More tyranny from regulations
The EPA bans wood-burning stoves:
It seems that even wood isn’t green or renewable enough anymore. The EPA has recently banned the production and sale of 80 percent of America’s current wood-burning stoves, the oldest heating method known to mankind and mainstay of rural homes and many of our nation’s poorest residents.
February 18th, 2015 at 1:01 pm
Sounds like a market for a “quaint, retro, decorative planter and roof vent”. The fact that it’s made of materials suitable to resist high temperatures is just good Made In USA manufacturing of a sort that is difficult to find nowadays.
February 18th, 2015 at 1:31 pm
A lot of this is scaremongering crap. Old stoves are grandfathered in and new ones really are better in every way than the older ones. They burn hotter and cleaner, which means more heat for less wood and lower creosote deposits in the flue. No jackbooted EPA thugs are going into people’s homes armed with M-16s and break their wood stoves.
February 18th, 2015 at 1:43 pm
Nate… yet.
Given the Feds have Swatted up after guitar makers and dairy farms. I’m not so confident on the whole “Don’t worry, the EPA won’t go crazy.”
February 18th, 2015 at 1:50 pm
Come to think of it, I’m wondering if I’m missing sarcasm on the part of Nate.
I mean he is essentailly saying, on a gun blog, “Stop being paranoid, no one is after your X. This law only applies to newly made X. The Xs you already own are grandfathered.”
February 18th, 2015 at 2:28 pm
No, I’m actually being serious. There is no history of confiscating or destroying building products that no longer meet government efficiency regulations. If that were the case, the houses and apartments that all of us live in would have been seized ages ago. Even for things the feds really don’t like such as lead paint and asbestos, they still don’t do anything draconian like demand you abate them at your own expense or something. And you can to the work yourself if you feel like it.
Guys, high efficiency stuff is good. I don’t like government regulations much either, but a regulation mandating production of a superior product that will save you money and prevent chimney fires is a totally different ball game from banning and confiscating guns that are politically disfavored by hoplophobic lunatics. We gotta pick our battles.
February 18th, 2015 at 2:32 pm
I am sensitive to the slippery slope argument, I really am. But it helps to have a history of slippery slopes to point to, and for building product efficiency regulations, it’s not there. Now, I don’t support these regulations or even think they really work due to Jevons’ Paradox: most people use high efficiency for more consumption rather than the same consumption with less cost. But again, it’s a totally different situation. Just get your nice new woodstove and enjoy the fact that it produces more heat for the same input of wood. And if you have an old one, just keep it and nobody is going to care. This whole “EPA banning our woodstoves” thing pops up every few years and it’s just paranoia. People using 100 year-old woodstoves have never been targeted for anything and most likely never will. Who benefits from such a thing? Nobody.
February 18th, 2015 at 2:48 pm
Next up controls on stove making paraphernalia. Soon you’ll need a government license to own a hammer, metal bender, riveter, welder, etc.
It’s been an odd century. I have somewhere lost on my hard drive an academic paper from the 1920s on research to improve fireplace performance. Less than 100 years from hearth to scrap heap due to big government.
February 18th, 2015 at 2:51 pm
The newer, apparently only 20% of the models, stove efficiency and therefore better products, may be true However, it didn’t work with toilets, dishwashers, washers, dryers, etc.
So experience would predict far lower standard of living with the newer government mandated product.
February 18th, 2015 at 3:53 pm
Gots me a wood stove in the garage waiting to be installed. There’s currently enough free wood around here I could buy a hydraulic log splitter and come out way ahead.
February 18th, 2015 at 5:18 pm
Nate – There’s ALWAYS a first time.
February 18th, 2015 at 6:47 pm
The woodstoves that meet the new standards aren’t more efficient. They are equipped with catalytic converters. The converter will require maintenance or replacement biannually if not annually. Price difference is in the hundreds between the non-catalytic and the approved version, replacement/maintenance of the cat converter is a non trivial expense to boot.
February 18th, 2015 at 7:06 pm
The motivation behind all this, as usual, has nothing to do with what they’re saying about it.
The motivation is to kill self sufficiency, and using local, readily obtainable fuel makes you independent of the public energy supplies for the majority of your energy use (at least for Northerners, heating is the primary energy usage. You can use most wood stoves for cooking too, and even for general hot water).
Strength, morality, principles and independence are the enemies of statism.
February 18th, 2015 at 11:07 pm
If a pot belly stove is good enough for Ben Franklin it’s good enough for me.
February 18th, 2015 at 11:10 pm
I’m hearing a lot of crap in this particular thread so I”m going to throw out some facts.
1. The EPA mandated a particulate limit years ago.
2. Lots of stove manufactures added cat converters to their stoves to make the new limit
3. Given some time, many of them moved to a reburner design (wood gas burner, look it up) and didn’t need catalysts.
4. Catalysis will last a LOT longer than two years if you don’t burn not wood in your stove. If you want to burn pallets, you need to pull the nails. That galvanizing will plug some shit up.
6. The wood stove that I purchased last year with NO catalysis (reburner chamber) generates HALF of the particulate of the new standard.
I have no love for the EPA but I’m glad a purchased the stove I did rather than some non EPA rated stove. It’s more efficient so I have to have less wood per winter. It’s cleaner so I don’t have to clean the chimney as much. It runs for hours on a load of wood so I don’t have to babysit it as much. My insurance company didn’t jack my rates when I installed it either. You did know your insurance company can deny a fire claim if you’ve got a wood stove that isn’t installed properly or isn’t rated for it’s install type didn’t you?
Bottom line, good backup or even primary heat and cooking surface even when the lights go out. Cut your own or buy the cords. You’re money ahead to buy the most stove you can afford.
February 18th, 2015 at 11:16 pm
Oh yeah, I wanna say thanks to all of you out there. When I put in my efficient stove, the government gave me some of your money to help offset the cost of my fancy toy.
Thank you.
February 19th, 2015 at 11:58 am
I installed one of the newer EPA-rated wood gassification boilers about three years ago. This is an outdoor unit and sits about 150 ft from the house, and required retrofitting heat exchangers into my propane heaters, etc. It was expensive – about $20K including the concrete pad and “extras” to get it going, and we did the labor ourselves. I can see how most people could not afford one.
However…the payoff on that is almost done. In three years. I am saving about $5K a year in propane and electric, and we keep the house a lot warmer than we ever did before. The cold tile is now just under 100 degrees, and the “furnace” uses nothing but the fan to push hot air made from wood.
The EPA annoys me, but there is no way the tech would have materialized for this had it not been for them coming out with the voluntary standard (that’s how it started) years ago. Boilers used to smoke-belching monsters that made your neighbors your enemy – today you can stand next to mine at full heat and literally not know it is burning wood and smoke at 1600 degrees.
So I got mixed feelings. My brother installs these in upstate NY (over 200 so far) and he said banks hand out the loans because they come in cheaper than paying for oil or gas. People pay them off in a few years and love them. And their neighbors don’t hate them anymore.
February 19th, 2015 at 7:29 pm
Sooooo.. one of these high-efficient woodstoves would be the cat’s meow for retreat-cabin OPSEC to avoid people seeing your plume of morning stove smoke whileist you sip your MRE coffee?
February 19th, 2015 at 10:20 pm
No… Wood fired boilers and wood stoves aren’t the same thing. And a quick look at the wood gassification stoves – they are furnaces. Again, not quite the same thing. Although a major manufacturer (made my current stove) has a high efficiency version that only costs a bit more than double the one I own. Maybe someone here doesn’t understand ‘affordable’.