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.

Unsafe Wood Stoves Routinely Overlooked During Energy Audits

Energy audits have two primary goals: 1. Identify how a family can conserve energy and save money and 2. Identify important health and safety issues in the home. Often, the wood stove is overlooked in audits, even though it may be the primary heating appliance in the house and can be a major source of carbon monoxide and a leading cause of house fires.

 “The Alliance for Green Heat believes it is scandalous that energy audits, particularly in rural, northern areas, do not address wood stoves like they address furnaces and boilers,” said John Ackerly, the group’s President. “Its time for energy auditors to expand their audits to address these health and safety issues in rural, low-income homes,” Ackerly said.

(2013 update:  BPI has started to include wood stove inspections in the standards.)

The Alliance for Green Heat is calling on the relevant federal and state officials as well as groups like Building Performance Institute (BPI) to improve standards for energy audits. Most energy audits check for carbon monoxide leakage, but since blower door tests are also routinely done, auditors instruct homeowners not to have a fire in a wood stove or fireplace. This prevents the auditor from checking for elevated carbon monoxide leakage from the wood stove. Moreover, energy audit standards, such as those set by BPI, do not include checking whether a wood stove is EPA certified or whether gaskets are missing. And, there is no accepted criterion for auditors that would signal when a wood stove is a “health and safety issue” and should be replaced.

The result is that wood stoves far past their lifespan are not being replaced at nearly the same rate as old and unsafe furnaces and boilers, even when they are the primary or a substantial secondary heat source.

In response to requests from energy auditing companies who wanted to better market themselves in rural areas, the Alliance for Green Heat developed an Energy Auditor Checklist for Wood Stoves. Now the Alliance is using that Checklist as a practical tool to show federal and state officials how and why assessing wood stoves should be a vital part of an energy audit. The Energy Auditor Checklist for Wood Stoves is still being improved, and input is welcome. Click here for a copy.

In many states, low-income families are eligible to have their current heating appliance replaced if it’s inoperable or a danger to health and safety. Families on low-income heating assistance (LIHEAP) in all states are also eligible to have their heating appliance replaced if it’s inoperable or a danger to health and safety, but only if it’s their primary heating appliance. However, many if not most families whose primary heat is a wood stove, claim their low income heat assistance for their secondary heater, such as oil, propane or kerosene. They do this because the benefit amount is often larger and they cannot obtain those fuels for free, as they can with wood. And, many energy auditors and state officials consider wood stoves to be a de facto secondary, space heater, even when most of the home’s heat comes from it. This has contributed to programs overlooking the wood stove and potentially dangerous conditions.

The surge in primary heating with wood stoves that occurred between 2000 and 2010, leading to a more than 100% rise in primary wood heat, was achieved not just by consumers buying new EPA certified stoves, but often by consumers dusting off old, uncertified stoves. Compared to new, certified stoves, old stoves produce far more smoke and creosote and are more likely to have cracks and metal fatigue. This rapid rise in wood heating is one of the major reasons that the federal government and states need to ensure that standards for energy audits and related programs are not biased against those who have taken up wood heat or returned to wood heat.

Another reason energy audits should better include inspections of wood stoves is that installing old stoves, which are neither EPA certified nor UL listed, is still legal in most places outside Washington State. Many homeowners try to install these old stoves themselves without the owner’s manual, resulting in them being installed too close to combustible surfaces or not vented according to code. And, the EPA still allows the sale of stoves that are exempt from emissions standards. Although they are UL listed, these exempt stoves are likely to have health and safety issues far sooner than EPA certified units.

If your state is overseeing standards for energy audits and/or subsidizing them, we urge you to contact the relevant state office and urge them to ensure that wood stoves are assessed during energy audits.

Wood Stove Changeouts Improved Air in Libby, but …

 

Four years after the changeout of 1,200 uncertified wood stoves in Libby, Montana, the definitive air quality study has been released.  Not surprisingly, it found that changing out stoves improved air quality and children’s health.  But some findings were surprising.  For one, indoor air quality did not always improve; in fact, it got worse in some homes.  Another interesting find was that no health differences could be found in kids from homes with wood stoves compared to those without them.  Overall, the air quality benefits were not as great as expected.  The detailed report was published along with a thorough critique of the report by health experts pointing toward what future studies should also consider. 

* Air emission standards in the United States typically regulate the specific type of device, the fuels, and heat outputs. A recent report indicated that this may allow gaps and variation in coverage, and some residential and small-to-medium–sized biomass units may not be subject to environmental regulations (Handley et al. 2009). In contrast, regulations in Europe are issued according to heat output and type of feeding device (manual or automatic), which provides 100% coverage. More importantly, European PM2.5 standards for wood-burning appliances are significantly lower at about 0.02 to 0.05 lb/million BTU heat output compared with state regulations in the United States at, for example, 0.1 lb/million BTU in Massachusetts and 0.6 lb/million BTU in New York State (Handley et al. 2009). This indicates that in the United States there is room for improvement in terms of reducing emissions from wood-burning appliances. (p. 40)

* It is not clear whether the total number of wood stoves in the community increased in the meantime, because more people may have chosen wood as a cheaper fuel, because of an increasing population size, or both. (p.43)

* In addition, there may be other sources of PM2.5 in the area, such as wood- or coal-burning fireplaces and boilers that were not covered by the changeout program. New York State has noted a tripling in the sales of outdoor wood boilers since the early 1990s (p. 44)

* The wood stove changeout program should be considered a success because 95% of older, high-polluting wood stoves in Libby, Montana, were replaced with more efficient certified wood stoves or with heating systems that did not burn wood. .. However, the air quality improvement was not as large as might have been expected based on the dominant contribution of wood burning to ambient PM2.5 concentrations in the area and the approximately 50% expected reduction in emissions anticipated from each certified stove compared with uncertified models. (p. 45)