Our heating costs dropped so significantly that the Gas company called, concerned that we weren't running our Natural Gas fired furnace and that we might need financial assistance.
We heated this way for many years after he died. I took up the responsibility of cutting down trees, splitting wood; and keeping the house warm. It is A LOT of work, but worth it if you have access to the trees/woodlots.
In the future (if this housing crisis ever ends), I will be adding a Rocket Mass Heater to my home. There is nothing in the world that compares to the feel of a roaring fire on a cold winter. One year the power went out in a very large geographic region that affected a large portion of the population. No electricity meant that no furnaces were running; so we had some elderly neighbors and family move in with us. They could have easily died without our wood-stove running. We even used it to cook on!
I'm guessing it's outside of the economic envelope in which people are burning wood anyways, but the article makes it sound like combusting at the "right" temperature essentially solves that problem. But I suppose at that point you might as well just burn something cleaner and retain the other advantageous parts of the design.
Of course, since each rmh is custom built, you need to actually test the exhaust of every one to ensure it works as intended.
Mine is pretty swell, albeit a tad annoying to keep going if we leave for a few days and the whole mass cools. With that said, it uses about 1/10th the wood of a new high efficiency wood stove we use in a different building.
RMHs are very interesting to me, but unfortunately due to their niche status, they're currently very hard to get insured.
(PS. I would love to see a picture of your RMH, is possible!)
Reading that article, I am curious as to why they say that rmh are less efficient than tile stoves. The exhaust temp on mine is around 130-150 degrees F- cooler than a fresh cup of coffee. And yet, I get pretty complete combustion- so all of the heat from the wood is captured inside my house.
I recently saw a claim that rmh can produce less CO2 for the same heat than gas furnaces, though that was just someone on the internet, I would definitely want more research to claim that.
There's no coal consumption to speak of. There's diesel fuel consumption, though that is largely concentrated on transport corridors (I-80, I-580, US-101).
Wildfire emissions all but certainly swamp woodstove usage.
That said, yes, a small number of poorly-tuned fireplaces can create a large amount of smoke. Where the intent is actual useful heating, and not fireplace-as-decoration, thats' a solvable problem.
Look on page 7
39% Wood Smoke 12 Cooking 12 Other Mobile Sources 12 Road Dust 7 On-Road Motor Vehicles 6 Combustion: Stationary Sources 5 Industrial/Commercial Processes 3 Construction and Farming Dust 2 Animal Waste 1 Wind-Blown Dust 1 Wildfires
Wildfires are basically non-existent in the winter, although the Colorado fire currently doesn't bode well for future California winters.
My understanding is that here in NYC the single largest (non-industrial?) source of air pollution is heating oil. The city banned the two worst heating oils back in 2015, but with a long phase-out period[1]. I would have expected the situation to be the same in most other cities, although SF's weather certainly doesn't justify oil burning the way NYC's does :-)
[1]: https://www.ny-engineers.com/blog/how-nyc-is-phasing-out-hea...