will suck out all the heat.

Woodburning stove inserts are extremely efficient and if the correct wood is used and burnt hot enough they generate virtually no smoke.

They are extremely messy though