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Post by jonjel on Jan 20, 2019 18:27:23 GMT 1
I have a woodburner, and have burnt wood for many years. However we are now told that if the wood is not perfectly dry we will cause more pollution than if it is dry, resulting in everyone in my town dying a premature death.
Now why? The only addition will be water, so the chemical composition of the fuel has not changed?
(If dear Jean was still around I would say I was asking for a friend!)
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Post by mrsonde on Jan 22, 2019 10:52:11 GMT 1
I have a woodburner, and have burnt wood for many years. However we are now told that if the wood is not perfectly dry we will cause more pollution than if it is dry, resulting in everyone in my town dying a premature death. Now why? The only addition will be water, so the chemical composition of the fuel has not changed? We're faced with the same problem - or we were, a couple of years ago, when the Isle of Wight was making a bid to be the Greenest Place on the Planet, or some such fatuous nonsense. Since then the County Councillor and "Eco-Businessman" pushing this and other schemes through, at considerable cost to the taxpayer, needless to say, have been found guilty of all sorts of corruption charges, and are sitting in the stocks in the village square as we speak. Anyway, I gather the problem here is to do with the smoke produced. Green or wet wood produces more of it - more of the particulate pollutants - because it doesn't burn as hot. An inefficient wood-burner or an open fire does the same, and hence are likely to be outlawed. What we do is dry our wood around the woodburner for a few nights - maybe a week if it's completely green. I get most of it off the beach (not driftwood, but falling oak trees from the cliffs above, as they collapse from landslip) so this is necessary in any case. Our stove sits in the recess of the old fireplace, so this is easy enough. After a few nights it's perfectly dry, burns quick and hot, and hardly smokes at all.
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Post by mrsonde on Jan 22, 2019 11:07:20 GMT 1
A similar mystery: why does a microwaved cup of coffee or reheated cup of tea cool down faster than a fresh one from a boiling kettle? Physicists argue that's it's because the microwaved water doesn't roil throughout when it's boiled, so the heat is closer to the top of the mug. I've tried stirring it a few times as it boils, and I'm not convinced.
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Post by jonjel on Jan 22, 2019 11:50:21 GMT 1
I used to have felling rights in a nearby wood. I may for all I know still have them. I used to fell in the autumn/winter. It was mainly ash and we were effectively restoring very ancient coppice that had not been touched for over 40 years. We would burn the brash and stack the lengths of timber, then log them throughout the summer. I had an ancient petrol driven circular saw up there. Logs were then stacked at home, or indeed sold to nearby pubs, £30 and two pints per load! Two piles at home, so the wood I burnt was felled two years previously, dry and perfect.
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Post by mrsonde on Jan 22, 2019 16:44:55 GMT 1
Interesting - were you a tenant, or had ownership rights in some way? Years ago I looked into whether we had rights to take the wood from the beach in this way, just in case I was ever challenged (I never have been - on the contrary, usually people come up and say good on ya. I'm actually doing a good thing, because sometimes the tide can wash the trees downcoast towards Yarmouth, causing a serious danger to shipping.) Apparently, there's an old Anglo-Saxon right called "Estovers", which in common law still applies to common land for members of the parish - for fallen wood, at any rate. The only question would be whether I had a chainsaw licence, which you technically require for use on public land. i used to have one, 35 years or so ago, when I had a summer job working on a plantation in West Sussex, but I doubt that's still legitimate, even if I could find it. Luckily no one's ever enquired. I suppose you have to be quite ballsy to get nosily officious with a stranger using a chainsaw.
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