Posted on 11/23/2007 6:18:58 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
Rob and Lynne Wallace jumped at the chance to install an outdoor wood boiler two years ago to heat their home and water supply.
For a year, they were immune to fluctuating fuel oil prices. Their family-owned tree service provided more than enough wood, stacked under a canopy near the furnace about 50 paces from their back patio.
But earlier this year, their small western Massachusetts town set limits on the outdoor boilers that forced the Wallaces to shut theirs down.
Concerned about air quality and neighborhood disputes, Hampden joined a growing number of communities nationwide setting their own rules on the increasingly popular wood boilers, which are not federally regulated. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends emissions and air quality standards, but does not regulate where and when the wood-fired burners can be installed or used.
Rules are patchy on the state level, too.
Some states, including Connecticut and Maine, have regulations and let their municipalities adopt even stricter limits or ban the boilers altogether. Massachusetts has considered statewide rules but has not enacted them, while Michigan offers a model ordinance that local governments can adopt in the absence of statewide standards.
The Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, a government coalition, estimates more than 155,000 wood boilers have been sold since 1990 in the Northeast, upper Midwest states and other areas prone to cold winters.
For those with easy access to wood, the boilers could make their homes among the few that are not vulnerable to swings in fuel oil and natural gas prices.
A recent Energy Department report says the cost of natural gas, used by 58 percent of American households, could rise 10 percent this winter. Heating oil, used by 7 percent of the country's homes, could jump 22 percent. Those who use electricity and propane will also see increases, with the prices of those sources estimated to rise 4 percent and 16 percent, respectively, this winter.
The Wallaces and others say wood boilers are an economical heat source that uses a renewable resource rather than dwindling foreign fuels.
"We're not hillbillies or trashy people. We're educated people who did our homework before we made our purchase, and we made it a point to operate it very conscientiously," said Lynne Wallace, whose unit would comply with the new town rules only if they spend thousands to move it elsewhere on their land.
The boilers resemble small sheds and burn wood to heat water, which is piped underground to the nearby home or other structure to provide heat and hot water. Some owners also use them for hot tubs, greenhouses and businesses such as dairy barns.
Depending on their size, their purchase price can range from about $5,000 to $15,000. That does not include pouring the foundation on which they sit, installing underground piping, extending the unit's smoke stack to exceed the height of any nearby roof, and other costs.
Their proliferation has prompted disputes over where they can be operated, the amount and smell of smoke emitted and other neighborhood issues. Many of those conflicts are being played out in town meetings and the offices of selectmen, mayors and health boards.
"You don't realize what you're dealing with until you get this haze all around your house and your back yard," said Chris Anderson, who bought his home in East Longmeadow, Mass., last year before learning that his neighbor had one of the boilers.
That 13-square-mile town, surrounded on all sides by communities with limits on the units, is considering its own rules. Emotions have been running high, however, about whether the limits should include existing units — as in neighboring Hampden — or apply only to newly installed boilers.
"My wife and I saved up for our dream house and this is the biggest investment of my life, and we can't enjoy it," Anderson said. "I'm not saying they should be banned everywhere, if they're put up in a good place away from other houses, but why should we be smoked out?"
Advocates of the boilers say irresponsible users — those who burn trash, chemically treated wood and other unacceptable substances — are ruining it for others who stick to the clean, seasoned wood recommended by manufacturers.
"We beg our customers to extend their chimneys higher up so the smoke disperses where their neighbors aren't affected, and we beg our customers to burn only the right wood," said Scott Bradley, owner of Mainline Heating & Supply of Ashford, Conn.
"We tell them you have the right to use a wood burner and stop using foreign oil, but you never have the right to smoke out your neighbor," he said.
In an attempt to avert such problems, Connecticut requires the boilers to be at least 200 feet from the nearest home not served by the unit, and also mandates chimney heights and the quality of the wood to be burned.
But those rules apply only to burners installed after July 2005, and towns can set stricter regulations or refuse to "grandfather in" older units if they wish. Some communities have banned the outdoor boilers altogether, including several in western Massachusetts and the eastern Connecticut towns of Hebron and Tolland.
Robert Girard, assistant director of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection's air enforcement division, said the department urges potential buyers to research whether their site is suitable before they make the purchase.
"Sometimes they're just not put in the right place because of the topography, the closeness of neighbors, things like that," he said. "There have been a number of cases where people have had to remove the units after they've spent a lot of money to put them in."
The Wallace family, which has returned to oil heat for their Hampden home, is still pondering what to do about the wood-fired boiler that sits cold and empty outside their house.
"It would have paid for itself in a few years," Lynne Wallace said, peering into the unit's firebox on a chilly recent morning. "And here it sits, off."
*SMIRK*
A ‘Nanny State Good Morning’ to YOU! :)
Damn nanny staters wanting more control
BBQ grills are next.
“or refuse to “grandfather in” older units if they wish. “
I have a hard time understanding this. I thought that “grandfathering in” was a legal precept. How is it legal to “ refuse to “grandfather in” older units if they wish. “
I see a lot of these outside wood burner units in rural Missouri. They are very smoky...
Wood is one of the dirtiest forms of heating and one of the worst for the environment. Some years ago, even Andy Rooney noticed that if everyone used wood heat, soon Vermont would look like Saudi Arabia.
The libertarian in me repels at regulation, but imagining that wood heat is environmentally friendly is self-delusion of the worst kind.
remember these are politicians and possibly liberals pols, it does not need to make sense. Just needs to feel good
Does boiled wood taste as awful as boiled peanuts?
They are around here in PA also. But you don’t wait until several people spend $5000 each and then decide you don’t like it. Make them illegal from this point on and make existing users put a higher pipe on the smokestack (the smoke will still come back down on some days).
I have seen pictures of the area I now live from the early 1900’s and there is nary a tree to be seen, all pasture. Now the same area is so thickly wooded you need a compass to navigate. Actually there is more forest now than there has ever been since the area was settled.
In the late 70s/ early 80s, air-tight woodburning stoves became very popular in the area I lived, largely in response to high oil and electricity prices. For a while it seemed like practically everyone had one. I remember walking outside at night in the winter, when temperature inversions were quite common, and you could feel the wood smoke immediately begin to irritate your lungs and throat. People think tobacco smoke is bad, but it’s got nothing on wood smoke. I’m also uncertain about the economics of it if you don’t have ready access to a good supply of cheap firewood.
slow wood cooking stove are junk, try liveing next to five of them on a still winter day .
It settle in (smoke) for most have no chimmy and if you had one next to you ,,you would hate it i know i;m in the middle of a crap load of them ... They do need a law that the chimmies are much taller to try to solve the problem
Then I remembered the neighbor with the woodstove. A cheap Yankee, he learned he could save money on trash collection by burning his rubbish in it. PVC bottles made clouds of yellowish grey heavier than air smoke that contained phosgene.
He stopped doing it, before I could leave him some Special Firewood. :-)
So, like everything else, it depends. If someone is burning CCA treated lumber, etc., they need to be stopped immediately.
I did have friends, however, who had a wood-fired baseboard furnace. They saved a lot of money, and no neighbors minded the rustic smell at all. There was one funny thing however regarding low stack temperatures...I was there once, and there were funny snowflake-like things that were falling in the yard, and a roaring sound. I ran outdoors to see a blue flame coming from the chimney that looked a lot like an upside-down Shuttle Launch. Creosote chimney fire.
You are on to something. Your right to fill the air will smoke and soot ends at the tip of my nose.
I remember the same thing in Colorado. That smoke was horrible. It does make going outside unbearable.
Don’t tell the people of Newfoundland that! They cut wood all summer for burning in the winter.
17 posts and no one has gotten to the root of all this and put the blame where it belongs, at the feet of the enviro-nazis.
If the enviro-nazis hadn’t prevented the drilling of domestic oil, all this wouldn’t be occurring.
That was enough incentive for us to convert it to gas and avoid the special fireplace tax.
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