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Comment by adsteel_ | Hacker News Reader

My romantic views of wood smoke hit reality when I first camped in Canada's Banff-Jasper national parks, where you could buy unlimited firewood for the night for $5. Everyone bought it, it seemed. Trying to breathe downwind of a campground was a rude wakeup call. It should definitely be restricted in denser residential areas. I can't imagine some of the towns in Germany or Poland where residents depend on wood fires for heat.

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Where they depend on wood for heat they are more likely to have efficient stoves that completely burn the wood. Smoke coming out of the chimney is "firing for the crows" and wasting fuel.

People should just make better fires.

A good fire doesn't release much, if any smoke. It burns it up instead.

A good woodstove is worth the money.

People have romantic ideas about heating with fire and burn the most awful green wood in their fireplaces, stinking up the whole neighborhood. I understand burning bad wood because you have no options -- I witnessed a chimney fire or two as a kid that resulted from burning too much wet pine -- but I cannot fathom the mindset of someone who does it recreationally.

Meanwhile my neighbor is burning wood he stacked eight years ago.

Some of it precious, too. Like black walnut.

The stink remains even for efficient fires. Smoke is often correlated of course.

I'm in Christchurch, New Zealand which gets winter smog,. The city council enforces rules and woodburners need to meet strict emission standards. They regularly tighten the rules so that if you want a woodburner you need to replace it every 15 years or so.

But they do still smell.

The rules have radically improved the air quality here and we now get much less smog than when I was a kid.

Outright banning open fires and coal years ago made a big difference too.

I'm not sure what happens if you don't follow the rules. A neighbour can make a complaint and there will get taken seriously and I believe they have a van sometimes checking too. Although I've personally never heard of anyone actually getting caught.

>They regularly tighten the rules so that if you want a woodburner you need to replace it every 15 years or so.

What's that supposed to achieve? Also what do you do if you build your own woodburner/fireplace?

No one is forcing you to get/build one that doesn't far exceed the current regulations to the point where it is expected to exceed them until the end of its useful lifespan.

What do you mean? A fireplace can last far far longer than that timespan and it's efficiency is not tied to it's age.

If you don't want to replace it after 15 years, buy one that will pass emissions for the next 30 years.

And the certification will cost almost nothing and take into account everything i presume? Or will it center around the ones you can buy in a shop of the shelf like most regulation and be ridiculously prohibitive for everyone that goes off the beaten path?

It achieves cleaner air, which I personally like, and which is especially great for anyone with lung problems like asthmatics.

I suspect part of the rule tightening is to slowly squeeze to get rid of fires altogether (the outcome with the cleanest air).

> what do you do if you build your own woodburner/fireplace?

You couldn't afford to do it legally (I expect emissions testing is expensive). I don't know what the penalties are for illegal woodburners/fireplaces. My personal experience is that it isn't enforced. I'd guess penalties can be avoided unless you're a repeat offender with a complaining neighbour.

Note that outdoor braziers are legal AFAIK. Although Outdoor fires have some restrictions - especially if very dry and high fire risk.

Firewood is not cheap for heating. Even if you have free trees then it costs a lot of time (in my experience) and often equipment or transport is expensive too.

Here's some historical data that shows very significant improvement over 25 years: https://www.ecan.govt.nz/your-region/your-environment/air-qu...

The smog was horrific before 2000 when those statistics start. Apparently low air quality was implicated in many deaths per year here.

>You couldn't afford to do it legally (I expect emissions testing is expensive).

An honest answer at least and something i hope we don't see here. But I think similar legislation is going to become common trough the EU (something is already on the books i believe) and is already a thing in Germany.

It's silly too in a time when most still heat with fossil fuels, pumping up more and more that could be avoided and i can build a fireplace with outside air intake or get a damn near ancient finish masonry heater that's far more efficient than anything one can get at the store.

>Firewood is not cheap for heating. Even if you have free trees then it costs a lot of time (in my experience) and often equipment or transport is expensive too.

I live in Western Europe but it's been cheap. If I counted up the time invested and compared it to equivalent time worked for money to spend on other heating with fossil fuels then it comes out far far cheaper. Even if i add some egregious estimates for the cost of a chainsaw, trailer and wheelbarrow it's still only a fraction of the cost.

> when most still heat with fossil fuels

Christchurch doesn't use much fossil fuels. Coal, Coal gas[1], Coke, and LPG were used in the past for home heating. Electricity generation can come from coal when hydro lakes get dry. Utility Solar will replace that usage.

I use firewood for heating when I'm using the living area but I'm not sure I'd replace the current woodburner. I currently use gas for hot water for showers but LPG is getting more expensive so when the gas califont fails it will be replaced with electric heating.

I have access to free trees, but I've been slowly finding that my "free" firewood is expensive (because I value my time highly). I'm not sure how to account for the risks of hurting myself, or the benefits of exercise!

We had a massive problem with smog, and although the regulations definitely have some bad side effects, the regulations have worked.

[1] https://www.engineeringnz.org/programmes/heritage/heritage-r...

We have a very nice Jotul stove that we use occasionally during winter to supplement our minisplits (e.g. when it drops to -10C or colder overnight). I've been told it's one of the best wood stoves you can buy.

But we burn Siberian Elm wood that grows (and dies) on our property, and even when the stove is working at its best ... jeez, I feel embarrassed for how much we stink up the neighborhood. Burning elm wood is just inherently nasty in terms of the smell.

It's particularly embarrassing because a lot of neighbors use pinon in their stoves and that makes parts of the village basically like walking into a cafe with the best smelling chili you've ever eaten (while remaining outside!).

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