Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/03/2019 21:50, % wrote:
On 2019-03-18 2:41 p.m., Vir Campestris wrote:
On 18/03/2019 05:00, FMurtz wrote:
Why does it matter? I have a wood heater and it does not matter how
wet the wood is once you have started the fire, It dries out quickly.

Damp wood results in condensation in the flue. Combined with the
products of the lower temperature combustion - which will include tars
- this can be a bit nasty for the poor old flue.

but the flames light up the yard so nicely

A wood tar chimney fire tends to burn with a pale blue flame and a
moderate amount of noise. Anyone burning wet wood deserves what they
get. They are likely not to bother sweeping the chimney either.


Chap down the road burns quite a lot that he gathers on his daily walk
through the wooded area around here,
after winds like we have had this week he takes a wheel barrow and a saw.
To be fair to him he has his own brushes and does the the lined flu once a
month.
Larger limbs and branches he does turn into logs and keeps them for two
years and some of that he has bought from the landowner where it it has
fallen but he reckons that the daily collection of smaller stuff amounts to
about a third of his consumption with consequent savings.

Being retired he had the time and it is almost a hobby for him, before he
was a delivery driver for a builders merchant and burnt a lot of pallets so
their dryness counteracted some of the green branches when mixed.
His moan now after being retired for 3 years is that he has now moved into
the €œnobody down there knows me anymore €œ category and they wont let him
have any now. So for the first time for years he got some coal product in .
I always thought was the worst combination of all due to the different
substances condensing
out and creating quite a corrosive mix but he is not the sort of bloke to
listen to things like that, and with a wife
who has just had a stroke needs to keep the house warmer and has less time
to gather his wood.

This is a country area so it is not too bad but the powers that be can
legislate against various fuels as much as they like but if policies make
electricity etc unaffordable we will see a lot more of people making
homemade stoves and opening up long disused chimneys and trying to keep the
use of them clandestine while they burn
rubbish from skip diving etc in towns and cities. That will cause a lot of
problems and fires and whatever the authorities say if they cant stop
visiting workers living in garden sheds turned into bunk houses they wont
be able to stop every illegal fireplace.

GH