Wood and Coal Stove Advisory

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Beyond the cozy charm of a wood stove lies the practicality of an increasingly
needed heating source.

First-generation modern, airtight wood stoves were little but well-sealed boxes.

It wasn't long till the poorly welded steel plate, thin iron castings, and over-fired antiques warped or cracked, and those pretty, green box-heaters proved too small to heat a large, leaky American room, say nothing of a whole house.

But the wood-energy economy matured quickly. New homes were built to be as airtight and energy-efficient as the stoves that heated them, and older homes were caulked and weather sealed. A rash of wood-stove-caused house fires and a plague of cord-wood scalpers (countrymen coming in to bilk the city folks for a change) prompted states to tighten stove-installation regulations and legislate that an honest cord had to contain 128 cubic feet of wood. Self-taught stovewrights began reconditioning antiques to look and work as good as new. And the new-stove manufacturing industry responded to growing demand with bigger, better-built, more attractive, and more fuel-efficient stove designs.

Where There's Fire, There's Smoke

But, with the new popularity of wood burners came new problems. First-generation modern, airtight wood stoves were little but well-sealed boxes. In their most fuel-efficient mode, the gasketed door was shut tight and draft controls opened just enough to supply sufficient oxygen to keep wood smoldering for a long, relatively cold—and very smoky—burn. Some barely attained 50 percent efficiency, meaning that almost half the energy in the fuel was lost evaporating the wood's normal 20 percent moisture content and carrying thick, wet smoke up the chimney. Some of the water vapor and smoke solids condensed into black, sticky creosote that leaked from ill-fitting stovepipes and dried out in flues to threaten chimney fires. But most of it exited to contaminate the air.

The wood-smoke haze that lingers in areas of active air flow, such as my own New England hills, proved to accumulate like any smog does in Los Angeles-type inversion bowls and in river valleys, ocean coves, and stagnant-air zones. These areas include: Vail, Colorado; Portland, Oregon; and the towns and cities in the Connecticut River valley of Central New England. There the carbon dioxide and acidic, unburned hydrocarbons that are in smoke distilled from hundreds of oxygen-starved overnight fires, settles with the morning dew. This not only corrodes paint on cars and homes, but also burns trees and garden plants, and encourages human heart, lung, and nervous-system disorders. Many cities had to impose a ban on wood fires when conditions were right for wood smog.

The environmentalist/public-interest lobby responded with a vigorous series of lawsuits that spurred the Federal Environmental Protection Agency to impose nationwide wood-smoke limits. These were based on Federal air quality standard PM10, which limits the amount of under- 10-micron particulates in our air.

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