EPA Makes Most Wood Stoves Illegal

First time accepted submitter Jody Bruchon writes "The Environment Protection Agency has lowered the amount of fine-particle matter per cubic meter that new wood stoves are allowed to release into the atmosphere by 20%. Most wood stoves in use today are of the type that is now illegal to manufacture or sell, and old stoves traded in for credit towards new ones must be scrapped out. This shouldn't be much of a surprise since more and more local governments are banning wood-burning stoves and fireplaces entirely, citing smog and air pollution concerns."

Comments

Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[Bomarc]

I would love to know which gas / propane / electric company bought this rule....

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[blankinthefill]

Honestly, I don't think is was bought. Wood burning stoves are a huge, huge source of dangerous particulate pollutions in many states in the north, where there is not the option to use gas, and oil is too expensive for many families. Fairbanks, AK, a community of about 100,000k people, has some of the worst particulate pollution in the developed world because of the amount of woodburning that goes on there during the winter.

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not entirely against this rule, but I think it should be a local law not a national one. Someone in the middle of the city burning things is a pretty big asshole; someone living in a cabin in the woods isn't causing local problems and could possibly have circumstances that make the usage more understandable -- e.g., using wood that otherwise would go to waste, or using it as a back-up fuel source in case something goes wrong in the middle of winter.
 
Not to mention that the fairest thing would be to judge each person's energy usage rather than ban particular uses of energy. Piecemeal laws like this are why we end up with absurdities such as the government often giving "green" incentives to wasteful people because they waste through sheer mass of usage (e.g., having a gigantic home) while each particular element in the massive waste is efficient.

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[girlintraining]

I would love to know which gas / propane / electric company bought this rule....

Yeah it's another bullshit EPA rule. Did you know that there are cars that emit about half the pollutants into the atmosphere that current EPA-certified cars do by volume? But they're illegal to sell here because the percentage of certain emissions is too high. In other words, we could do less environmental damage per car with (some) imports, but they're illegal because they won't spend a fortune fitting rare-earth metal infested catalytic converters and other emissions systems that, in reality, don't help the environment much -- but they're super expensive and only a few companies sell them here.

Burning wood is a very efficient way to heat a home. A small home within the arctic circle can keep warming with just a few logs a day; A chord of wood can last them the entire winter; Which is maybe about half of what a single decently mature tree will yield. I used to live on a 30 acre plot of woods growing up in a rural area. We had a furnace to keep the pipes from freezing when we were away for long periods, but the house itself was the size of a barn and was poorly insulated. Even at that, we only needed about 8 logs a day to keep it nice and toasty at 80F. The roof almost never had snow on it unless it was fresh.

We'd go out in the winter with out little plastic sleds (I was 12) and I'd haul down about 20 logs at a time to the truck and load it up... Then help cut it up and leave it out on a tarp to dry in the sun. Two, maybe three dead trees in the winter was all we needed to keep our massive and poorly insulated house cooking all winter. And up here in the northern midwest of the United States, we're at the same latitude as Moscow. It gets cold.

By comparison, to heat our house with propane, we'd need to fill our giant tank up about 5 times during the winter, at the cost of a few thousand dollars. As opposed to the gas and oil for the chainsaw... which cost about $20, and the excercise, which I suppose you could say was paid for in pancakes.

You think about that for a minute now -- all the pollutants we have to burn off, all the electricity we spend, all the labor, and all the extra pollution from transporting it all over the country, to get that propane into the tank... as opposed to just going outside, walking a few hundred feet, and going chop-chop. Those few acres of woods could provide for about ten homes' worth of nearly free heat, and the only pollutant would be carbon. Now think of the average forest fire in California; Think of the hundreds of thousands of trees that go up in flames. California could provide heat for next to nothing to all those homes up along the mountains and keep the ferocity of those forest fires down, by logging the dead trees. Not clear-cut logging like the environmentalists like to showcase... but just the dead trees; Move in on foot, haul them out on sleds.

But they'd rather you buy the dry heat from a propane or natural gas tap... because it's more environmentally friendly?

Dude, if you believe that bullshit cover story, you're smoking the cheap $3 crack. Raw oil comes to us on supertankers, and there are no environmental restrictions on the oil those things burn. They are so dirty you can't bring them up-wind less than fifty miles of a major city because you'd have people hospitalized for asthma attacks. A significant portion of our environmental pollution is from these supertankers, powered by the most unrefined, shitty oil you can imagine... it's black like the night and you can see chunks of particulate floating in the tanks, so big you can grab them with your bare hands.

Environmentalism is a joke... it's just an excuse to let some people get rich at the expense of the rest of us, while making some appeal to the planet that'll fend off the opposition.

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[girlintraining]

Footnote: The type of stove we used was a very primitive double-barrel wood stove. It's exactly as the name implies; It's just two barrels stacked, with a pipe between them, and a stack out the top. You start a fire in the bottom one. It was a beautiful thing to stand next to growing up -- back of it would actually glow a faint and deep red... it would radiate heat out fifty feet in every direction. I used to stand there first thing in the morning and cook my backside and legs red just soaking in that delicious heat before I had to go to school. You could throw your sopping-wet snow pants on the top barrel, and in two minutes pull it off and it'd be dry as a bone.. and on fire if you weren't careful. God I loved that thing. Made walking a mile through the snow-covered trail that led to the county road where the bus picked us up every morning (at 6:30am) in the winter bearable. And no, it wasn't up hill both ways, but the wind would cut through any kind of clothing like razors. I'd stand up against a tree to shelter myself until the bus was in sight. I lived in a county where one day the wind chill was reported at -80, but there was no snow fall... so the governor declared the schools would remain open. They had to call a special session of the legislature to override him: Apparently having kids freeze to death in as little as 15 minutes wasn't so cool with them. The new law? -50. And people joke about it being cold in Russia... fuck. They got nothing on the northern Midwest.

On a totally unrelated note, there is one small problem with wood stoves we had; The dog. Damn thing loved the heat it pumped out, but it would go a-wagging it's tail and catch fire. If you've ever smelled burnt dog, then you know the smell of burning wood is heavenly by comparison. Cats at least are smart enough to only catch fire once or twice. Damn dog though... every other week it was flaming lab! Yeesh. #countrybumpkinproblems

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[adolf]

As long as we're generalizing with wild assertions:

You know what else takes about 10 years off your life expectancy?

Slaving away at a stressful job that you don't have your heart in during the winter months, largely just to make money to pay someone far away to refine/convert/combust some manner of fossil fuel into "natural gas" or "electricity..." just to stay warm for the few hours a day that you actually get to be at home.

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[FlyHelicopters]

Here is another way to think about it...

Lets say we live next to each other, lets say that you are struggling and have little money. For whatever reason, the only way to earn money that you have right now is to accept barrels of toxic chemicals and store them on your property (the chemical company pays you for this).

Now lets say one or two start leaking and it starts to affect the health of my family.

It strikes me as reasonable to ask the government to step in and tell you that you can't have such things on your property because it affects me.

Why the government? Because my other option (if we remove government) is to come over to your house and shoot you. I don't think we want to live in THAT world.

So back to government. The government (local, state, federal, whatever) passes a law that says you can't store toxic chemicals in your backyard.

You complain saying that this is hurting you, you have no other money and this is your only way to survive. Fine, but your right to make money and survive doesn't give you the right to screw up the environment around you and harm others, you'll have to figure something else out.

Otherwise, people like me will hire our government (via our tax dollars) to send some people over and make you stop. Because we don't want you to do what you're doing because it harms us.

Just food for thought...

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[FlyHelicopters]

What is so insane about that is that I actually agree, but I'd do it another way...

Lots of people who need to replace this old stuff don't need a tax break, they don't pay enough in taxes (the kind that you can use such breaks for anyway) to make it help.

I would provide low interest loans, secured by a lien against the house, for people to buy such things. Many people can't get credit, or it is very expensive, but if the goal is to get people to replace old and very inefficient appliances, HVAC systems, etc. then instead of tax breaks, provide the money in the form of a loan.

Frankly, most people replacing a 20 year old HVAC system with a new 16 SEER unit would probably find that a 10 year low interest loan would cost the same or less than the reduction in their monthly electric bill, making it a "free" upgrade.

Huge benefit to society, creates jobs, lowers our energy use, saves people money.

Win-Win-Win

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[Anonymous Coward]

We need the EPA. We just need to put people in charge there that have a clue. That, of course, would take a government that had a clue. Sadly........

No, we don't need the EPA. We need the legislative branch to stop ceding its responsibilities to the executive. Where laws are required, they must come from the legislature, not random executive departments gone haywire.

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[JaiWing]

It also looks like this has become a minor right-wing cause. Jack-booted thugs coming to take away your wood-burning stoves, and all that.

The right wing tends to be against regulation that erodes personal freedoms. This particular rule may or may not be a good idea, but the healthy thing for society is to look at all new regulation with a healthy dose of skepticism and suspicion.

You have got to be joking. The same right-wing that is calling for anti-abortion law across all the state where they have uncontested power? The same right-wing that is taking away the right to vote in the same states?

That right wing?

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[FlyHelicopters]

Environmentalism isn't a joke, the fact is that there are cities in the world today that you can go to and they are so filled with smog that you can hardly breath. We had this problem back in the 60's and 70's, which is what created the EPA in the first place.

The issue isn't *you* and the single stove, it is 10 million people doing the same thing. Each small bit adds up to a large bit.

The thing is, burning wood is fine, if you have a modern stove that does it at the right temp, you use dried out wood, and you don't release so much crap into the air.

The EPA isn't saying you can't have a wood burning stove, they are just saying that you need one that doesn't suck.

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[joe_frisch]

I remember Los Angeles in 1980 and recently, The difference in pollution levels is stunning. I've also been to big Chinese cities and seen the pollution there. I don't know about each rule separately, but overall the emissions restrictions from the EPA have made a huge difference.

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[Dahamma]

Come on, give me a break. It's not all about instant death, it's more often about about quality of life.

A few years ago I inexplicably developed asthma in Northern California (I have never had a single allergy, etc in 40 years). The doctor said she had seen a huge number of the same cases due to major fires south of San Jose that year (so bad some days you could see a haze in the air 50+ miles away). And I have never had the symptoms since (well, actually - one time - hanging out in a bar in IL before they instituted the smoking ban... so it's pretty clear what triggers it...)

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[Karmashock]

In US politics, liberal means socialist or some weak form of socialism.

The term originally did mean freedom but the modern "liberal" parties are only liberal in their approach to SOME social issues. Homosexuality for example is something most "liberals" are liberal about. But when it comes to economic policy, environmental policy, health policy, safety policy, etc they are not actually liberal. If they were liberal then they'd let people make their own choices and not impose government restrictions and edicts on everything.

Do not confuse liberty with anarchy. Freedom does not mean no government at all. The difference is between consensual action and non-consensual action.

For example, if I point a gun at someone's head and tell them to give me something that is something the government has a right and responsibility to act upon. However, if I talk to someone and ask them for something and they consensually provide it, then the government has no right to influence that situation unless its willing to breach individual rights.

Political distinctions address... On the subject of wood burning stoves, I think it all boils down to population density and the frequency of use. Banning wood burning stoves indifferent to zoning, population density, and frequency of use is actually pretty irrational. Do you really care if some guy in the mountains is using a wood burning stove in his cabin? Its not an environmental problem. Furthermore, what if you have a city with 10 million people in it and five people use wood burning stoves. Also not an environmental problem. Etc.

So for this law to be rational it has to take all of that into consideration rather then just blanketly banning their use. Banning them entirely is actually a really bad idea for a few reasons. One, many people will simply not follow the law and there is no means to actually enforce it. You're not going to inspect kitchens in rural house holds. Which means you've created a law that will not be followed which will then undermine all other laws. You're making people feel comfortable breaking the law. Because once everyone breaks one law they become more comfortable breaking others. And the law increasingly loses moral authority. When that happens the law becomes not a matter of right or wrong but rather what you have the police to enforce. You lose community support. There is no moral stigma for violations. The second problem with this law is that it hurts people that aren't hurting anyone else. There are a lot of people in rural communities that need to use wood burning stoves. I have an uncle that lives in a cabin in the woods. The man heats his home and cooks his meals with a wood burning stove. He's in the middle of giant forest and has to keep brush clear of his property on a regular basis. That brush must be burned. Understand, if he doesn't burn it then nature will. The area goes through a burn phase as intervals naturally. And even if he didn't burn it, it would be impractical to mulch or dispose of otherwise. So its going to burn. If its going to burn one way or another, why not use the energy released to heat the home and cook food? Right?

Look, no one is arguing for wood burning stoves in Manhattan or something. But if you're in a rural community wood burning stoves are not a problem for the environment.

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[Bing Tsher E]

The part I thought was weird that was his purported only option without nanny government being there was to shoot his neighbor.

Must suck to live in his neighborhood.

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[FlyHelicopters]

Either the government will send people over to force the issue, or I could do it myself.

If you are doing something that I want stopped and you won't stop, my only two options are to pay the government (via taxes) to force the issue, or to force it myself.

The idea is that if someone wants to be difficult, sooner or later, someone (or multiple people) with guns will have to resolve the issue.

If two people disagree, and can just leave each other alone, fine. But if one side or the other decides that the current situation is not acceptable and the other side won't discuss it, then violence is the only remaining solution.

Works at the local level, works at the national level, we called them duels back in the day, when nations do it, we call them wars.

.........

BTW, if you missed the third option, which was to move, then you missed the whole point. I can't move, I live on Earth and have no where else to go. The pollution that humans have been doing for the past hundred years affects us all, I can't move far enough away to get away from it. You're my neighbor if you live next door, or 10,000 miles away.

Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?

[AmiMoJo]

I grew up in a house with a wood furnace, that house still has a wood furnace and not a single member of my family that either grew up or continues to live in that house has any kind of lung ailment. Hell, I run marathons.

Wow. You sound exactly like those people who say "I smoke 20 a day for 50 years and I'm fit as a fiddle". Lucky you, if it's true, but even so we are pretty sure cigarettes cause cancer now. The effects of particulate matter, especially PM2.5, are well understood. Denying the overwhelming scientific and medical evidence is just dumb. Sorry, but it is.

Note also that not all furnaces have been banned, just the ones that don't capture the particulate matter and vent it into the atmosphere. You can still buy good quality ones, just not the high pollution varieties.

Re: Good

[kwormwood]

Or maybe you see huge swaths of people in the northern states use them just to stay warm. Get out of you bubble much?

I don't know how to feel about this.

[blankinthefill]

I have lived in Fairbanks, Alaska, which has roughly 100,000 people in and around it, and is basically isolated other than that. During the winter, particulate pollution is insanely bad, and even worse when you consider how small the city is. This is due, mainly, to the amount of wood burning stoves that are used to heat houses. Now, it's exacerbated by the valley that the town is in and the extreme cold, but most of it's terribleness comes from the wood burning in the area. After seeing that, I want to support stronger regulations or even bans on wood burning. On the other hand, many of the people in Fairbanks that burn wood do so because it's the cheapest method they can use to heat their houses, and they can't afford other methods (natural gas is not available in Fairbanks for heating, or at least not cheaply). I don't know what they're supposed to do if these regulations increase the cost associated with wood burning very much... not heating your house when it's -50 out is just not an option.

Re:I don't know how to feel about this.

[nctritech]

That's one major reason I wanted to bring this story here. Poor choices regarding the regulation of wood stoves can (as those regulations squeeze the availability of these stoves) result in deaths, especially since manufacturing repair parts for "illegal" stoves is a consequence of "you can't manufacture these stoves."

It's not like people use wood stoves to drive the kids to school; they're mostly used to avoid the hazards of freezing temperatures in the winter. Frostbite and hypothermia aren't commonly seen as positive outcomes of government regulations.

Re: Good

[murdocj]

Apparently not. He doesn't know that I can pay $1,000 for a tank of oil... or $200 for a cord of wood. And the cord of wood heats better. Turn the heat down? Yeah, I tried that... and the guy who came to repair my pipes pointed out that up north, water freezes when it gets below 32F.

Not that big of a deal...

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who lives in a rural area and burns wood as a secondary heat source (oil is primary), I think this may be getting blown out of proportion. For years they've been driving up efficiency of wood-stoves, and most stoves on the market today probably already meet the new standards. Looking at the list, the (non-catalytic) stove I bought 8 years ago (to replace a 30% efficiency old stove) will still be legal to sell under the new rules. I do find the practice of banning the use of existing stoves terrible, but driving up the efficiency of stoves is a good thing, and my current stove produces much more heat than the stove it replaced.

Re:Not that big of a deal...

[Dare nMc]

Epa has a article on the site, it says you need heat, time, turbulence, air. At 1100 to 1500 f range with sufficient oxygen, for 3 seconds you should get only co2 and water. Or a secondary burn, that re lights the escaping smoke. http://www.epa.gov/burnwise/workshop2011/WoodCombustion-Curkeet.pdf

Re:Not that big of a deal...

[Mr. Slippery]

As someone who lives in a rural area and burns wood as a secondary heat source (oil is primary), I think this may be getting blown out of proportion.

An overblown story on a website with headlines like "How To Turn Your Home Into A Fortress!" and "Obama Ex-Bodyguard Says Scandals 'Worse Than People Know'"? An overblown story based on an editorial from the Washington Times? An overblown story that defends woodsmoke air pollution by saying it's not as bad as being in a car with a cigarette smoker? Impossible!

Seriously, this article screams "CRANK!". Actual fact: EPA tightens pollution regulations on new wood stoves. Crank interpretation: Obama wants people to freeze to death.

Re:Good

[FlyHelicopters]

That's just it... burning wood for heat is fine, so long as it is a clean heating unit that burns wood at the right temp so that it doesn't release as much into the air and actually uses most of the heat for the home.

But isn't that what the EPA is saying? You can have your wood burning stove, so long as it isn't a crappy one.

Just like 10 SEER AC units used to be legal, now they are not, 13 is the minimum. Frankly it should be higher, the cost to go from a 13 SEER to a 16 SEER isn't that much, this past summer our downstairs AC unit went out, compressor failed. We replaced both units (upstairs and downstairs) with new 16 SEER dual stage units and our AC bill went down 30%.

The price difference between the 13 and 16 SEER units? Total of about $4000, that will be paid back in less than 2 years with the power savings (our old units were 13 SEER models).

Re: Good

[grub]

up north, water freezes when it gets below 32F.

Come to Canada, this far north water freezes at 0C!

Re: Good

[chmod a x mojo]

Bah. Wisconsin might not be as far north but our water freezes at 273.15k!

Re: Good

[BrookHarty]

As a Washington State resident, there are many counties that are wood only heating. Pierce and Tacoma have large suburbs and are not exactly off the grid living. They are bigger and can force the smaller population to upgrade. The counties like Stevens, Ferry and Okanogan are mostly wood heated homes. I have no real numbers but out of the 39 counties in Washington, I'd say at least 1/2 have majority of wood only heated homes, we still are a big wild state.

My mothers county has many people that are wood only, and if they went around giving $1000 dollar fines for people burning, they would tar and feather and hold a recall election. Those urban counties are gray haired monsters who know each other and would put pressure to any elected official.

Those poor gray haired women are the Majority of voters, tell them they cant heat their homes. Most of these people live in urban areas that dont have fire departments, police or or trash pick up. Tacoma I'd say is much different, its urban sprawl.

Re:Good

[bzipitidoo]

The kinds of stoves and fireplaces that the EPA is banning are the bullcrap kinds that builders put in new homes. These are not serious devices for heating homes, they are purely entertainment, so people can watch the pretty flames. Some fireplaces are so poor that they actually have negative efficiency. The house would stay warmer if the fireplace was not used.

Most people don't understand how bad a typical fireplace is. They're hung up on the romance of it. People don't remember what it was like 100 years ago, before we had central heating and A/C. Heating a home with a wood burning iron stove in the kitchen and fireplaces in half the rooms was hugely labor intensive. Takes a lot of wood to keep all that going. Have to gather wood and chop it into small pieces. Have to clean the ashes out regularly, and check on the fires frequently, make sure they are under control. There's nothing romantic about all that labor to those who lived that way. They were glad to be done with fires when alternatives became available. And fire is dangerous. An accident can easily burn the house down. Burns from accidentally brushing against the stove were another danger. Finally, they don't heat a house that well. Heat doesn't circulate that readily. The iron stove can keep the kitchen too hot while the bedrooms remain freezing cold.

local and state issue

[stenvar]

Honestly, I don't think is was bought. Wood burning stoves are a huge, huge source of dangerous particulate pollutions in many states in the north

The effects of this are local, not national. Northern states and towns should be able to make these tradeoffs locally. There is no reason for the federal government setting rules or the entire nation.

here's some facts to chew on.

[noh8rz10]

This is the worst summary ever. Here's the real situation:
* EPA is tightening existing standards for new wood stoves. Wood stove makers will adopt new control technology to meet these standards.
* these standards do NOT apply to stoves already in use
* they're NOT making it illegal to burn wood

nobody's trying to tear your wood stove from your cold dead hands. simmer down, internet.

Re:Burning down the house

[Anonymous Coward]

it's ok to dump carbon into the atmosphere, and fuck up the planet for everyone?

Any carbon you release from burning wood is only there because the tree sequestered it when it was growing. For most trees that's probably somewhere in the region of 20-50 years. In geological & ecological terms that's nothing, and the net effect is no additional carbon dioxide.

The problem with burning fossil fuels is that it releases carbon that was sequestered millions of years ago over a period of hundreds of thousands of years; so what we're doing is very rapidly re-introducing a bunch of carbon dioxide that wasn't in the atmosphere for several million years. From a geological & ecological point of view, it looks like a net increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.