gas fireplace insert

Something else i can add from my own experience from watching people burn wood in stoves and fire places and working in this industry with forest products. My uncle said that while wood is renewable, he “suggested” that it may not be sustainable. Part of the problem WILL be this: the woods we burn in stoves are hardwoods (oak, ash, maple; leaf trees). Hardwoods burn cleaner and leave less pitch in the flue and are safer from the standpoint of chimney fires. Hardwoods take a lot longer to grow than softwoods. A lot longer (i am sure this is why we pay a lot more for hardwoods at the lumber yard). Softwoods include things like spruce and pine and fir; needles). The trees that we see being farm grown in large swaths of this country are soft woods for cheap moldings, pallets, construction lumber etc. I question wether the industry would be willing to (take a risk) or can take these pine forest areas and turn them into hardwood forests and if they can respond fast enough to meet demand if enough people moved over to wood. Even as i write this i th ink about all of the farmed pine forests in south eastern north carolina and wonder if hard woods would even grow in places like that.

Colonial: One reason i came down on wood as a heating source in the city was i am asthmatic and during the 1970’s when we had the OPEC oil shocks (when my asthma was at its worst), a lot of working class and lower professional class people where i lived began installing stoves and there was a lot of heavy smoke hanging around. So i did this: i took what you said about the EPA Cert and called my uncle, Richard S. Freudenberger. Richard had been a senior editor at Mother Earth News (i just googled his name and a list of some of his mother earth articles come up) and later the publisher of Back Home Magazine. a few years ago he wrote a book titled “Alcohol Fuel”; his area of interest is alternative fuels. He has heated with wood for as long as i can remember and i asked him if he is against natural gas and he said “not the use of it but the acquisition of it” (fracking). this is what he had to say and i have permission to use his name:

the epa certified stoves are cleaner but they are still not as clean as natural gas (even when functioning as they should). a big concern with this equipment is that people do not maintain it and do not use it as they should and then it gets nastier;

he explained why smoke sometimes hangs down low. it is because of heavy matter in the smoke and when that hits the cool air it gets pushed down (to street level). He did tell me that this happens less frequently with the new epa stoves but it still happens. i asked him “so we have 17 houses on the side of this street where i live. if people were burning wood would that happen a few times a month to a few of them and his answer was a firm “yes”.

He told me that if you are talking about people with respiratory conditions, we have to consider that wood in itself is messy and carrying it around a house produces dust and has the potential to bring other things into the house. he also told me that as careful as people are, a couple of times a month, someone has an issue where this stuff puffs back into the house (it happens to him). (see what the american lung association says about wood vs natural gas).

he did say that wood has NG beat out because it is a renewable resource but he added that it may not be sustainable. i asked “so if we all started using wood we would run out?” and he said yes and we might not be able to keep up.

and with anything else environmental we have to consider all of the costs:
additional diesel burning trucks moving into and spewing fumes in an urban area;
the consumption of fuel to cut it down move it and process and what that does to the environment;

He agreed with what i suggested before and that is the only reason the city has not come down hard on this (they have, i do not think new construction can have wood burning anything; wood chips from my lumber processor can not be legally burned in the city) because it is impractical for people living in the city and they are not so motivated but that if someone began selling wood and wood burning stoves on every corner, the government would take action.

He could have gone on for 2 hours about this if we had the time this morning. it is not really my thing. if you really want to get into this, i can possibly get you his phone number. you are always welcome to email me.

i wish i could have a wood stove here myself. i have a lot of waste from my business that can be used to heat my house.

steve
www.brownstonehomeinspection.com

Most wood stoves inserts are EPA certified and burn far more efficiently than an open wood burning fireplace, and use a sustainable fuel that doesn’t require the fracking up of dead dinos. With all that’s gone on this year, I simply couldn’t imagine installing a _new_ gas device — I’m trying to do the opposite and go gas free.

Yes, the negatives of burning wood are greater than using gas. Gas inserts are always more efficient. Then there’s the issue of particulates in the smoke and disposing of the ashes. I’m asthmatic so would never consider burning wood — even in an enclosed stove or insert.

I just looked this up: One source states that wood burning pollutes more than natural gas (look at the particulate coming out the chimney of a wood burning stove; even when it is burning the way it should). another, the american lung association, suggests that burning natural gas is a better alternative to wood though they would rather we use neither.

it is true that the state and city have been pushing the anti gas thing but they are equally against burning wood. imo, wood is less of an issue in the city because people do not have easy access to it and it comes with a lot of hassle. so the lawmakers focus on gas. at times the issue has been wood fireplaces.

and yes, all this and i would still go with wood if it is being done for ambiance. heating is a different story.

It depends on what these are being used for; novelty or heat. If these are being used to heat, each will bring issues:

My father heats with wood, 24/7 – oct to april or early may. It is extremely terrible on the wallet in the city and it has to be stored (my father grows trees for this purpose and cuts his own). It can also smoke a bit at times and is terrible on the lungs (one assumes with either wood or gas it goes up the flue – but sometimes something happens in the atmosphere that presses the smoke from the wood stove low to the ground where it might bother the neighbor’s lungs; sometimes it will cycle and come back in the house through a window if one is open a little; this might be made worse because he is using an “air tight”). i’d considered putting a wood burning stove in here in queens (illegally) and backed away from the idea because i was afraid the smoke would bother someone and they would call. With gas, they would never know.

If someone is doing this to heat, the gas has issues. I am not sure how the thermal unit price compares to wood b ut my wife comes from a home that had no central heating but used coal to heat fireplaces that were in the dining room and parlor. As with the old houses here, they had doors to isolate those rooms. As her parents aged, one of the brothers got what sounded like a great idea; he installed a gas insert. Within a year, her father had ripped the insert out. He claimed the coal gave off more heat (i think what it was was that the coal radiated more heat into the room and less up the chimney) than the gas.

If i were doing this i would do what colonial suggests and go with wood but that would be for the ambiance. Also, i’d get the wood for free by scalping it off my father’s wood pile (that won’t last forever). If i were doing it to heat, because of the ease of use (no storage, flip a switch, no carrying wood upstairs; when you get closer to 60 you think of these things) it would be gas. My late uncle had a wood burning fire place in his home. As he got older, he put a gas fireplace in – no more kneeling to light the flame; one flip of a switch.

Also, my father has to clean his chimney regularly. So if this will be used more than a couple times a year, that becomes an issue (he is too old to go on the roof so he has my son do it). I never hear of people cleaning chimneys used for gas heating.

I have an uncle who was a senior editor at mother earth news. His specialty was alternative fuels (and he heats with wood). If anyone has any questions, i can run them by him. He loves to talk about this stuff.

Why not put in a wood burning insert? Gas is terrible for the environment, the wallet, and the lungs.

The inserts aren’t inexpensive (Valor — sold by Big Apple in Elmhurst, Queens — have models that fit Victorian fireplaces, as well as very modern styles) but it’s the installation that is really costly. For starters, you’ll need a Master Plumber (ie. licensed to work on gas). Maybe contact a chimney mason like A&A and see if they work with a plumber for this kind of situation. I’m gonna guess having the chimney mason act as contractor will save you the hassle of hiring individual tradespeople who may argue about methods/outcomes.