Here we go, It was bound to happen… More control by big brother.

there are things im not real happy with about the OWB's myself. the things a lot of times do no have stacks rather they use an induction fan to force combustion air in on demand. this wouldn't be bad if the units burned clean, with an "on demand" system though they smoke horribly when they are "idling" i've seen them in places where they smoke up a whole valley was driving to boston back in 04 i think it was and saw one right off the highway in a small valley you literally couldn't see the house it had smoked up this little draw so badly, no flue setup , just belching right out of the roof of the thing.

FWIW i am an industry member, have been since 93. everything we build has to be certified as clean burning before i can market it. OWB's have no such restriction as of yet. IMHO they should be regulated in a similar manner as woodstoves are, maybe not as tightly as the woodstoves, as they are different in their operation, something has to be done with them though because as they sit are literally the "poster child" for the anti wood burning community, if not regulated they give the anti wood crowd a perfect target to exploit in their efforts to impose even stricter regulation on the whole industry. there's nothing wrong with "smart" regulation, it beats "overregulation" any day. the biggest worry if they aren't smartly regulated is the anti's using them as leverage against the whole industry (which some in that crowd are already trying to do)

hey, if i can produce products which work just dandy with the limitations i have to design to due to regulation, they should be able to do the same thing. they aren't right now because there is nothing making them (the manufacturers) have to do so. actually if the right forms of regulation are imposed the units may actually be better cleaner and also more efficient than they are today. we had to do it back when phase 2 was enacted and while it shut some of the manufacturers down, many survived and developed products which not only burned cleaner, they benefitted from the technology in a way that made them produce more heat from less wood.

 

again this is where the lack of responsible standards hurt the folks who had to give theirs up. were the stoves certified and operated within the certification then the community's recourse would be to go after the individual who was creating the problem. its just like someone burning garbage in an old barrel, the locals can legislate this out of practice as its not a previously regulated and standardized practice.

FWIW i feel bad for those who had to give up what amounted to a serious investment. its really not their fault. its the fault of the industry in part, but in part its the fault of the government for not properly creating a standard for the devices. (and its also the fault of the "bad actor" who was being an idiot operating this device in a way that caused this to be brought to the forefront as well.

 

actually im more west, up against the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge mountains.

FWIW im not a fan of government over reach by any means. but i do believe that things can be made better (heck a model T will still get you down the road but its not exactly the best way to travel cross country these days)

when i entered the industry (right out of the army) in 93, it was just 2 years after the phase 2 became active (july 91) we were already building cat stoves but i did get to handle some of the "pre-epa" units we had in inventory dealt with several which had already gotten into the pipeline prior to the new reg. now they did the job. i never said they didn't, but the newer stoves did the same job and better as you could make more heat with less wood. this is the hidden beauty of the phase 2. it forced the industry to think clean and still produce a viable product. the results can be seen today in modern stoves. when i was burning wood here in my house in a cat stove i got every bit as much heat out of my cat unit as we did at dad's with his older stove burning literally half of the wood. its just better technology, you squeeze more heat out of every stick you burn. now, this doesn't mean the old fishers didn't do the job, but they are wasteful of wood, pollution aside im not talking about that with the fishers and the like as i said they can be burned clean (reasonably so) if operated in a way that allows them to do so, but they can also be burned very dirty if operated in a manner that doesn't allow enough oxygen to burn clean in the primary fire which they have to do to be clean because they have no secondary system. imagine a system which allowed you the same surface temps on your fisher that you get with a 4 hour load but the wood lasts 8 hours. this happens in a modern stove routinely, its because we had to meet a standard. stoves are actually BETTER now due to this regulation

 

no prob Dave, like i said, its not with me a 'support of big brother" its about being responsible, industry will not be so unless they have to, trust me i know this very well. i've argued with my boss and others in the industry about it more than once.

BTW, since i haven't yet said so to you, back when i was wearing green we did a training mission out of Oceana NAS when i was with the task force doing "boat work" with the aUSS Milwaukee off va beach, we diverted to assist with a sar call for a boat incident worked with the coasties down there on that hop the boat in question was a small craft which had a medical emergency we found the craft vectored them in and the coasties took over while we basically stood off and watched. had a few cold ones with them the next evening. was an impressive show of flying, they lowered a man to the boat who got the casualty littered up and pulled back to the bird and off they went.

you guys seriously impress me. i gather you are out of Cape May, from what i read its the last best school of pure seamanship on the planet. having a beer myself hopefully we are "having a beer together" Salute

"you have to go out, you don't have to come back" if i remember right this is the motto? NSDQ

 

Sometimes, you can "OVER" engineer something…. I have seen it many, many times in my 30+ years in the field!

youre right dave, and in our industry it has happened, "building for the test" again , it falls under being "smart" given a criteria that is achievable you can do it right and make a product which works well within the parameters or you can make one which does not (and suffer the consequences)
as for the fisher, yeah, they are a great piece of 70's engineering, way better than the older stuff which folks had to use prior to their invention far safer and more efficient than the "pot bellies" and the like which were the norm before them. what we make now are that much better than they are. its evolution. i think in another 20 years we will be able to produce units which are again better than the ones we make now, not that what we make now aren't great units, but if we don't try to do even better how do we advance the technology?

i participated in the DC thing a few weeks back, saw some pretty amazing things, some of them right now aren't practical, but they were still pretty amazing. thing is, were it not for phase 2 none of these advances would have happened

 

yeah, i got one in college as well, i'll lift a bottle o beer to your brother's memory BTW privilege to do so! had many a meal with aspiring sergeants majors at Ft Bliss Tx. (location of the US Army's Sergeants Majors Academy (we shared a mess hall)) learned a lot from those gents) and yeah, i believe in the KISS system, its a true facet of anything one does (just ask the guys who worked for me when i ran our assembly line. my axiom "by the numbers" probably irritated a few of my guys from time to time) you know the drill. thing is , we have this dialed in, we make stoves today that can do things that weren't even a dream back in the 70's and the stove is just as simple to operate. i'd really love to show you what my engineers are doing these days making the next generation of stoves. its pretty kool. load it set it walk away, come back in about 6-8 hours repeat. no computers , no fiddling, just a pull and a twist and when it hits temp it sets itself into a slow burn creating secondaries that bring surface temps to 6-7 hundred degrees and hold it for hours while the fire smoulders and the exhaust looks like its connected to a gas stove. you could look at the fire and think this things gotta be smoking like a pig, then look up at the top of the dilution tunnel and see nothing coming out. its amazing how you can "cook" wood create fuel burn it and leave just ash afterwards.

 

you get it, the key is entrapment and supply of O2 in the path of smoke, it reburns the "smoke' which is really wood gas that hasn't been burned cause there wasn't enough air left in the primary fire to burn it, now , we burn this above the primary fire so it is spent before it leaves the stove, this gives a massive boost to the output when its done correctly, at the same time the stuff the "enviroweenines" fuss about is consumed inside the stove! best of both worlds, we make more heat for less, and the clean air nuts have nothing to bitch about. best thing about it is we have systems (us and the other manufacturers) that allow the end user to simply follow the same good burning rules you already follow and get more heat from less wood.

FWIW chief, my invite is open, just let me know ahead of time so i can make plans for you to see what we can do. would be an honor to have you stop by

 

Well, things could be worse. http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/240833...arbecue-grills-to-cut-pollution#axzz2lsZxAyHu

IMHO, to use a comparison of 70 years ago is really apples and oranges since the U.S. Population was about 200 million less than it was then. I think this whole thing comes down to doing the right thing, and courtesy and respect for one's neighbor and fellow citizen. If you're doing something on your property that spills over to affect your neighbor's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, someone needs to step in to prevent escalation of the problem. We all are/were in the military. Solve things at the lowest level. It doesn't matter if it's dumping PCB's in the Hudson River in the 1960's or belching a ton of smoke out of an OWB today, When people fail to agree on what that standard is, unfortunately in our system it is time for the government to step in with regulation and as we all know, when they do, they over regulate.

If OWB's are going to be grouped in with wood stoves, and the OWB owners don't want to solve the problem, then it is up to the wood stove owners to help develop the scope and extent of the regulations. I think a great way to start would be to show the regulator just how CLEAN an OWB can burn on DRY WOOD. Sure, it might belch out some smoke when idling and it will likely idle more with dry wood, but I would think (i have no scientific evidence to prove this) that it would just burn more efficiently and cleanly. I'd be all about the department of weights and measures regulating the moisture content in "seasoned wood" sold to a prospective buyer. If it's advertised as seasoned, one should be able to throw it right in the stove meaning it should be under 20%. Otherwise it's green. Would it raise the price? Sure, but it would also raise awareness and more people would consider buying their wood "green" and seasoning it themselves. I think the practice of burning whatever you want (plastic, tires, etc) needs to be stopped as the health considerations are real, especially in densely populated areas..

Don't know all of the solutions, but those are a few of my thoughts.

 

unfortunately OWB' shave created their own mess. I can pull out of my driveway, turn either way and within a mile there is an OWB. Next to the OWB are stacks of TREES waiting to be burned. They are smoking like a tire fire. I f they were my next door neighbor and affecting my life their OWB would disappear one evening.

 

In the boiler world, clean burning has been around since the early 80s.
The OWB is advertised as being able to burn anything including green un-split wood, very appealing to the unsuspecting.


Our first boiler was like the one in the picture; essentially an outdoor boiler without the little house and could it burn the wood! It could really smoke big time. This unit burned 22 cords per year!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jetstream_furnace

The old Jetstream with storage does the same load on 4 1/2 cords per year.
The ultimate compliment for the Jetstream came last year. A new neighbor moved in across the street 4 years ago and last spring, when we were offloading wood into the woodshed, he came over and asked if we sold firewood? I told him no but we burned wood year round. He was very surprised because he had never seen smoke coming out of our chimney!


This is one of my favorite pictures!
Outside temperature is -5 Celsius with the Jetstream at full output. It's just hot enough to be uncomfortable to breathe but no odor or hint of smoke!

 

These are the 3 pages that I had meant to post .

 

Good god. Banning BBQ grills in China to cut pollution is like going on a diet to help you car stop sooner when you have bad brakes. Sure, it will help, technically, but that's not the problem.