How can we balance the need for heat with the smoke it causes? A personal journey.

This essay was reprinted from 
Rural Roots, dedicated to telling 
the stories of rural health in
New England.

By John Ackerly

Growing up in central New Hampshire, my dad taught me how to choose a large round log to place at the back of the fireplace so that there would still be coals in the morning.  He called it an “all nighter log.”  It seemed to work.

I looked up to my dad as a fountain of not just knowledge, but wisdom passed down through the generations. Turns out, some of this was not good advice and was not good for our health.  “All nighter logs” were designed to smolder through the night and open fireplaces are notorious for leaking smoke into the home.  

Early fascination with wood stoves

My dad also made me chop and stack wood far more than I wanted to as I kid.  Once I was old enough to realize how much I loved that activity, I got to experience the challenge of getting my son to do it with me.

I remember a friend once telling me I smelled like wood smoke after I came out of my house.  It didn’t really disturb me at the time, but in retrospect it should have.  As I went through my teens I was drawn to Nichols Hardware, down the hill from where we lived.  In the basement they had dozens of models of wood stoves, and for some reason I just liked being around them. In the late 1970s and 1980s they were so popular the Nichols family could barely keep them in stock. But the idyllic little New England towns, like mine, located in valleys soon became filled with wood smoke.

In my twenties, when I began paying my own utility bills, the benefit of wood heating hit home. Wood is the people’s fuel, and if you don’t want to go out and get it yourself, there is likely someone down the road who sells it.  Its never controlled by some corporate giant that adds any number of taxes and fees to their monthly bills. 

History of wood heat in New England 

After Eva Horton's success in Maine, 
Duncan Symes started Vermont Castings
in the mid-1970s.

In the mid-1800s every house in New England heated with wood and we had clearcut the land for sheep, building and energy.  The Troy New York areas was for woodstoves what Detroit would become for cars.  By 1940, 23% of the country still heated with wood, falling to a low point in 1970 when only 1.3% did. But New England states held on to wood, with 36% of New Hampshire homes heating with it, and 33% coal. 

In 1972, before the Arab Oil embargo, a woman from Maine named Eva Horton was the first American to popularize modern wood stove designs by importing Jotul stoves from Norway.  They used less wood and made less smoke, a dual advantage. Vermont Castings didn’t start until 1975 but soon dominated the market and built a cult-like following.   

Regulation of wood stoves

But the rush for wood stoves in the aftermath of the Arab Oil Embargo led to far too much wood smoke, especially in the Pacific Northwest where trade winds created terrible inversions in valleys, trapping all the wood smoke.  When wood smoke gets that bad, it’s like a nearby wildfire, and the smoke seeps into everyone’s home, regardless of whether you heated with wood or not. 

States put pressure on the EPA to regulate wood stoves and as of 1988, they must meet basic emission regulations.  This helped a lot, as did a declining number of people heating with wood. Today ambient outdoor wood smoke, especially in the Northeast is far better and the biggest health threat is usually not from outdoor ambient smoke, but smoke from your own stove, leaking into your home. 

Choosing a career promoting wood stoves

Nichols Hardware, in lower left, served the Upper Valley
from 1945 to 2006, selling wood stoves and everything
else a country hardware sells.

I moved away from New Hampshire, pursued a career and family, and in my mid-50s, I needed a career shift.  After being an armchair wood stove aficionado, I decided to start a non-profit, the Alliance for Green Heat, dedicated to cleaner and more efficient wood stoves.  With all the interest in renewable energy, I thought there was an opening because wood stoves were in about 10% of American homes, whereas in 2010, not even 1% had solar panels, much less electric cars.  I scraped by earning somewhat of a living for 15 years, finding that foundations, governments and the public regarded wood stoves with some suspicion, even though they are a lifeline to millions of rural households. 

Part of that suspicion is well-founded in that stoves can create unhealthy indoor air, but that does mean all stoves lead to bad indoor air quality.  And the rise of uncertified outdoor wood boilers which create more smoke than heat gave wood heating a bad name during a crucial decade when we were seeking to show wood stoves had promise.  Vermont took the lead to regulate them and then ban them unless they were for homes with virtually no neighbors.

My passion was to computerize the wood stove, and we got grants from New York state and the Department of Energy to hold wood stove design challenges to get manufacturers to add sensors, and combustion fans so people would only have to load the wood, then let modern technology shoot just the right amount of air, at the right time, to the right part of the firebox.

Our group also got funding from the US Forest Service and support firewood banks all over the country, and especially in New England.  The Trump administration is cutting funding for them now, as they are to local food banks.

Environmental and health impacts of wood heat today

Firewood is a very low-carbon heating fuel assuming its harvested sustainably, which is not a problem today in New England. Homes heated with wood or pellets do not contribute to the devastating impact that fossil heating fuels have had.  Wood heating also has a major health benefit because the exercise of chopping and stacking wood is not to be underestimated.

But it also comes with a significant health threat - air pollution -  that many of us like my father, don’t take seriously enough. 

Bottom line: if you regularly smell wood smoke in your home, the safest thing to do is to call a chimney sweep and see if they can help figure out what is going wrong.  Often, it’s from a poorly installed stove that doesn’t have a strong enough draft.  Sometimes, its prevailing wind that blows smoke down your chimney and can be fixed with a special chimney cap.  Or you may be burning unseasoned wood. Whatever you do, don’t ignore it.

Getting to the source of the problem is important but using HEPA air filters can help.  You can even make a low-cost effective air filter from a box fan and a furnace filter. Children and the elderly are most susceptible to poor indoor air quality.

Intergenerational knowledge is extremely important and rural New Englanders tend to understand the importance of securing firewood at least a year in advance and seasoning it well. Burning extra dry wood (15-20% moisture content) in a modern, EPA certified wood stove, and not letting your stove smolder is the best thing you can do to reduce wood smoke for your family and your neighbors.  My dad passed away a few years ago and would laugh if he knew I was writing about his bad advice.  Most of it was good and I will always treasure that.