Smoke Haze over Melbourne ( 14 Jan 2020 )

In Denmark many want to ban wood burning stoves in residential areas, and i would not be surprised if a law is passed.
There are a total of 670.000 fireplaces in Denmark ( very few use gas fire places here most are wood burning )
Where i go house / dog sitting this weekend it is the only means of heat, hot water are made with a electric heater.
But most places the fireplace are just a luxurious thing which the house there don't really need, and i do understand it if the guy next door have it going all the time.

On the other hand there is about 80.000 oil burning house heaters left in the country, that's how my friend get his heat & hot water, these must be gone by 2050 they say.
About 60.000 houses here are heated with natural gas in a furnace instead of oil, i assume these will also have to be gone by 2050.

On the harbor in my birth town of Aarhus a new seawater to decentralized heat system have just been fired up, but so far just 1 unit in the room large enough to host 8 of them.

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All of your green are belong to us :LOL:
 
Hmmmm , greenhouse emission targets ... Guess they have gone out the window for 2019 / 2020 ...
Melbourne was the unhealthiest ( Air quality ) place on Earth last night . ( So the media Boffins claimed this morning )
 
So very sad to see all the damage going on there, even away from the fires themselves :( I wish I could do something to help.

Several US States have pollution regulations regards wood-burning stoves, I think in the form of using a catalyst to ensure more complete combustion of the emitted smoke. Fireplaces here are mostly left-overs from older homes or purpose-designed ones meant for gas logs instead of wood (but some can do both). It's well known that traditional fireplaces are terribly inefficient. "Pellet" stoves are gaining in popularity; those burn pre-sized compressed wood pellets and most are semi-self-feeding so you aren't so constantly adding fuel. Dump in a bag of pellets into the hopper and you're done for the day.The design of the pellets maximizes heat extraction when burned. So many people heat with wood here that they can't simply stop it as many of those places are too remote to access any other form of heating fuel.

Phil
 
It is a "art" to correctly use a wood burning stove / fireplace, its not just "cram wood in it and set fire to it"
Also here people will burn illegal stuff like impregnated wood and what have you, so the fumes coming out of the damn thing can be pretty nasty.
The cute little girl at the gas station have a pellet burning stove, but where i go house sitting this weekend it is a regular stove.

I totally get it as "SAW" say with people out in the sticks, when i had my house for the first year or 2 we had a oil burner for heating, but then we god on district heating, which is what heat most homes here.
But my house was just 11 KM outside the 2 largest town here, so this just prove the district heating are mostly around the larger cities.
And even in a little country like Denmark you can also get "out there" its just not as far out as in larger countries, and here those areas are getting depopulated fast.
Pellet burning furnaces are also not uncommon here, and with a auto stoker ASO it is pretty nifty way of getting your house heated and get warm water.
 
So many people heat with wood here that they can't simply stop it as many of those places are too remote to access any other form of heating fuel.
They can use electricity?

Most houses are connected to the electricity grid anyway so it is very cheap to install, and when the electricity is produced by renewable resources such as solar/wind/tide then it is completely green.

If I use electricity for heating then right now at midday (peak time for electricity use) it is 27% fossil fuel derived, last night when there was less demand it got down to 18%, it will be down to 0% at night in a couple of years, and that is the time our electric storage heaters charge themselves up with heat. We have been using electric storage heaters (storing heat created from electricity) in the UK for many decades to make use of cheap (unwanted) overnight electricity.
 
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Like many people in the mountainous rural area where I live I've been using a wood stove as my primary heat source to warm my home for decades. While it is a lot of hard work to heat with cordwood, it has many benefits and pleasures. For one thing it is much less costly to burn than fossil fuels and it is a sustainable, renewable energy source. In my case, my house is surrounded by thousands and thousands of acres of (primarily deciduous) forest. My property alone would produce many lifetimes worth of heating fuel for my home. Wood heat is also essentially carbon neutral. Whether you burn hardwood logs to heat your home or the logs rots on the forest floor, the same amount of carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere where it is eventually reabsorbed from the atmosphere via the process of photosynthesis. Unlike coal or oil, wood is part of the natural carbon cycle as it has been for millennia from burning (forest fires) or rotting. If coal and oil had been left in the ground for the same period of time the carbon overload in our atmosphere would not exist as it does today. Granted, if everyone, everywhere were to burn wood for heating (and cooking) there would be problems much as we see in some parts of the world where forests are stripped bare and the air is virtually unbreathable. Still, in some communities where forests are properly managed, wood is sustainably harvested and burning is done efficiently, it can be and is a very viable energy source.

Wood heat is not perfect by any means. It can release quite a lot of particulate matter into the air and the harvesting and transport of wood requires fossil fuels. Here in the US wood heating appliance (space and water) emission regulations have been phased in over a period of years (with some stricter ones now kicking in during 2020). There are both federal wood appliance emission regulations as well as (sometimes stricter) state requirements. Some of this is achieved with the use of catalytic converters and also with cleverly engineered burning schemes. The stove I use is controlled via bimetallic thermostat and it has secondary and tertiary smoke chambers. After smoke leaves the primary firebox, air is carefully introduced into the heated ancillary chambers where the heated gases and smoke reignite before leaving the stove and entering the chimney. I also have an oil furnace which I use for backup and during the off season when wood heat would otherwise be overkill. I also use propane to heat my studio, but that's another story.

Many people here are converting to the use of wood pellets. It is attractive because it is very convenient and it can be burned efficiently without having to pay much attention to what you are doing. One doesn't have to be bothered with selecting, seasoning, moving and stacking cordwood and it doesn't take much knowledge, experience or skill to run the appliance efficiently and safely. It is also less messy when it comes to dealing with bark chips or ash disposal.

I'm not a fan of wood pellets however. For one thing, wood pellets require a lot of fossil fuel to produce, far more than cutting and harvesting cord wood logs. Much of the efficiency you may gain by burning pellets is really being outsourced to a remote location. Another thing that is a deal breaker for me is that wood pellet stoves require electricity to operate. The stoves use electricity to continuously feed the pellets into the firebox and some of them also have built in fans to circulate the air.

Where I live, kind of out in the middle of nowhere, it is not uncommon for the power to go out periodically. Usually that's no big deal and the power is restored quickly but on some occasions due to extreme weather we have lost power for days at a time. We've had several winter ice storms over the years where I have been without power for as much as a week. During the last ice storm the electric meters were torn right off the side of my house! Thankfully, I have my wood stove to keep the house toasty warm during such disasters. I can even cook on the wood stove if need be. So, for me, my traditional wood stove is a vital survival tool when needed as I would be in dire circumstances without it. I also have an 8kW propane powered standby generator for when I need it but that source of electricity is impractical to run full time for extended periods of time, so during extended power outages I'll run it for several hours at a time, morning and evening to keep my freezer frozen, run my well pump to recharge my water tank, wash dishes and also to get a hot shower.
 
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I can even cook on the wood stove if need be. So, for me, my traditional wood stove is a vital survival tool when needed as I would be in dire circumstances without it. I also have an 8kW propane powered standby generator for when I need it but that source of electricity is impractical to run full time for extended periods of time, so during extended power outages I'll run it for several hours at a time, morning and evening to keep my freezer frozen, run my well pump to recharge my water tank, wash dishes and also to get a hot shower.
How do you heat the water? Using the wood stove? You could also use wood to power a steam engine for your electricity.

My parents used to use a stove for heat, cooking and hot water, and oil for lighting when there was no electricity, but they haven't lit the stove for years now, green electricity is so much easier!

Remember that all the coal started life as wood, if you don't use the wood from your forest then the CO2 is not necessarily released, it may end up permanently stored as coal given time and offset some of the other carbon that you cause to be released through transport, agriculture, manufacturing and other causes.
 
Yeah, the pellets are convenient, but got to be more costly on the CO2 footprint, also i hear you can get counterfeit / bad pellets that are not that good.
Before my sister left the father of her youngest girl they had a regular furnace they had to go stoke with regular wood, but after she left i hear he have switched over to pellets.
Both heat a huge water tank for in floor heating and radiators + hot water.

In Denmark you will find very very few homes that use the "American" way of heating ducting warm air around the house, the norm is to heat water instead and circulate that thru radiators.

If i was to build a house, it would also have a wood stove / fireplace, just cuz the prepper inside say it must have, i would also prefer to have a backup diesel generator and solar for main everyday power, maybe even a little "hobby" grade wind turbine with a 4 - 5 M DIA propeller on it.
But of course this will only happen if the lotto gods are kind to me tonight, the pot is large enough for me to get the hell out of "Dodge" and build a comfy little house in rural Australia if they will have me.
 
How do you heat the water? Using the wood stove? You could also use wood to power a steam engine for your electricity.

My parents used to use a stove for heat, cooking and hot water, and oil for lighting when there was no electricity, but they haven't lit the stove for years now, green electricity is so much easier!

Remember that all the coal started life as wood, if you don't use the wood from your forest then the CO2 is not necessarily released, it may end up permanently stored as coal given time and offset some of the other carbon that you cause to be released through transport, agriculture, manufacturing and other causes.

"Given time?" Coal has been in the ground for millions of years where it should remain. Leaving trees for millennia to turn into coal for the purpose of offsetting carbon is an absurdist, delusional fantasy. Coal is formed when dead plant matter decays into peat and is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. Coal originated in former wetlands, called coal forests, that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous and Permian times. Such conditions don't exist today even if we were willing to wait millions of years. Apparently, your goal with such a post is to manufacture another petty argument for the sake of arguing, as usual Nigel.

Green electricity is another delusional fantasy when it comes to residential heating in an extreme cold climate. As always, you assume everything outside your laughably elitist and unrealistic UK bubble either doesn't exist or is somehow worthy of your contempt.

And a steam engine to generate electricity? Really? :ROFLMAO:. Maybe I could run it on coal?

I use my 8KW propane generator to run an electric hot water heater reserved for the purpose. Within a short period of time I can heat 55 gallons of water to between 120ºF and 140ºF depending upon my needs. Everything is on transfer switches so I can direct my home generated power to where I may need it. (and to prevent it from entering the grid so as to not harm anyone working on the lines)
 
Green electricity is another delusional fantasy when it comes to residential heating in an extreme cold climate.
You will have to explain that one, seems to work fine here, maybe you need better insulation and triple glazing if you don't want to upgrade your power lines?

Of course your electricity is only half the power (voltage) of ours!
 
Yeah, the pellets are convenient, but got to be more costly on the CO2 footprint, also i hear you can get counterfeit / bad pellets that are not that good.
Before my sister left the father of her youngest girl they had a regular furnace they had to go stoke with regular wood, but after she left i hear he have switched over to pellets.
Both heat a huge water tank for in floor heating and radiators + hot water.

In Denmark you will find very very few homes that use the "American" way of heating ducting warm air around the house, the norm is to heat water instead and circulate that thru radiators.

If i was to build a house, it would also have a wood stove / fireplace, just cuz the prepper inside say it must have, i would also prefer to have a backup diesel generator and solar for main everyday power, maybe even a little "hobby" grade wind turbine with a 4 - 5 M DIA propeller on it.
But of course this will only happen if the lotto gods are kind to me tonight, the pot is large enough for me to get the hell out of "Dodge" and build a comfy little house in rural Australia if they will have me.

You are right that many American homes use forced air heating but water circulated radiators have been very popular going back to the early part of the 19th century. Today radiant heating is increasingly popular, where tubing is embedded in the floor and then covered with a layer of concrete. It is extremely effective and efficient. Some people heat the water with solar but other sources are also used.

If I were building a new house I would employ this method. As I live in a house built in the 1770s a different approach to heating is required.

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If you ever decide to install a generator somewhere I suggest avoiding diesel. Propane or natural gas is a much better way to go. Interestingly, locally, at a closed capped landfill site methane is extracted for electricity generation. And some local farm operations that have lots of cow manure as a methane resource use it to generate their own power.
 
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"Given time?" Coal has been in the ground for millions of years where it should remain. Leaving trees for millennia to turn into coal for the purpose of offsetting carbon is an absurdist, delusional fantasy. Coal is formed when dead plant matter decays into peat and is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. Coal originated in former wetlands, called coal forests, that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous and Permian times. Such conditions don't exist today...
Ireland still grows and uses a lot of peat, including to generate electricity, in the UK it has always been a renewable resource, but Ireland used it up in their electric generation far faster than it regrew and then it became a far more CO2 polluting source of electricity than coal. It certainly isn't the case that "Such conditions don't exist today".

 
Yeah i just love floor heating, we made that in the house too before my sister left the guy.
I was on concrete mixing and wheel barreling all day, just keep em coming so i did :) but most satisfying was putting up the new roof, i even got to put down a few shifts myself and i never tried that stuff.
Okay he soon after that tore it all down, but only to put black glazed tiles up, where as the first roof was the conventional brown tiles most Danish houses have. ( some times it is not funny to work with a perfectionist )
 
Ireland still grows and uses a lot of peat, including to generate electricity, in the UK it has always been a renewable resource, but Ireland used it up in their electric generation far faster than it regrew and then it became a far more CO2 polluting source of electricity than coal. It certainly isn't the case that "Such conditions don't exist today".


Well then, perhaps Ireland can wait for the right conditions to return so they can produce coal from their peat bogs, assuming there's still an Ireland by then, or a habitable planet? :rolleyes:

We too have peat bogs, as does Canada, but the mass tropical environments teeming with dense vegetation and subsequent geologic conditions that persisted for millions of years afterwards and gave us the world's coal reserves no longer exist.

But, of course, you know that.

How long do you plan on continuing with the sophism in this thread Nigel?
 
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Well then, perhaps Ireland can wait for the right conditions to return so they can produce coal from their peat bogs, assuming there's still an Ireland by then, or a habitable planet? :rolleyes:
They will probably want some global warming by then, since they will be located over the North Pole!
 
You will have to explain that one, seems to work fine here, maybe you need better insulation and triple glazing if you don't want to upgrade your power lines?

Of course your electricity is only half the power (voltage) of ours!

Seriously, Nigel? You know, your misguided air of British superiority and incessant disparagements towards all things American appear to be getting more clownish and asinine as time goes on.

You really believe our electric power is only half the voltage of yours as if it somehow doesn't match the "energy" or "potency" of 230 V UK electricity? And Americans (or Canadians) should feel embarrassed or ashamed of this somehow? Really?

The choice of supply voltage is due to historical reasons regarding engineering decisions made long ago, not optimization. The USA uses 110/120 Volts nominal simply because it is more versatile and because that is all that is required. There is no practical need to run small appliances, household lighting or electronics such as TVs and radios on higher voltages.

Nevertheless, FYI, ALL USA residences are supplied at the main breaker with 240V. These are three-wire, split-phase 240V systems which provide 240V that has a center-tapped neutral to give two 120V supplies which can then also supply 240V to loads connected between the two line wires. This way you can have a choice of 220/240V to supply large appliances such as electric kitchen ranges, 22V/240V electric clothes dryers or any other higher voltage requirment machines or tools. My studio and shop for example have two types of 220/240V outlets for when I require them but everything else is otherwise 110/120V by choice, not because "our electricity is only half the power". Good lord!

For a guy who always tries mightily to present himself as the smartest guy in the room you sure come across as a blatherskite.
 
You really believe our electric power is only half the voltage of yours as if it somehow doesn't match the "energy" or "potency" of 230 V UK electricity? And Americans (or Canadians) should feel embarrassed or ashamed of this somehow? Really?
Well twice the voltage gives half the transmission losses, which gets important when you are using a lot of power for heating. UK is 240 V single phase, or 480 V (415) for the 3 phase.

I was just considering that might be an explanation for your idea that "Green electricity is another delusional fantasy when it comes to residential heating in an extreme cold climate.". If that was not the explanation then maybe you could explain the real reason?
 
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