Proposed EPA Regulations

I would like to see a safe burning class go with the sale of the stove and be part of the sale pitch. When I bought my Harman, I received instructions as well as a DVD from the company with complete instructions and maintenance. When I got my first stove, after watching the Keystone Kops do the install after their third visit, they left without even leaving me the operating manual.

 

Well how ever this turns out everyone should keep an eye on this whole process.
Seems like the only people who get active in this process are the people wanting to ban wood burning stoves completely.
So spread the word so people are aware lets all stick together here. Email all your wood burning pals who dont frequent these type forums.
We can create dist lists in our email programs and forward articles that we find like on the web page for Alliance for Green Heat about this subject.
What we are doing essentially is planting seeds and watching them grow as every time a wood burner reads an article about the proposed EPA regulations they are thinking about it then they tell a friend and that friend tells a friend and it grows and grows.

There are gonna be more regulations but we want to be part of the solution not live with a solution someone else came up with.

 

As usually I agree with most of Mikes points (time to restart the mike fr prez campaign ).

I do believe its a good thing to keep working for cleaner air and pushing better performance but it does seem like we are at the point of diminished return for stoves. Supposedly my cranky old VC tests under 2g in the lab but I can tell you even with good dry wood I dont think I'm getting that performance in the real world... I agree with the consensus that the best thing would be to close the furnace/OWB loopholes and stop allowing exempt stoves.

Mikes idea to regulate wood would probably make the most improvement of all but I dont see how you regulate it in practice. Many states, mine included have strict regulations already about firewood quantity (a cord being a real 128ft3)... but enforcement is a joke.

OTOH - and here is my practical side contradicting my liberal environmental side again - I dont want to see any outright ban of all existing older stoves and fireplaces. Here is why. I love old houses... and one of the key parts of the charm of a 17th and 18th century house is the traditional fireplace. If they made regulations that required me to rip those out, or not be able to repair them in a renovation I would break down and cry. Similarly if you go to some old house museums in places like Sturbridge and Strawberry Banke in the winter you can see really cool 19th century parlor stoves still in operation. Sure they are dirty... but in the grand scheme a handful of these old stoves dont even register against the pollution from millions of modern heat system, trucks,cars, etc.

For other reasons I would hate to see standards so strict we would effective kill off woodburning altogether.... We would just push people to more fossil fuel usage and actually create more co2 pollution just to save some particulates. Typical short sighted thinking by wannabe "greens" just chasing whatever is trendy (look ma I demolished my old house and build a new leet green house out of plastic! ugh ) , not true environmentalism.

And on another tangent.. if we really want to make a dent in particulates how about regulating heavy truck diesel particulate emissions? or trains?

 

i'd be kool with "offering" classes on it but i dont think a mandate would be productive

 

good of you my friend (but do you really hate me so bad that you would subject me to what POTUS goes through on a daily basis)?

as for the "built to the test" stoves which do not perform in real world conditions, the market if it offers more usable option , the less desirable will be phased out due to simple competition (think "stove darwinism") OTOH if standards are made so tight that the only way to get a stove to market is to "build for the test" then it doesnt leave rooom for the free market to decide if one unit is more desirable than another.

as for the firewood thing , my thought would be that it would only be effective to regulate "commercial" sales the guy making a few bucks on the side wouldnt be practical to try to regulate . note also i do not have a problem with the sale of "green wood" as long as its marketed as such (with the understanding that its "not ready to use"

as for the "old houses" and "historic districts" i'd think an exemption could be applied for and granted on a case by case basis for the most part as there would be very little overall impact. this would be somthing covered in the marking up of the legislation (deciding the criteria to qualify )

as for youre tangent , trucks i get ,but when one looks at trains and the emmissions per ton of freight moved they come in very clean. they could be made even cleaner i suspect with changes to the fuel they generate with (most are deisel electric where the deisel engine is simply a generator and the electric motors drive the wheels)

 

hahaha... just pulling your leg Mike... Just dragging up an inside joke from our old heated discussions in the can.... (those who know, know)

Yeah, agreed - I just threw trains in their thinking of other things that run on diesel. The diesel driving a generator arrangement even predates trains - its how old diesel submarines were (are) built... and its actually a very elegant engineering solution - The genius is that by building a system with a storage battery and even better with a couple smaller engines rather than one large one you have the ability to always run the engine at its peak efficiency load, and just shut it off (or only run half the engines for example) when you dont need all the power - using the batteries as a buffer to store and release as needed to the varying load at the drive motors. This is also how some hybrids like the Chevy Volt work and I expect we will see more and more of this in future.

 

Dittos. Too many mandates in this world already.

 

Yes too many mandates , I think the Hunter Safety Courses are more like an awareness class , at least in my state.
They give you a 100 question test but I have never heard of a person failing it. LoL
And they let Dads help out the younger kids while taking the test.

Mandates just make people mad and then refuse to take them.

Maybe mandate that the Stove companies include a DVD which has been produced professionally like from an Industry person like Mike.
Maybe one of these Wood Burning organizations could help foot the bill for the production and the Stove Companies only need to pay for Copies.
But essentially a Wood Stove Certification Course on DVD. Then a Voluntary Test taken online sponsored by one of the organizations and if you pass, the person gets a Tshirt or something with some kind of responsible wood burning slogan on it and some advertisement for the organization.

 

actually we do videos for our pellet stoves, have for the last 10 years or so. as for a woodburning one , i'd love to do one , but it just hasnt been a priority like the pellet ones were pellet stoves as an end item require more in the way of servicing than a wood unit and the aim of the videos we did for them was geared more towards the upkeep than operation.

i'd love to do a woodstove vid though, just hard to find the time for one and obviously it would cost money to make one.

as for the gun safety course, i like the idea of them and they are somthing that is more easily administered IMHO as well due to the more portable aspect of a firearm. at one time when i was stationed in Korea i was the Battalion's RSNCO. i used to have refresher courses before each months qualifying ranges , if you didnt show for the course, you didnt shoot, if you didnt shoot you were usually subjected to the wrath of the sergeants major (which isnt pleasant)
the reason was not only to refamiliarize our troops (this is an aviation battalion , not grunts mind you) with their weapons , but to stress the safety aspects of working a range where live ammunition was in play. somthing i am a HUGE proponent of. with the training i have had i could very well teach a hunters safety course, but that said , i would attend one each year prior to the season as some things you just dont take for granted and a refresher for even a seasoned hunter is never a bad idea