Thank you for collating those articles.Originally Posted by Kingstepper
I have now ordered a PM2.5 detector/meter to ascertain the extent of the issue in our house.
Articles written by journalists aren’t exactly credible, the Chris Whitty statement was about burning wet wood!
Before I bought my wood burner I asked some people I do some work for who are world renowned experts in particle analysis, I was told not to worry provided I use it correctly, I’ll take their word for it https://www.cambustion.com/company/about I was also told that by far one of the largest sources of atmospheric particulates was from vehicle tyres,
I was merely posting to disprove Bravo's claim that such articles were only found in the Guardian.
.
Would the use of a hepa filter machine help combat the additional dust particles?
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Ive got one, it peaks when i light as the doors slightly open but drops to acceptable levels when burning. Again if i open to add more logs it'll go up but then drop again well below. Other things also put up the levels also like cooking some stuff in the pan.
All wood under 20% moisture is fine !
And i am sure over this is fine as well
Well i am happy anyway
Not to supply it isn't but you can burn what you want, straight out the hedgerow if you feel like it but good luck not knackering up your fire
Well, that has certainly been a very interesting (ongoing) exercise.
I did a bit of Googling and ended up buying one of these:
https://www.temtop.co.uk/products/m10i
According to those articles (and obviously the research behind the majority of them), the most dangerous elements of wood smoke are PM2.5 particles (measured in ug/m3). The important thresholds are 12ug/m3 and 35ug/m3. Levels below 12ug/m3 are considered safe whilst 12-35ug/m3 are considered ‘moderate’. Anything above 35 can be considered unsafe. Levels about 250 are ‘hazardous’.
We have 2 log burners in our house, both burning kiln dried or seasoned hardwood. Once is a modern, closed log burner whilst the other is an older, open door ‘Franklin style’ burner. The ambient PM2.5 levels in our house are 1-2ug/m3.
I tried out the detector on the modern, closed log burner with the detector placed about 2m away from the burner whilst I lit it and got it up to operating temperature. Once it was lit, I probably opened the door 3 or 4 times to feed it. Throughout this time, the detector read 2-3ug/m3. Even when the door was opened, there was no discernible spike in the PM2.5 levels.
With the open fire, this also showed similar levels of about 2-3ug/m3 until about 20 mins after lighting. The level then spiked up to 25ug/m3 where it stayed for a few minutes. Then, over the next 20 minutes or so, (whilst I was still feeding the fire as normal), the level steadily decreased to 10ug/m3.
So, although I have only had the monitor a couple of weeks and it is obviously a very small sample size so far, my experience does not correlate with those newspaper articles at all. Especially not the frankly sensationalist Grauniad ones. I will continue to use the monitor and report back if it starts showing a different pattern.
(Interestingly, when the fire(s) aren’t lit, the monitor tends to live in the kitchen where it charges. Whilst cooking supper, the PM2.5 levels are normally constantly above 30ug/m3. One night, with something cooking on the hob, it spiked up to 240ug/m3 but my personal record so far is cooking a couple of steaks on the griddle: 950ug/m3!!! I await with bated breath the swathe of Grauniad articles about how dangerous cooking is for our health).
Well done, interesting, curious to know your long term results
Likewise, a very useful contribution. I have a CO monitor in the lounge but it’s an ugly thing. The linked bit of tech looked quite good, but SWMBO says no!
What’s the Grauniad?
A twee name for one of the few non-tory newspapers in the UK
The Guardian.
Alludes to some period of bad proof reading or something.
I thought it might refer to the Guardian but couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t just write ‘Guardian’
Very good info about the PM meter! Thanks for that.
M.
For the same reason that many things in life have nicknames. Readers of Private Eye will relate to this.
Had the wood burner installed on Friday, game changer.
Now stocked up for a few weeks, hopefully.
Anyone advise on good wood storages box?
Looking for something like this?
https://www.sheds.co.uk/adley-pressu...xoCBegQAvD_BwE
Looks like a great price for the log store, unless you've got a few pallets and are handy with a hammer id be buying that one tbh
This is how I store the wood inside the house, outside I built a wood store
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Consider/measure this season how much you burn (m3). A full season is about 2x what you’ll burn now, until Spring. From there you can decide how large the shed should be. Ikea-style sheds are good. I built one from garden wood, inspired by pics of a shed built by a fellow forumite.
Had the wood burner installed on Friday, game changer.
Now stocked up for a few weeks, hopefully.
Anyone advise on good wood storages box?
Looking for something like this?
https://www.sheds.co.uk/adley-pressu...xoCBegQAvD_BwE
Storing wood inside the house: I store as LITTLE AS POSSIBLE inside. Basically, what’s in the house gets burned the same day. Some blocks contain wood worms etc. The in-house ambient temps wake these critters… First time I heard that was 23 yrs ago when we wanted to buy a house. A chartered surveyor asked the seller about his wood storage system inside the house. And hey presto! The floor planks under storage had the well-known small pin-sized holes. We didn’t buy it.
Fast forward this winter. A sailing buddy with a large in-house wood storage found wood wurms in the window frames of his home, close to the storage! It reminded me of the story 25 yrs ago.
Interesting about the woodworms, our wood is kiln dried, I doubt they will have survived that
That may help. My burners’ wood is air-dryed in the shed.
Any update on this?
Not really, TBH, apart from ‘more of the same’ really. Both fires still seem to having a negligible effect on PM2.5 levels in the house.
Cooking, on the other hand, (and particularly, pan frying) is having a significant effect on PM2.5 levels. The level often shoots up into the hundreds of ug/m3 (my new record for steaks has topped out at 999ug/m3!) and the residual PM2.5 level on the ground floor of the entire house will normally stay above 30ug/m3 for the rest of the evening. (And that is even with the back door open and the extractor fan on full).
Interesting. Is your conclusion that the Guardian articles were scare mongers?
I wouldn’t necessarily say that the Guardian are scare mongering. They would argue that they are just reporting the scientists’ findings.
However, I would definitely say that there is an agenda at play. This is from one of the multiple articles that they have published over the recent past:
“Just 8% of the population cause this pollution by burning wood indoors, according to a separate government-commissioned report. It found almost half of those burning indoors were affluent and many chose a fire for aesthetic reasons, rather than heat.”
(From https://amp.theguardian.com/environm...ollution-fires).
However, their Letters section does provide a element of balance (and shows that my experience isn’t unique):
https://amp.theguardian.com/environm...-further-study
“I purchased a £200 air quality monitor, convinced that it would confirm that there was a problem with PM2.5 levels. I was therefore astonished to discover that our wood burner had no effect on PM2.5 levels, even when the door was opened for refuelling. For reference, I lit a match and the PM2.5 level shot up to 165 micrograms per cubic metre.”
I just store my wood in the garage…. 3 ton bags to get though - £80 a bag now!
Maybe I should have put some bars on the floor to raise them a little ?
Couple of lengths of wood maybe or a pallet ?, If they are dry shouldn't be too much of a problem though
It’ll be fine now. Small chance that the lowest row of logs will contain more moisture.
Just burn this, take out the lowest row and put down a cut-up pallet. Store the 2023/24 supply and put the prementioned ‘lowest row’ on top op the new bunch. It will dry quickly.
Gotcha!
I just hope no one tries to open the door
I have ordered the meter you referenced above and will report my findings.
Well I’ve run the M10i meter for a bit now and our meter is reading an ambient of 2-4.
If I run the burner all evening and open the doors to feed it it gets up to 7-8. Still well in the safe region.
The highest I’ve seen in the house has been 30 when next door had a stinky bonfire on Saturday.
If I took it outside at that point it when up to 180
Took a day for the house to get back to 2 from his bonfire.
Been and interesting exercise. I think the people in those Guardian articles must have been burning wet wood.
Meter seem a decent product but the battery life is very poor.
Last edited by Montello; 30th January 2023 at 11:48.
Thanks for this!
Lots of people complain about their neighbours having a wood burner: they smell it etc. I would be interested to know what the readings are when you go outside and try to find the spot where you can smell your wood burner.
LoL…. Nah…. I never use it!
I’m glad to see that it’s not just me then!
Have you tried using the meter in the kitchen (whilst cooking)?
Wife just cooked an omelette which spiked it up to 45 …
i foresee a new article in The Guardian: 'Cooking Kills'.
Your other peaks vs the fire itself are interesting and suggest some knee jerk reactions in the press. What a surprise.
I think checking the air quality was/is worth it and it gives peace of mind, I also placed it near the boiler to check that wasn't producing any nasties ...
You obviously can have problems with wood burners and open fires and if you have them I'd buy one of these meters to check ... otherwise you could be doing yourself no good ...
Last edited by Montello; 30th January 2023 at 18:32.
Thanks for taking the time to post this. Having grown up with open fires and just about anything would get thrown on, I had no intention of repeating bad habits of the past when my burner was installed in December (after a 6 month wait), especially with the kids around. The Guardian articles didn't exactly inspire confidence that I wouldn't be making, simply, a different kind of mistake. Your findings, and others experiences put my mind at rest, especially when it wasn't even a consideration that the wife and I would have ever thought of.
Love having a fire back in our lives, even though it was a house that we would never have envisaged fitting one in to, it's worked in really nicely.
Scorchio
^^^ looks great ... maybe still worth you getting a meter to check ... I think getting clean air is in part a function of how well the chimney drawers and you cant see that ...
Looks great, interested as to what happens in the floor above there & how you have managed it.Thanks for taking the time to post this. Having grown up with open fires and just about anything would get thrown on, I had no intention of repeating bad habits of the past when my burner was installed in December (after a 6 month wait), especially with the kids around. The Guardian articles didn't exactly inspire confidence that I wouldn't be making, simply, a different kind of mistake. Your findings, and others experiences put my mind at rest, especially when it wasn't even a consideration that the wife and I would have ever thought of.
Love having a fire back in our lives, even though it was a house that we would never have envisaged fitting one in to, it's worked in really nicely.
Scorchio
On a different note, if I could get a small burner in my upstairs office I would love it!
Although the air quality in your house is OK, doesn’t that just mean that your burner is efficiently sending all the crap up the chimney and doing everyone no good?
What you burn is a key factor, I burn kiln dries logs with less than 20% water. From May it will be illegal to sell wet logs and home coal.
I live in a rural area with just 10 houses, I’m not on mains gas so heating options are not the same as urban properties.
Kiln dried here too, sub 15%. Friend has given me some oak and eucalyptus seasoned but not kiln dried which looking forward to trying.
Even a kiln dried log brought in from the cold uses a lot of heat to get the log warm before burning efficiently, so a cold log is better left a day to warm up.
Sounds strange but makes sense and have witnessed it in the recent cold spell when we ran out of warm ones.
Yeah, always have a day or twos buffer indoors. Not too much as they bring insects.
It’d be interesting to see what the meter read if you stuck it near the chimney pot. Have you got a big stick?It’s different in rural areas but the trend of growing numbers in urban areas can’t be good.
I don’t have a big stick but I have held it near the open door and it doesn’t shift much.It’d be interesting to see what the meter read if you stuck it near the chimney pot. Have you got a big stick?
As I said what you burn is key which is why they have banned wet logs and home coal.
In an ideal world we be on solar, wind and ground source heat pumps.
Won’t be long before gas boilers are banned.
We had the option of directing the flue out of the wall, but in an ideal situation we wanted it to go through the house to ensure an efficient draw of a room temp flue, rather than a freezing cold outside one, along with the added benefit of residual heat through the house... What we didn't want, was a random flue appearing in one of the bedrooms, looking rather out of place.
In truth, where we wanted to locate the log burner, by fluke, directly above is the fitted wardrobe of the master bedroom, and then the attic above that. All the local companies that we got quotes from were delighted with the chance layout - all of them said their least favourite jobs are the ones that require drilling through the exterior walls.
Wall behind stove is a gable, and centrally located in the house, so it's a straight line directly up, and then at the last minute, 2x 45degree bends to bring the storm collar just forward of the ridge line.
I have screened off the flue in the wardrobe using furniture panels to prevent clothes nearing it (side and rear), while adhering to regs/distances - it takes up a very small footprint and clothing space lost has been pretty minimal. The benefits are excellent. Zero issue with warming the flue, and what appears to be a second radiator in the master bedroom when the sliding wardrobe door is ajar.
One chap suggested that any heat from the double insulated flue would be negligible, while another company suggested 0.5kw of heat per metre of flue. The flue is around 7metres, and I can confirm, it gets as hot as a radiator would at maximum temp. Not enough to endanger a child touching it, but plenty to heat up the room.
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