EPA to ban wood heat

I posted this on another site as well. I'm hoping to get some clarification. A friend of mine just sent me a link to this. Hopefully some of the more knowledgeable people here can shed some light on how much truth (if any) there is in this story....or is it just more sensationalizing / fire alarm pulling ? Is this referring to the 2020 regs which some stoves are already meeting ? Iv'e never heard of the EPA using "micrograms/cubic meter" as a measurement before.

EPA to ban wood heat

EPA to ban wood heat
Justi | October 26, 2017 | Cabins, Homesteading, Off Grid Living | No Comments

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.

The agency’s stringent one-size-fits-all rules apply equally to heavily air-polluted cities and far cleaner plus typically colder off-grid wilderness areas such as large regions of Alaska and the American West.

EPA moved ahead with sweeping new regulations on wood stoves, wood-fired furnaces and outdoor boilers. Some states say they won’t abide by the rule.

Regulations will be put into place over the course of five years. There is a grandfather clause that quells resistance but it does ban any reselling or trading of non-compliant wood stoves.

Wood stoves will become very expensive because these rules will ban 80% of the current wood stoves and fireplace inserts. Old ones will become more and more expensive to repair.

Is this for real?

EPA to ban wood heat
The Environmental Protection Agency is set to finalize a set of regulations in February that critics say will effectively ban production of 80 percent of the wood- and pellet-burning stoves in America.

The EPA had published a set of proposed regulations more than a year ago, and since then had accepted public comments.

But the regulations already are having an impact. An advertisement for the Central Boiler Company says that company’s classic outdoor wood furnaces will be outlawed by the new regulations and will not be available later this spring.

The EPA has argued that the new regulations would improve air quality. The regulations require new stoves to burn up to 70 percent cleaner.

“Residential wood smoke causes many counties in the U.S. to either exceed the EPA’s health-based national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for fine particles or places them on the cusp of exceeding those standards,” the EPA previously said. “To the degree that older, higher emitting, less efficient wood heaters are replaced by newer heaters that meet the requirements of this rule, or better, the emissions would be reduced, the efficiencies would be increased and fewer health impacts should occur.”

It would be the first new standards on stoves since the 1980s.

Critics say it is government overreach lacking common sense – and note that people have heated their home with wood for thousands of years.

“It seems that even wood isn’t green or renewable enough anymore,” columnist Larry Bell wrote on Forbes.com “… [It’s] the oldest heating method known to mankind and mainstay of rural homes and many of our nation’s poorest residents. The agency’s stringent one-size-fits-all rules apply equally to heavily air-polluted cities and far cleaner plus typically colder off-grid wilderness areas such as large regions of Alaska and the American West.”

While EPA’s most recent regulations aren’t altogether new, their impacts will nonetheless be severe. Whereas restrictions had previously banned wood-burning stoves that didn’t limit fine airborne particulate emissions to 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air, the change will impose a maximum 12 microgram limit. To put this amount in context, EPA estimates that secondhand tobacco smoke in a closed car can expose a person to 3,000-4,000 micrograms of particulates per cubic meter.

Most wood stoves that warm cabin and home residents from coast-to-coast can’t meet that standard. Older stoves that don’t cannot be traded in for updated types, but instead must be rendered inoperable, destroyed, or recycled as scrap metal.

A response to EPA…

 

The Worst Media Myths About EPA's Move To Cut Woodstove Pollution

 

I guess we will have to put catalytic converters in our chimney liners!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Sounds like someone has been reading RW BS.

 

Those EPA effers will have to pry my ash shovel from my cold dead hands.....

 

That you stumper?

 

this articles comes out every year lol

 

Media Matters - Media Bias/Fact Check

Sure there are "myth's" out there, but your link is part of the deception.

 

This is the same divisive make the epa the bad guy bullchit. Once you bought it you own it. No one is going to ban it. That doesn't mean companies can keep making stoves the same way they did in the past. Progress is a good thing.

 

It is just a link showing another perspective. Biased? Probably. No concern of mine, it is more factual than the story the thread started with, that is why I posted it. I don't care in the least about a site's perceived bias if the facts are right.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about this. The coal industry had been pushing mountain tops off down the sides of mountains filling stream beds and doing real harm to the environment, including hurting wildlife and messing up hunting ranges for hunters. If the streams are clogged up, kind of hard for wildlife to find food and drinking water. However, reversing the regulation against pushing mountain tops off down into the valleys below was one of the first things Trump did after becoming president. Somehow, I don't see the EPA preventing people from heating with wood when the EPA is going to let coal companies continue to destroy mountain valleys.

 

Been good, I end up taking off the summer and come back for the heating season because I like this place so much.

 

That is an interesting point, as some people have reported they only burn dry wood because their new EPA stove does not work well with wet wood.
My favorite comment was one guy said he wondered how well his pre EPA stove would have worked with dry wood.