States Sue EPA on Outdoor Wood Boilers

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/states-sue-epa-seek-wood-boiler-emissions-rules-20520429

 

Can you spell politics?

From the EPA web site:

The federal government is currently shut down. The EPA website and social media channels will not be updated until the federal government reopens. En la actualidad, el cierre del Gobierno Federal está en vigor.

 

From the article: "An outdoor wood-fired boiler, which resembles an outhouse with a chimney". lol

 

Hahaha, funny thing is it's true

 

The truth is OWB's can burn clean. They need to burn the same wood as you would feed a modern wood stove ie. cured dried splits. The problem arises when you give a farmer a burn chamber the size of a small apartment. Now... If I'm a farmer and worked hard all day long the last thing I want to do is chainsawing, splitting, curing etc... and if the fire chamber will accept a dozen wet round logs, a pair a rubber boots, recently deceased cow well...

Education is in order since many users are still under the preconception these boilers are designed to burn green wood. EPA, MFG's and others (these types of forums for ex. ) should spend more time in education and demonstrating these units can perform so much better if some basic wood burning techniques were followed.

It might be good for some OWB users on this forum to tell us how they maximize the performance of their unit and post pics of how clean they can burn.

 

The lawsuit is a bit odd given the fact that new regulations are in the final phases. They include new emissions limits on woodstoves, OWB,IWB, wood furnaces. This is either grandstanding, or if there is pressure for less stringent limits, it is an attempt to preserve the more stringent limits that have been proposed.

http://www.epa.gov/burnwise/pdfs/20120209NSPSpresentation.pdf

A little newer,

http://www.epa.gov/burnwise/pdfs/NSPSDraftProposal32213.pdf

 

Some of it is grandstanding to push the epa process faster... Of course the court approach will probably backfire and slow it down.

Its a good thing the new rules will include OWB. They have been exempt for too long and too many fools throwing whole trees into one. How many of have not seen one belch nasty black smoke at one time or another...

 

Yeah, I read a little more, the draft rules should have been out for public comment by now and they are not. So they are trying to beat the horse over the jump.

OWB's should be regulated, as well as other appliances. But you can't regulate stupid. I have heard some crazy stuff from salesmen and owners.

I have a problem with some of what EPA has been floating. I think we have gotten to the point where wood stove emissions should be tiered in terms of stove capacity. Even if it is just two levels. Or a fleet standard as with cars.

 

Agreed.The grams/hr levels should be relative to btu output.

 

This is what EPA is currently considering for furnaces, boilers and OWB. They are looking at the Canadian CSA B415.1 Standard- which itself is modeled on some European and Asian country emission standard. This standard is "emission per energy released" rather than "emission per hour". So the CSA standard is .40 g/MJ (MegaJoule). I forgot what it works out in MBTU's.

So this standard is more 'flexible' in that the time frame of burn is not considered but rather measure by a certain amount of energy released.

Makes sense?

 

I just get a real kick out of the folks that have the OWB and say it is better to burn green wood. How about if they mix 40% water with their gasoline to help save on the cost of fuel.
A good friend has an OWB and he was never horrible but did not have the best seasoning practices. We have been getting him ahead the last 3 years and he is really seeing a huge benefit.....smaller fires now and using a lot less wood than just stuffing that beast full.

 

What I don't understand is how burning a OWB saves $$$$$$ as opposed to other fuels. Here, where our hydro costs are high, you have to buy hydro to runs the pump and fans. My neighbor has one and last year when the hydro went down, he was screwed for heat when his generator crapped out. My woodstoves cost me nothing to run and I have a much more even level of heat on top of it. i must be missing the point. I don't see the economics.

 

Yes, and it makes more sense than grams per hour. Which is when the US gov. generally stumbles for one reason or another. And are they not considering it for woodstoves? The last I looked; which was this summer, they were floating 1.1? grams per hour for ALL woodstoves regardless of size.

 

Perfect sense. In fact it should have been that way to begin with. The current system is like trying to make an 18 wheeler meet the same environmental standard as a moped. silly.

 

Wow, 1.1 grams per hour, really? Even the progress hybrid wouldn't meet that standard--its rated at 1.33 g/hour.