replace your wood stove (Sheridan: assessor, mortgage, loan)

[ElkHunter]

Well, I would think that many doctors have diagnosed a smoker, with cancer and said it was because he/she smoked, and they did it without running air quality tests. Same with the spouse of a heavy smoker, getting cancer and the doctor said it was caused by second hand smoke. They are using their best guess, and not running air quality tests in the house to verify that that is exactly where the cancer came from. A person with cancer of the lungs can absolutely be aggravated by wood smoke and I don't need to run air tests in order to say that.

Why does everything said on this forum have to be so exact?

[Froggie Legs]

Yes, they ran through family and personal history and the type of cancer she had and made "educated guesses" as to the cause.... after all, they don't call it a "doctor's practice" if they get it perfect every time, do they?

[sunsprit]

"A person with cancer of the lungs can absolutely be aggravated by wood smoke and I don't need to run air tests in order to say that."

No doubt correct. But the concern here is the difference between the causation of the lung cancer vs aggavating the condition.

My concern on this thread about wood smoke pollution is we seem to have folk who wave the strawman argument that all wood combustion in Wyoming is bad pollution, therefore we should all be on the bandwagon for gov't intervention because it's the right thing to do. But that takes us down the slippery slope of how clean does the air have to be to satisfy their clean concept, and at what cost? and is there really a woodstove air pollution problem here in Wyoming? I was working outside my house today, and there was repeated heavy clouds of dust and debris from trucks and cars coming through on our dirt county road ... and the stack on my wood cook stove was clean.

As we've seen in this thread and the websites it takes us to, there's folk out there using non-approved woodstoves who would be at a personal financial loss to change out what they are using now. Will that solve anything? Will it save anybody from contracting lung cancer?

PS: In my years of working for other shops, or in my sales career calling upon folk at their place of business, I've been heavily exposed to tobacco smoke. Indeed, my dad was a heavy pipe and cigar smoker for most of his life, and it was a serious problem for me while growing up because I was allergic to tobacco smoke ... as I still am today. So when I have a choice to avoid this, such as in restaurants, I do so with my feet and my wallet goes with me. But I don't have lung cancer from all that exposure, either. Nor does my wife, with a similar background, although it was her Mom who was the heavy cigarette smoker.

I've yet to see conclusive medical proof that second-hand smoke causes lung cancer, although I'll agree that it aggravates an existing lung cancer case. IMO, after reading a lot of studies about cancer causation/triggers (a near and dear subject due to family history/deaths due to cancer), I think there's a lot more going on here than this as a primary causation. Interesting to note that even a smoker doesn't always get lung cancer from tobacco use, and then there's the fact that tobacco use brings many chemicals into the entire body of the smoker, not just into the lungs. Do they increase their chances of many cancer forms due to this exposure? looks like it in the studies I've seen, but it's still not an absolute cause-effect relationship.

As I've pointed out on other threads, I don't deny the right of others to smoke or use tobacco if that's their choice. I only insist upon not having it used in or around my home, vehicles, and my place of business. Folk have their choice, and I believe that it's theirs to make ... not by gov't intervention and regulation. Same goes for wood smoke pollution; we had a valley-wide inversion problem in Vail, and most wood stove owners voluntarily stopped using wood burning stoves when the problem became apparent with the further build-out of the valley. For many years prior to that, the inversions existed but the pollution issue wasn't apparent until many more woodstoves were put into service which apparently overloaded the environmental system. There were some very stringent bans and operating statutes proposed ... and a ban on wood stoves, too ... but the majority of the wood stoves and fireplaces were taken out of service voluntarily before the statutes came into place. By the time gov't got involved, the problem had effectively gone away.

While I wouldn't assert that folk will always act in their own apparent best self interests and that of their neighbors, I'd suggest that such behavior is more common in Wyoming than some other states. If a study conclusively proved that my wood stove use was a direct causation of cancer amongst the people exposed to it's exhaust stack emissions, I'd be happy to convert it to propane via the kits that fit the factory installed models. And I won't blow tobacco smoke in their faces, either.

[Froggie Legs]

Hmmm... this does not bode well...Obama uses executive order in sweeping takeover of nation's climate change policies | Fox News
Especially for energy resource producing states.

[ElkHunter]

Originally Posted by Froggie Legs

Hmmm... this does not bode well...Obama uses executive order in sweeping takeover of nation's climate change policies | Fox News
Especially for energy resource producing states.

Nothing surprises me anymore with this guy. Did you notice that none of the people on his study panel actually live where hurricanes are the most frequent?

[WyoNewk]

Hungry for power, but not for our kind.

[Froggie Legs]

EPA proposes restrictions for new wood stoves | Fox News


this article just made my hubbies blood boil... methinks we live in a nanny state

[sunsprit]

As I understand the regs, there will be a mandated 80% reduction in particulates/pollutants phased in over the next 5 years over the current standards which already made many woodstoves obsolete/illegal to sell or use.

They're basing it not only the premise that the cleaner air will save $hundreds on medical bills, but will use less wood to deliver the same BTU's now delivered from a wood stove, hence saving the environment and the wallet of the wood consumer.

What I haven't seen is any underlying "studies" that lead the EPA to their conclusions, medical benefit quantification, and the environmental benefits.

There's so much standing deadwood in beetle kill and blow-down forests in the region that the current woodstove users couldn't possibly burn it all in many decades of aggressive use. We all know that running a woodstove is not a trivial project to maintain a household comfort throughout our winters. When I used top quality wood heating stoves, I could count on having a fire last with enough coals to the next morning. Now that I use a wood cookstove ... exempt from the regulations ... I have to stoke it ever 4-6 hours. And it's not only exempt as a cookstove, but it also met the clean burning requirements up until last year.

IMO, this new set of regulations isn't about clean air or environment, it's only about control of the people ... taking away another viable, proven technology of renewable resources that folks have used effectively for many years.

[monkeywrenching]

how will they force people to get either newer stoves or get rid of the stoves a person has currently?

I do not plan on giving up my stoves, not even to the epa or any other agency.

[sunsprit]

Originally Posted by monkeywrenching

how will they force people to get either newer stoves or get rid of the stoves a person has currently?

I do not plan on giving up my stoves, not even to the epa or any other agency.

Two ways that are currently used to verify details of a house structure:

1) Homeowner's insurance policy declarations schedule. Whenever I listed having a woodstove in my house, my insurance company required a physical inspection of the installation to be sure that it met code requirements for safety; ie, proper clearance around the stove, safety floor area/threshold, proper stack construction and clearance to adjacent roofs. My insurance agency sent out an inspector to verify these and many other details/condition of construction/roofs/exterior siding/proper electrical service, gas hook-up, etc. If you don't list the wood burning device and a fire loss occurs at the structure, you're not covered by your insurance policy (and my understanding from my insurance agency is the fire causation doesn't have to be the wood stove ... you aren't covered for fire peril if you haven't disclosed a woodstove in the structure; perhaps this is just my insurance company policy, but very few companies write farmowner's policies which cover the rest of my structures and operations so I don't get to shop my homeowner insurance very much).

2) County Assessor schedule for site improvements for the property tax assessed valuation. It's not very frequent that they make the rounds, but the county assessor (for all of my SFH real estate, not just here in WY) tries to have a team physically inspect each property every 4-6 years. They do drive-by inspections to verify the line card information that is on file, and if there's any question about improvements/condition, they will schedule a team visit for the interior/exterior of the house. As well, with the latest satellite photos of the properties, they can spot a lot of property details, such as a chimney structure. Last time they were in one of my houses, they made a big deal about checking that there was an UL metal tag on each of my fireplace inserts ... which were still there from the day they'd been installed back in the 1970's. Absent finding those tags, the CofO would have been red-tagged by the fire department & county zoning department until the units were removed or rendered permanently unusable by blocking them off.

What I've found to be a consistent tactic on the part of assessor's offices is to way overstate a FMV for a house so that you have to appeal to get your property taxes down to a fair level. Once you open the door for that contest, they have the right to inspect the house to verify your claims for size/improvements & condition. In my experience, I've had the county cycle in Colorado every 2 years play this game, and it has become a pi**ing match every time between the costs of the appeal and the prospective increase in my tax base valuation. In 30 years of ownership on one SFH alone, I've had to do the appeal 12 times; for one of the years, the assessor acknowledged that they'ed overestimated the valuations for most of the area and they were automatically denying the first round of appeals because they didn't have the manpower to review the protests. Had to take that one all the way to the 3rd round of appeals to get a realistic FMV adjustment downward on the order of 45%. It's reached the point where a number of professional appraisers in the area have made it their primary business to appeal the assessor's office and they consistently achieve substantial reductions on a percentage fee basis.

Where this is leading is that there are several avenues by which the authorities will know that you have a woodstove and the right to inspect it for code compliance. Their means of enforcement for your compliance are numerous, beginning with a red-tagging of the house, forcing you to not occupy the house until the "defect" is corrected. They can require the insurance companies to not insure a house at all if it's not in compliance. It becomes a cost/risk game to them for you to play; ie, they'll take this to court with you if that's your desire, but at one point or another you'll find it less costly to comply with their stove requirements than it is to fight over the principle of your freedom of choice ... even if the underlying requirement is unfounded. (The gov't agencies are experts at this ... look at the antics of the disabled access requirements in housing and public use areas. My favorite is requiring that bathrooms in airport restricted areas to pilots have the signage with braille identification on the doors)

While the current proposals allow the grandfathering in of existing stove for the next few years, there's nothing that prevents the EPA by director's order to cancel that approved status. The EPA doesn't operate under the rule of law, they operate under a mandate from the executive branch and make their own rules. The agency was created with guidelines as to what it was supposed to accomplish, but not how it would accomplish those tasks. Nor were there limits to it's determination of the guidelines of performance; ie, how clean does a woodstove have to been to be "clean" at what cost/benefit?