[woodruffw]

Purely out of curiosity (I've never permanently lived somewhere where woodburning stoves were essential for home heating): is this because people are over-burning wood to compensate for the slow warming-up time, or because the stoves themselves are inefficient, or something else?

[UI_at_80x24]

When I was young (~10 years old), we installed a wood-burning stove in the family-room of our house. My dad had a lot of family and friends who were farmers and were in constant need for tree removal.

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!

[Rendello]

It's very cool that you will be adding a rocket mass heater. They fascinate me endlessly (I've posted about them here before) and are what led me to read about masonry heaters. It's unfortunate that RMHs are so difficult to insure, but I hope that building one is in my future as well.

[apcragg]

The stoves just put off a lot of particulate pollution. Stoves don't completely combust the wood or do so at the wrong temperature which results in much more pollution than burning an equivalent energy amount gas.

[woodruffw]

That certainly makes sense; I've only ever used fireplaces and you can visibly see the particulate those emit.

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.

[zdragnar]

Look up rocket stoves, and rocket mass heaters. Properly built, they effectively produce only co2 and steam, even all carbon monoxide is consumed.

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.

[Rendello]

For anyone looking to compare masonry heaters with rocket mass heaters, this is a nice introduction: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/03/radiant-and-conducti...

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!)

[zdragnar]

Not mine, but what I based mine on:

https://youtu.be/8ptwncPImuo

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.

[s0rce]

You'd be surprised how common it is, the largest source of air pollution in the winter in the SF bay area is from people burning wood.

[dredmorbius]

What are the other major sources of air pollution / particulate pollution in the Bay Area?

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.

[s0rce]

See here for the other sources: https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/files/communications-and-outr...

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.

[woodruffw]

That is indeed very surprising!

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...

[s0rce]

I'm not sure how much heating oil use there is in California, seemed like most people without natural gas use either wood or propane.

[apcragg]

Less that its so common, more that a small percent of people cause all of that pollution. They usually convince themselves they are being environmentally friendly because "I just use the wood I already have from my land!!" And the rest of us suffer their refusal to use a modern heating source.

[maxerickson]

*recreationally