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You know, there is some skill involved in getting a wood stove burning right, particularly if you are starting with the stove cold, at room temperature. Having dry enough wood matters, as well as not putting anything too thick into the fire until it gets going good and the stove is up to temperature. I think one of the main sources of problems is trying to get the stove to burn for several hours without adding any fuel, followed by not having dry enough wood.
Most of the skill is keeping properly seasoned wood from not burning, assuming you also have a chimney with good draft.
I have yet to see any seller of firewood selling properly seasoned wood. Least on purpose unless you get some he split and didnt sell last year. Oh the trees may been cut year ago but wood wasnt processed into firewood until they are ready to sell it. Properly seasoned wood needs to be cut up and split and then seasoned with summer heat and lot surface area exposed so air can circulate. Up north wood needs to be seasoned two or three years cause summers are so short.
Now getting fire started with green wood and poor drawing chimney, well that takes skill, also when the chimney catches fire around February from all the creosote from the green wood.
Calling this an environmental disaster if everyone used a wood stove is a bit out there.
If everyone in all the cookie cutter neighborhoods like they have in Los Angeles did it yes it would get smokey with out wind.
A stove is also much more efficient than a fireplace
Wood stoves are MUCH WORSE than cars for pollution that affects humans.
Your right about "cookie cutter neighborhoods", but it gets to be a HUMAN HEALTH hazard, not just smokey.
Sequim is hardly a "rural" area. Maybe for someone from southern California!!!
Wood stoves are nasty when it comes to human health effects. Much, much, much worse than fireplaces or wildland fire smoke.
A wood stove is MUCH more efficient than a fireplace in producing heat. It is also MUCH, MUCH more efficient in producing cancer producing particles than fireplaces or wildland fires.
When I worked for the Forest Service we got sued by the Sierra Club over our program to provide low-cost firewood to the American public.
I learned a LOT about human health hazards of smoke, and the Pacific NorthWest Power grid!!! Some good news on the power grid, except for all the areas we have destroyed in the Northwest to ship wind electricity to California.....almost over a million acres and counting....heading for TWO is short order.
BUT, the human health hazards of smoke, no scientific controversy on that one. Smoke is REALLY BAD for you. AND wood stove smoke is the WORST.
That said, I own a wood stove and love it. It is my primary source of heat at my second home, but at my primary home electricity is so cheap that anybody burning a fire, except for romantic reasons, is a total nut case.
Wood stoves are MUCH WORSE than cars for pollution that affects humans.
Your right about "cookie cutter neighborhoods", but it gets to be a HUMAN HEALTH hazard, not just smokey.
Sequim is hardly a "rural" area. Maybe for someone from southern California!!!
Wood stoves are nasty when it comes to human health effects. Much, much, much worse than fireplaces or wildland fire smoke.
A wood stove is MUCH more efficient than a fireplace in producing heat. It is also MUCH, MUCH more efficient in producing cancer producing particles than fireplaces or wildland fires.
When I worked for the Forest Service we got sued by the Sierra Club over our program to provide low-cost firewood to the American public.
I learned a LOT about human health hazards of smoke, and the Pacific NorthWest Power grid!!! Some good news on the power grid, except for all the areas we have destroyed in the Northwest to ship wind electricity to California.....almost over a million acres and counting....heading for TWO is short order.
BUT, the human health hazards of smoke, no scientific controversy on that one. Smoke is REALLY BAD for you. AND wood stove smoke is the WORST.
That said, I own a wood stove and love it. It is my primary source of heat at my second home, but at my primary home electricity is so cheap that anybody burning a fire, except for romantic reasons, is a total nut case.
Are you talking an ''old school" stove or a "rated" one? When mine is up and burning well, there is no visible smoke from the chimney, and very little smoke smell outside. If you are talking about a rated stove, do you have a link?
Our old Dutchwest x-Large with a cat, when warmed and chugging, produced less than a gram of particulate p/hr. In fact you could only make out the heat mirage coming out of the stack. Only smoked when you fed it.
My shop furnace? Nope- plumes of smoke until it gets ripping hot.
If your woodstove is 'in the corner', does that mean you are heating two exterior walls?
Absent of any possibility of centrally locating it in our house that would be a yes- it will be in proximity of 2 exterior walls.
It will kinda sorta look like the set up I built in our first house so many moons ago in West Virginia.
In this case the pipe will be a straight vertical run, no bends, through the ceiling and roof. I have to demo the bump out in the corner, make it a true corner and then do the stone and hearth.
I'm going to tear out the vertical wall, run it to a true 90 corner and go from there. At least that's the plan. As that corner sits it's actually a cold corner due to the dead space behind the POS propane fireplace.
I've got several tons of flat stone to work with to build a hearth floor. A lot of it lichen covered. I'll repurpose some of the solid oak from the current surround, including mantle. We'll see- we're still in the rebuilding planning stage, but the stove is ordered.
I typically think of a woodstove in a corner as making those two exterior walls hot and losing a lot of heat to outside. Also the opposite corner diagonal away from this hot corner will be a cold area in your house, unless you have mechanized some method to transfer the heat from the hot corner to the cold corner.
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