A reduction of over 90% of the pollutants is the norm for EPA rated technology.
If the entire fuel cycle is considered, an EPA clean burning fireplace or stove will heat your home more efficiently and with lower environmental impact than any other fuel option.
Burn a Tree and...Help the Planet?
By Wolf Bennett
The first homeowners to heat with wood lived in caves—and for hundreds of thousands of years not much changed. People put wood in various types of alcoves, rings or containers for cooking or heat, but until fairly recently all we really had were campfires in a box. In the past twenty-five years technology has changed all that. By allowing us to control the burn, the new stoves offer high efficiency and cozy ambience in beautiful units.
Burning wood is carbon-neutral and green. Yes, you can burn wood in Steamboat Springs cleanly, legally, efficiently and inexpensively in an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rated fireplace or woodstove. The availability of beetle kill fuel means we are looking at many years of inexpensive, efficient, clean fuel.
The carbon cycle works like this: trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air as they grow. In fact, about half of their dry weight is absorbed carbon. As old trees die and decay, or are consumed in a fire, their carbon is released to the air as carbon dioxide. When firewood is used as an energy source, part of the natural carbon cycle is brought into our homes to heat them. A fire in a good unit releases the solar energy stored by the tree as it grew. If the entire fuel cycle is considered, an EPA clean burning fireplace or stove will heat your home more efficiently and with lower environmental impact than any other fuel option.
The other options, oil, gas and coal, are fossil fuels, and when they are burned, old carbon that was buried deep in the earth is released to the atmosphere leading to the effects called global warming. Passive solar is great but typically needs to be designed into the structure and PV or active systems can have a large initial price tag. Wind is good too—if you have the breeze.
Even considering the not-so-green costs of cutting and transporting the trees, burning wood is still very close to as green as you can get. Those forests that surround us will be releasing carbon whether we use it in our homes or leave it to decay. An EPA rated unit does not contribute to global warming because no more carbon dioxide is released than the natural forest would release if left untouched. Using wood for heat means fewer fossil fuels burned, fewer greenhouse gas emissions and a healthier environment.
A little information about wood burning is useful here. Campfire smoke burns your eyes because it contains a pharmacopeia of noxious agents. Remember that beautiful scene of the rooftops of London in Mary Poppins? The red sunset through the coal smoke is definitely not healthy and neither is the smoke from old woodstoves or fireplaces. No Burt, it isn’t “just good, clean soot,” it’s carcinogenic and the original black lungs belonged to sweeps. So how can we say that burning wood is clean? Fire pollutes the air when it burns inefficiently and incompletely, thus the sting and gunk and the obvious limits on open, inefficient, wood burning fireplaces.
The EPA has set standards that really do work in cleaning up emissions. The newest units exceed 80% efficiency by increasing the “residency time” of gasses swirling around in the firebox, thus giving them a chance to combust more fully. The stoves are “airtight” giving the user the ability to control the burn through controlling both the amount of air coming into the unit and where the fresh air is injected, as opposed to simply choking the exhaust. They also force the exhaust to flow through a series of baffles or a catalytic converter that allow the gasses to combust at a lower temperature for a “secondary” burn which vastly increases both efficiency and heat released into your home and tremendously reduces the pollutants released into the air shed. Thus Steamboat’s code and environmental regulations allow EPA rated units to be installed into virtually any home without the purchase of fireplace rights. Check before installing a unit to ensure it meets restrictions for the city and county air sheds.
Higher efficiencies mean fewer cords of wood per season, thus reducing your number of trips to the woodpile. The giant, inefficient fireboxes of not too long ago are now unnecessary since the better burn times provide many hours of steady, cozy heat. Those older, big boxes are notoriously polluting. A new stove or fireplace will save hundreds of dollars over the older units every year, plus give you the added benefits of beautiful ambiance and green technology.
The new technology seems like magic, but in the past fifteen years, it is science that has come to our aid. It works like this: once a catalytic combustor reaches its “ignition” heat of about 500 degrees Fahrenheit, it continues to burn nearly all the smoke passing through it. The more smoke it consumes, the hotter it gets, and the hotter it gets, the more smoke it consumes, and that added heat goes into your home. Since the combustor thrives on a diet of smoke, it is permissible—even desirable—for the homeowner to maintain the kind of slow, smoldering fire that would send huge amounts of smoke belching from any non-EPA rated stove or fireplace. A reduction of over 90% of the pollutants is the norm for EPA rated technology. Take that, campfire smoke. More heat, less fuel, fewer pollutants and beautiful units. Makes a nice combination doesn’t it?
The design of the vent pipe has increased safety and efficiency as well. Any time you slow down flue gasses, burn them inefficiently or cool them off, creosote builds up and can cause potentially devastating chimney fires. Thus the creation of double-wall vent connector pipe and packed chimney pipe. Keeping the correct amount of heat in the pipe will increase draft, control the fire more efficiently and reduce creosote. Venting your wood burner into that old brick chimney will certainly save you venting costs, but it will cool and slow the gasses, and who among us knows the condition of every joint in that beautiful stone chimney? Triple wall vent, though still used in certain applications, is not the panacea many thought it to be years ago. Yes, the new chimney venting can be costly, but what is the price of a house fire? The cost of proper installation, regular inspection, cleaning or replacement of parts and the use of safety equipment is not so high when the consequences are truly considered. We are all on a budget, but safety should always be a part of that budget.
Another option for heating your home with wood is the pellet stove. These stoves are easy to operate, burn cleanly, create little if any creosote, are thermostat operable and use a waste product (sawdust). Pellets are readily available and several new plants are under construction locally so obtaining fuel will be ever easier. Feeding the hopper once a day, and cleaning out the ash drawer once a week, is not a big investment of time or energy. However, they require electricity to operate the blowers and igniters, so in a power outage you should have a generator or backup heat source. A tax credit is even in the works for installing pellet appliances or new wood stoves. I loved heating our house with a pellet stove though its ambiance is not that of a crackling fire in the hearth.
Wood burning stoves run a gamut of beautiful options, from clean, European styling in soapstone or tile with huge glass viewing areas to classic antique looks. New units are being developed all the time and soon there will even be an open fireplace available that should meet EPA standards.
The need for heat is obvious, but it doesn’t need to contribute to environmental problems. Like all alternative energy solutions, a mix of possibilities will serve you best. I like the combination of solar, insulation, wood, gas and thermal mass, but a different combination may work best for you. Winter is a fact of life and often the reason we live here, but we can do much better than our ancestors with a campfire in a cave. The primal feelings of fur and fire can still be met while being responsible for the environment. Stay warm, enjoy a nice cozy fire knowing that your carbon footprint has grown smaller—and do a dance to bring that snow. 
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Winter 2007