Would you rather look up into a tall wood than sit in a cathedral?

Or are you easily entertained by radiators?

Can you stare happily at a windy sky, a swirling stream or a blazing log fire?

Even allowing for emissions of CO2 in planting, harvesting, processing and transporting the firewood, replacing fossil fuel with wood fuel will typically reduce net CO2 emissions by over 90%!!

WOOD and WOOD STOVES

by Billy Backwoods.

If I were to spit upon the revered black stone in Mecca during the height of the annual pilgrimage, I would be slain on the spot by enraged pilgrims for daring to profane the sacred symbol of Islam. An Israeli soldier’s bullet in the back would be my deserved fate for scrawling graffiti upon the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. . . . Life would not be pleasant for me if I took a hammer to the Pietà in the Vatican, for we humans hold our creations dear, and we deal harshly with those who fail to share our reverence for old stone walls, meteorites, marble statues, icons, and architecture....

Yet each and every day, humans enter the most sacred and reverential cathedrals of the natural world - the redwood forests of northern California or the rain forests of Amazonia - and each and every day we profanely rape these great mysteries with chainsaws and bulldozers.

Paul Watson

“Give me a land of boughs in leaf, A land of trees that stand; Where trees are fallen, there is grief; I love no leafless land…”

A. E. Houseman

"What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another."

Mahatma Gandhi

One of the tribe asked the Indian chief,

Is it going to be a hard winter?

The chief said,

Go collect firewood and I'll consult the stars tonight and tell you.

Being new to the job and a 21st century type of guy the chief really hadn't a clue about the old ways, so the next day he phoned the local ranger station. They told him, Yes it looks bad, so he told his tribe to collect more fire wood every day for a week and he phoned again to see if there were any more predictions. Once again the ranger told him it looks like its going to be a really long, cold, bad winter so the chief gathered the tribe and told them they must go and collect as much firewood as possible

A few days later he phoned again and asked the same question only to be told that the weather for winter looks really terrible and it will last a really long time.

He asked the ranger how he could make such a prediction and what was it based on.

The ranger replied, It's the Indians. They're gathering fire wood like crazy !!

Trad.

121105: A trailer load of logs (£55), arrived from Ian at Kendal (lakelandcoppiceproducts - super website). The logs are well seasoned and a good mixture, nearly all hardwood and some quite big pieces too. For best burning these'll need to be mixed with a load (a campervan full), of softwood (rubbish), which six months or more ago I scrounged from a demolition site.

Carrying the logs today from the trailer in the alleyway to our backyard and then into the cellar has given me quite a lot more exercise than I'd normally take in a week.

<<<< About 2/3 of the logs stacked 2 deep in an alcove.

Background Chainsaw DON'T Firewood Fitting Lighting Links Wood types

The-Tree The-Tree The-Tree The-Tree

Kids for Forests

Background: Since 1991 I've shared four houses with six different wood-burning stoves, two stoves in each of them. The first stove was an elderly, but very handsome, Vermont Castings model with a boiler (which leaked and produced light brown bath water). The stove had been poorly maintained by the previous owner (and by me too for quite a while). A major service and many replacement parts improved it enormously, as did removal of the boiler (I'm told that stoves just do produce less space heat when a boiler is fitted, which must explain why relatively few of them are produced). Even if I could, I wouldn't get another Vermont and I can't find anyone who particularly recommends them.

The next stove was bought for a newly built extension to the same house when it was found that the otherwise very good builder, despite asking his old dad who'd also been a builder, had little if any idea of how to design and build a chimney. This stove was bought of necessity when the open fire persistently sent every last puff of smoke straight out into the living room-kitchen.

	In all these fireplaces there would originally have been one of these now very rare items, a "range". A Franco-Belge was the first stove bought for the next house. It was a big and hungry and very hot. As well as a front door it had a side opener, a wonderful idea and it allowed us to load in logs 50% longer than previously - that's 33% less sawing!

Then I got the fabulous Godin. I found it at an "antique" stall run by a woman who frequently holidays in France and brings back Francophilia (is there such a word?). I traded in a vaguely ornate basket grate against the Godin and paid about £150.

This fabulous coal burning stove burns logs very easily. It's probably my favourite and it's old and very effective. It's called Ancienne Maison and was made by Godin, God knows when, (but you're doing it again, etc.). The glass isn't glass, it's mica and you can still get the stuff. Don't you go stacking logs as close to the stove as they are in the photograph.

The fireplace area had a cast iron range fitted into it about 120 years ago when the house was new. I've never heard of anyone who managed to get a range out without badly damaging it. When we moved in, the three blocks of local sandstone now painted British Racing Green, were plastered over, invisible, (as I'm sure they were originally).

The opening had been filled by a marble tile and concrete brick monstrosity which looked very similar to a mortuary refrigerator. Inside it was one of those real flame open gas fires which quite remarkably, I'm told, all share the same qualities: they are both inefficient and ineffective.

Left behind at a previous house was a quite small, but very good cast iron Dovre stove with a fabulous amount of draught available through that slider above the glass, top right, which works like a screen wash, and also through the spinner control which you see set wide open, vertical, below the glass.

This stove has a riddler for shaking ash down through the grate and for breaking up coals which sometimes solidify into a block. Our riddler broke within 6 months. It's not unusual with this make, but we managed perfectly well without it.

Dovre are Norwegian. I didn't realise this when we got the stove otherwise I'd have shouted, "Get that product of a nation of whale-killers out of my house!". (That doesn't help to explain why there might also be Japanese products in the house). Anyway, the way in which we acquired this stove was rather unusual.

There had been a basketed open fire in the opening where the Dovre stove was fitted. Blazing away the open fire looked very good, but it was inefficient, (as are all open fires), and I'd bought some cheap coal which merrily threw sparks nine feet across the room and onto the settee and off-white carpet. Open fires draw vast amounts of air from within your house and take it up the chimney, but I remembered an advertisement I'd seen years before for a glass screen to cover the opening. This would let us keep our "open" fire.

John Spendlove got me one. It came from the US, (Utah?), via Gloucestershire. It was fairly easy to fit and it looked good - a metal frame with four glass panels which opened concertina-style and had an adjustable air vent below them. It should have been wonderful and yet it drew air into its vent, sent no heat into the room and in fact made our sitting room very much colder! After I'd had long arguments with the bloke in Gloucestershire it was posted back to him and John provided us with the Dovre stove free of charge. Contact John Spendlove.

Fitting: There are few, if any, homes into which stoves like ours can't be fitted, though I guess you'd have to be a bit careful if you were a tenant in a high-rise, but, some folks even have woodstoves in their campervans. Two recommended, but apparently skill-free, fitters once tried to rip me off when they absolutely refused payment on the day of fitting and then posted a bill to me for twice the estimated amount. I had asked for a quote and had been assured that their estimate was accurate. I did only pay them the estimated amount and I hope, for everyone's sake, that they've gone out of business, or at least stuck to plumbing (about which they probably know something).

Subsequently all our stove fitting has been done skillfully and tidily by my HETAS-approved friend, John Spendlove, (07736-064001). John: "I cover Furness, Ambleside, Sedbergh, Settle, Lancaster to Grange over Sands. I have been stove fitting and flue liner installing since 1985. The original installation was for myself. Stoves can be supplied by Ingleton Fires, 015242 41934 & by Bob Whittaker, 01524 32664".

Firewood: By judicious scrounging, good luck and hard work, or by sporadic bursts of very hard work, I very rarely buy any firewood. I have a small Stihl chainsaw and some helpful friends. [One very helpful friend who climbed trees like a monkey has injured his back (nothing to do with me!), and can no longer help out]. Between us we'd a useful amount of previous experience in commercial tree surgery and felling, both of which are potentially very dangerous activities.

Now that you might be thinking about it, I have planted hundreds and hundreds of native deciduous trees in Gloucestershire and in Powys. And I've been called a, "Murderer!", when cutting down six no longer even vaguely ornamental, 5ft high conifers in a Lancashire garden.

It's a very good feeling to go from this...........

...........to this.

Did you know that our country is amongst the least wooded in Europe?

Coppicing is sustainable farming of woodland, an ancient and 100% valid land use as the excellent Lakeland Coppice Products site shows..... If it's logs you're after you'd do well to visit and from there arrange to buy some first rate firewood, (and get free delivery within a 20-ish mile radius of Kendal, Cumbria, UK). If you're outside the area go to LogPile.co.uk. Firewood is generally bought by the "trailer load". There's not much alternative because it varies so much in density, seasoning, species, etc.

Update: On 040205 we moved house for the fourth time, brought the Godin with us and bought a new (I said I'd never do that), rolled steel (or that), stove, a Thornton Dale made in Pickering, North Yorks. It is utterly superb! Of course, we revved it up a little for this shot.

Firelighters? If I'm using one, I break it in half - it's more than enough. Leaner-meaner-greener.

201103: Climate Care is now funding an innovative new project in Bangladesh to reduce CO2 emissions by reducing unsustainable deforestation. Working with a local NGO (Intermediate Technology Development Group) Climate Care are funding a series of training courses in local villages to show people how to build energy efficient stoves from local materials. The stoves reduce fuel use by as much as 60% which means fewer greenhouse gases are emitted. Burning less wood also means less time and money spent in collecting it and improved air quality in people's homes. Part of the programme will encourage people to set up micro enterprises to sell stoves to others in the community, thereby ensuring the long term success of the project.

MUST HAVE! A GLOBAL BAN ON GM-TREES!!
Petition for the UN Forum on Forests

You're right, I don't properly understand it, but might there be a Pirsig-style, philosophy-type thing going on here, as if the woodstove is an older model Harley (needing some understanding and quite frequent attention), and the nuclear, gas or oil-sourced, out-of-sight-and-out-of-mind central heating is a soul-less BMW?

What do I do if I get lost in the forest?

Listen...listen...stand still.

The forest knows where you are.

You must let it find you.

Native American poet, David Wagner.

DON'T . and WHY

Don't buy a (new) stove that doesn't conform to all, (your local), anti-pollution regs.

It's irresponsible and selfish and illegal. Many stove fit catalytic converters similar to those in a car. They make stoves run more efficiently and discharge fewer pollutants into the atmosphere. A new woodstove with a catalytic converter is rated at nearly 76 percent efficiency. Other stove makers rely on "high tech" designs that are specially insulated and engineered to use airflow and secondary combustion to bring efficiency up and particulate emissions down. See a Choosing a Wood Burning Stove.

Don't fit a stove in any way which does not conform with local building regs.

It's irresponsible and selfish and illegal and might be dangerous.

Don't buy a stove for any less than you can afford.

The best ones are generally the most expensive, the most efficient and the least polluting.

Don't burn wood that's been treated with paint or any other chemicals.

It's irresponsible and selfish and harmful and illegal and might be dangerous.

Don't burn wood that hasn't been seasoned for two years!

That's what the stoves' manufacturers advise. Seasoning cannot be accelerated by placing logs to dry near to your stove. (And that's potentially dangerous anyway).

By burning wet or sappy logs you could start a very dangerous chimney-fire, or even a house-fire because moisture from unseasoned logs is very unlikely to get all the way up the chimney. It hangs around in the soot and forms a substance very similar to creosote!! Then it sits there just waiting for a spark to reach it.

Green wood contains up to 50 percent of its weight in water. The first stage of combustion involves bringing this mass of water up to its vaporization point. The energy expended in doing this does not heat your home. By cutting firewood a full year or more in advance you theoretically could halve the amount of wood required to heat your home. Buying or cutting and splitting two years' worth of fuel may take some up-front money and discipline, but it's an investment that pays for itself quickly in terms of effort and safety.

<<<< A woodstore outside our kitchen door. By late autumn there's generally much more nearby & in the cellar.

Near Annecy, France a stone built house with a generous roof overhang used as a convenient and effective place to store firewood.

Don't burn logs which, once split, are much bigger than "3 be 2".

I don't properly understand why this is, but it's scientific and it's true - you won't get as much heat from bigger logs.

Don't pay for firewood......... Joke!!!

But never even think about felling a large tree and don't even consider tree surgery unless you've been trained and / or had years of experience. You'll almost certainly make a right bloody mess of it and possibly put yourself and several other people in hospital. Or die. It's very dangerous.

Don't expect a fire to burn well in a house that's very well sealed against draughts, (unless you've an underfloor source).

A good fire needs a good draught from somewhere, although few houses are so tight that a healthy chimney can't pull enough air to run a heating appliance.

Don't be a stranger to your chimney sweep.

You could start a very dangerous chimney- or even house-fire because moisture is unlikely to get all the way up the chimney. It hangs around in the soot and forms a substance very similar to kerosene!! Then it sits there waiting for a spark to reach it.

Don't panic when the room gets too warm.

Keep your fire burning efficiently. Open the room door. If you're lucky with the location of your gas central heating system's thermostat, warm air will now go past it and switch it off the heating! The warm air will then start to warm the rest of your house, (quite quickly especially if you've remembered to close doors to rooms which are not in use). You'll be saving money and reducing your use of, and reliance upon, finite resources. Think biomass.

Don't allow your woodpile to get even slightly damp.

Many businesses still discard used pallets. These can serve as excellent platforms to get each and every precious stick up off the ground where it can dry. Keep stacks of wood separated so that air can flow easily through them. Avoid the temptation to pile row after row end to end, because wood in the centre will not have enough circulation to dry properly. If possible orientate your log pile with sunlight and prevailing winds working to your advantage. Avoid overhanging eaves and trees. Better still, build a big woodshed or use a garage or cellar to allow your firewood to continue drying throughout the winter.

Don't let your stove block up with ash.

On the next warm day let the fire burn out so that you can remove built up ash. In terms of heat output and creosote production, a small vigorous fire is more efficient than a large smouldering one.

Don't burn just any old species of wood.

Burning poplar or elm "in the old days" usually resulted in a pregnancy due to folks finding an alternative method of keeping warm. Some wood is so bad it's not worth having. And what does your supplier means by "seasoned"? A single season (i.e., one winter; not much drying time there) or a full year? And is it easy to split?

Here's a dreadful poem (by whom?) which can serve as a guide:

Beechwood fires are bright and clear

If the logs are kept a year.

Chestnut’s only good we say

If for long it’s laid away.

Make a fire of Elder tree –

Death within your house shall be.

But Ash new and Ash old

Is fit for Queen with crown of gold.

Birch and Fir logs burn too fast,

Blaze up bright and do not last.

It is by the Irish said

Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.

Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,

Even the very flames are cold.

But Ash green or Ash brown

Is fit for Queen with golden crown.

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,

Fills your eyes and makes you choke.

Applewood will scent your room

With an incense-like perfume.

Oaken logs if dry and old

Keep away the winter cold.

But Ash wet or Ash dry

A King can warm his slippers by.

Wood burning stoves are cheap to run. A tonne of wood has half the calorific value of a ton of coal. That means you need two tonnes of wood for the same heat output as you get from one tonne of coal. Two tonnes of good, hard, well seasoned hardwood typically cost less than half what you'd pay for one tonne of some types of smokeless fuel. Of course, if you have your own source of wood, then the cost drops even more.

Different woods have quite different characteristics when used as fuel. The harder and longer seasoned the wood, the better the heat value. Hardwood burns more slowly than soft, so you will need to refuel less frequently.

Type of Wood	Combustibility	Comment

Ash	Excellent	Burns well even if newly felled
Hawthorn	Excellent	High calorific value
Larch	Excellent	High calorific value. Some sparking
Oak	Excellent	If seasoned high calorific value
Beech	Good	Ideal for Woodburning Stoves
Cherry	Good	Season for 3 years
Chestnut	Good	Season for 3 years
Elm	Good	Ideal for Woodburning Stoves
Holly	Good	Excellent fuel
Apple	Good	Should be seasoned for at least 3 years
Pear	Good	Should be seasoned for at least 3 years
Pine	Good	Heavy resin - burns quickly
Fir	Good	Heavy resin - burns quickly
Yew	Good	High calorific value
Birch	Fair	High calorific value. Burns too quickly. Smells wonderful!
Poplar	Very Poor	Season at least 12 months
Willow	Very Poor	Season at least 12 months
Alder	Very Poor	Unsuitable as a fuel
		But Bruce writes: "I have only given my Alder one season to er. season - cut, logged and stacked under cover in Jan/Feb 2006 and being burnt now! I mentioned only one season, because all my sources on coppicing recommend two seasons seasoning, with a season referring to a summer season. Also, it is very important to cut the trees in winter when the sap is down and to log to final length immediately, as these will both speed seasoning. Another factor may be my woodshed which is very high, rain protected and very well ventilated - I think this is an important point for my westerly location where humidity is high and rain frequent.

LIGHTING IT, ETC.

Hold on........, What are you wearing?

A shirt, tee-shirt, blouse?

Go and put a jersey on!

Still cold?

OK, light the fire.

Firelighters (= paraffin = carbon), are very cheap, but they stink. If you do decide to use one, break it in half!

A little scrap paper and some thin dry kindling wood will start the fire adequately without any "chemical" help. The dried skins of citrus fruits make very effective firelighters, (though to get to you they'll have travelled a long way at environmental cost. They also over-acidify garden compost).

Use maximum draught.

When lighting, open wide every draught device and, if you can do so without allowing smoke into the room, leave the fire's door open half an inch. Leave the room door open too.

Never reduce the draught to the extent that logs, (or coals), are smouldering. You'll be operating at way below maximum efficiency and causing maximum pollution.

Before you put on any more logs, use more draught to "rev" the fire up AND DON'T reduce that draught until the fire is re-established.

Otherwise you'll be operating at way below maximum efficiency and causing avoidable pollution. If you can see any more than a hint of smoke from your chimney you're probably doing something wrong.

The Good Wood Guide

"The forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence that makes no demands for its sustenance and extends generously the products of its life and activity; it affords protection to all beings."

Buddhist Sutra

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