Coal fires are to be a thing of the past by 2023. I shall miss that smelllof coal fires that you still ocassionlly encounter . It reminds me of my childhood. I remember my mother telling me to count the sacks of coal as they were dumped into our coal bunker on case we were given short measure!
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51581817
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"Coal fires are to be a thing of the past by 2023....................."
Yes - my late coal-miner father would be turning in his urn if he heard this news. His main aim in his later years was to keep going as long as possible in order to carry on claiming his concessionary coal. I used to rib him, telling him that he was chiefly responsible for global warming. Coal, coal, coal, I even went to Coalville Grammar School.
The clean air act (1956) and subsequent legislation cleaned up the smoke and smog in our cities but I was taken back to the smells of my childhood whilst wandering through the hutongs of old Beijing back in January '98. It was -15 degrees, and the locals were burning coal-fired braziers in the streets. Breathe in that smell ........... ah - wonderful ....... well, no, not really!
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Oi Gov, I can do you some real coke, £200, good black stuff it is too, delivered in a van, no questions asked.
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I have a wood burner stove in my man-shed out the back. Love it and love the smelll from outside !
However saw on the news how much CO2 it gives off compared to a bus and a modern diesel car!
Scary, but will it stop me using it?
Na.....
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Is that just a laddish thing to say or do you really not give a sheet about the future of the world?
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I buy 2 cubic metres of 'wet' (green) hardwood logs every spring for £140.
I season them over summer in my south-facing log store, and they last me all through 'the black season'.
Kiln-dried hardwood logs would cost me c£300 = stuff that. I have a moisture meter so know 'what's going on'.
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I have a Morso Badger multi fuel stove....buy a builders size bag of seasoned hardwood every 2/3 years. I then stack it in my S facing wood store for at least 2 years before using, together with Wood I collect whilst out walking nearby.
When I come to use it it’s dry as a bone. My moisture meter tells me it’s well sub 20%. Is it that bad for the environment, which I do care about ?
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2 years is more than enuff - 'specially in a south-facing log store.
I must admit my logs do hiss when I start burning 'em, so they certainly aren't as dry as kiln dried jobbies.
But, I live in a rural spot with just one close neighb so I'll carry on as b4, like.
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I used kiln-dried birch from www.biohot.co.uk
So dry there's no need for kindling or firelighters.
Put 2 logs flat with one over the top, peel some bark and stuff it in the middle - light bark and off it goes.
The issue with logs is the smoke rather than CO2 output - I remember reading a study over 20 years ago that women in Pakistan who used green wood for heating/cooking in poorly ventilated homes had the equivalent risk of lung cancer as a 40-a-day smoker.
Smells good but certainly isn't good.
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The ban on green wood is as you say to do with carcinogens in the smoke rather than CO2 emissions. However the view that burning wood does not contribute to overall CO2 levels is rather dubious as it takes many years for replacement trees to grow. Drying the wood in a gas or oil fired kiln does of course make it even more dubious.
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>>However the view that burning wood does not contribute to overall CO2 levels is rather dubious
Totally.
Felling, processing, and transporting thousands of tonnes wood pellets from Canada to Drax is carbon neutral, honest guv :-)
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I use one of these instead of kindling - bung the logs on my 8kw Hunter Herald, stick the nozzle among the logs and, whee we have fire!
grenadier.co.uk/
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I'm amazed that a ferocious, free-standing device like this is legal. It needs constant supervision as it is quite easy to overturn by accident, say by a tripping person or frisky dog. The danger was acute with our Pither studio stove. This beast would only burn correctly with anthracite beans. Paper and sticks or firelighters would not burn hot enough to ignite them and the only way to get at them was through the fire bars, and an angle which meant that the Grenadier had to be perched at its highest and least stable. The blast was so intense I imagine it would have burnt the bars away in the end.
To make matters worse, the stove was so inefficient that the ashes were rich in unburnt fuel and were shovelled from it straight into an excellent Jotul strove in another room, for a second burning.
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>>I'm amazed that a ferocious, free-standing device like this is legal
Aw c'mon Rambo ... my wife occasionally uses ours as a hair dryer when she's in a hurry :)
But seriously, it's a wonder how our EU fiends haven't banned it.
I never take my eye off the thing when it's chucking out heat, which isn't very long with well-seasoned wood.
I have used it on anthracite, bleedin joke that was as it took yonks to catch.
Jotul you say - now you're talking!
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Coal is the product of several hundred million years accumulation of carbon - burning it does release excess stored CO2 into the atmosphere.
Wood is a renewable resource so the issue is not CO2 emissions providing we plant new wood to replace that which is being burnt.
However wet wood burns inefficiently, releases cancerous compounds, and coats chimneys and flues making combustion even less efficcient. You would be daft to use it!
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>>issue is not CO2 emissions providing we plant new wood to replace that which is being burnt
Because it magics from tree to fireplace and then disposal of the ashes without any energy requirement....
Even kiln drying ususally uses a percentage of the wood (I'd guess around 10% to reduce the water content) in the process of drying the remainder.
CO2 neutral it is not.
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Goodbye to coal - Haywain
