Posted on 07/14/2009 1:06:09 PM PDT by decimon
MADISON, WI -- JULY 14, 2009 -- The stress of rising natural gas prices is leading many consumers to rethink how they heat their homes. For some this means moving towards modern alternative energy options, while others have been turning to a more traditional method for a solution to these rising costs. In Canada and the United States, wood burning stoves have been reevaluated as a potentially viable option for home heating.
The case for modern woodstoves has developed with the improvement of the products on the market, as wood heating technology has substantially advanced in recent years. With the advanced secondary combustion systems on Environmental Protection Agency certified woodstoves, they are now 95% more efficient than their predecessors.
Dr. Paul Grogan, a plant and ecosystem ecologist and Canadian Research Chair (II) at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario conducted a case study on the benefits of woodstoves with the help of final-year undergraduate and first year graduate students. He determined that adding a woodstove to the home can help both consumers heating costs as well as the environment. The results were published in the latest edition of the Journal of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Education.
The environmental sustainability of woodstove use is dependent upon the consumption of wood from sustainably managed woodlots, as the carbon released is reused as the next generation of trees grows. Annual gross CO2 emissions did in fact increase from 12,610 kg (i.e., ~2.5 metric tons CO2/person per year) to 17,330 kg after the installation of the wood stove. But while this gross amount did increase, the net carbon released by the combustion is negligible, the only surplus coming from the harvest and transport. Based on an average growing time of 130 years before harvest for local Ontario tree species, a woodlot or forest 3.5 hectares in size would provide an indefinite supply of wood heat for a household without a net increase in carbon emissions.
In the case study, adding a woodstove to the ground floor of a 3200ft2 home reduced the mean annual gas cost by 60%; from $2260 to $880. The annual cost of the wood fuel for the woodstove amounted to $1330 for 5 full cords (a cord is 8 feet long by 4 feet high by 4 feet wide - 128ft3 ). This was a yearly savings of $50 at market fossil fuel prices of 2005-2007 without taking into account rising fossil fuel prices or the impending carbon tax. Should these variables come into play Dr. Grogan estimated that the domestic heating costs would be reduced by 25%. This translates into a potential savings of $920 in the first 3 years.
Wood warms you three times:
Once when you cut it
Another when you carry it
Once again when you burn it.
So people are incented to burn wood instead of pay for rediculously priced Cap and trade utilities.
And carbon emissions will go through the roof.
Nice job Obama!!!
Great heat, great place to put soup on to let it cook all day.
The cons were that we spent a good portion of our summers cutting wood, and the stove REALLY dried out the air. We had to run a humidifier 24/7.
A modern wood stove with a secondary combustion chamber/catalytic converter that draws external air through pipes is very efficient.
Newwwwwwws from the past. The price of natural gas has plummeted during the past few months. My gas company is letting me have it for free if I agree to give its meter reader a sandwich when he comes by to read the meter. (OK, that's a little over the top, but it has dropped by more than 50% recently).
Even if I use a hydraulic splitter, that still makes me sweat.
Global warming Enviro Gestopo would consider rubbing your hands together and wearing layered clothing a more viable option than a wood burning stove. Think “Green,” kkthx.
/sarcasm
Wood warms you three times:
Again when you see the reduction in your utility bill.
And again when you realize you’re helping plants to thrive by putting CO2 in the air.
My Woodstock Fireview literally runs us out of the cabin, and the secondary burn is awesome to watch......
http://www.woodstove.com/pages/wood_stove_fireview.html
if things go along as planned, wood burning stoves could quite likely be banned as they have (or are trying to do) in areas of California........
The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
Raise the price of gas and people start cutting down trees and burning them.
Not according to this.
Sure -- I know a few folks who heat that way in places with fairly cold winter temps. A lot of the viability is governed by the design of the house, of course, and by the design and placement of the wood stove(s).
The more difficult problem has to do with what happens when you're in an area where a lot of people are trying to heat their houses with wood stoves. Pollution can be a serious problem.
Denver is a great example: its location is prone to temperature inversions that stick around for days at a time, and the inversion traps the wood smoke ... and when you throw the smoke from several thousand fireplaces into that, it can be a real and significant problem in that case.
It got so bad back in the '70s, that Denver was actually forced to significantly regulate wood-burning because of the cumulative pollution effects.
Looks nice but I get the creeps seeing that baby near a wood stove with no barrier around it.
A far more interesting idea is the oven-stove. Check this out, especially the really neat pictures.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/12/tile-stoves.html
The idea is a much more fuel efficient way of heating than a wood stove, because it does not heat by convection, but by shining infrared light at everything in the line of sight from the oven-stove.
A small fire is built in it, that burns very thoroughly with little waste. In turn, it heats stone bricks that then radiate infrared radiation for hours.
Undoubtedly, if Americans applied themselves to improving on this traditional idea, we could probably create an oven stove that could perform several functions other than heating and cooking, such as an infrared clothes dryer or a dehydrator for food.
Ah, get over it.... babies are like pets. Yeah, they'll burn themselves on it once, then they'll never go near it again....
(Do I really need the /s?)
Waxman’s last minute amendment to the energy tax/job killer bill calls for making California building codes the national standard.
As far as I know, as of January 2008, fireplaces/wood-burning stoves are no longer permitted in new construction in California. I’m sure there will be taxes and fees on existing wood-burning heat sources as well.
Lopi....
Very effecient, no cat converter!
I built a home and put in an “Earth-stove”. It’s a air-tight Franklin stove. In the winter, two small loads would heat the house all day, with the furnace only kicking in around 2AM. We had a real hard winter, one year, and my light bill didn’t go up appreciably, while everyone elses doubled and tripled. Good insulation and a Franklin stove works.
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