Is it safe.

[9th year rookie]

Does anyone have info on health risks associated w/wood stoves?

My wife read somewhere that it can cause athsma (sp?) or other issues, even with the newer, more efficient, cleaner burning stoves. Especially with young children as their lungs are still developing and more sensitive.

Oil prices are high and I have endless supplies of wood. I'd love to burn but.....do I have reason for concearn?

 

[chowdozer]

Does anyone have info on health risks associated w/wood stoves?

My wife read somewhere that it can cause athsma (sp?) or other issues, even with the newer, more efficient, cleaner burning stoves. Especially with young children as their lungs are still developing and more sensitive.

Oil prices are high and I have endless supplies of wood. I'd love to burn but.....do I have reason for concearn?

Alot is dependent on your situation and there are some things you can do to help. I'm going to speak from my own experiences here.

Get your stovepipe up as high as possible if you have a woodstove. Getting the pipe up in the air cuts down on the amount of smoke that swirls about on the downwind side of the house when the wind is blowing. If you are fortunate, the prevailing wind will not blow smoke into the area you park your vehicles, walk out to get the mail, get firewood etc. Use an insulated stovepipe as it will keep the heat in the pipe and increase the draft. Get a good chimney cap that induces draft. I use a custom homemade cap and have never experienced smoke in my house.

Use a woodstove as there will be less chance of ashes or smoke entering the house. Fireplace would not be good.

When I scoop ashes out of my stove, I use a shopvac to keep the dust down. I have a vac with 30' of 2" hose. I leave the vac in the garage and run the hose in the window. I hold the vac hose above my ash bucket while I use the shovel to scoop the stove out and dump in the bucket. This works very good for keeping the ash dust down in the house.

When I brush my stovepipe, I make sure the draft is closed to keep dust from finding it's way out the stove intake.

Other's may have more to add.

As far as the health risks, sure there are. Everything is a compromise. The amount of dust and/or smoke you get in the house is going to be dependent on the lengths and care you go to to keep it out. I would guess that it would be difficult to tell I burn wood from the dust level in my house.

 

[Patrick62]

Is anything "safe" ????

This would depend on perspective!

If one were to talk to enough people I am quite sure you could find plenty of people with opinions about what they consider "safe".

In regards to heating with wood vs. other forms of heat.
Is a wood stove safe? No. It operates at hundreds of degrees of temperature, and there is always a chance that feeding the thing you could get a nasty burn.
Is gas heat safe? Not if you ask my mother! She would not have a potentially dangerous leaking gas pipe in the house (electric heat). Is electric heat safe, not if you ask the bunch up here that had it all ripped out of their house! They were concerned about electric fields.... Oh yea!!!

Back to the stove. You have to handle the wood, is that safe? No way, you can get splinters, damage your back loading the stuff, all this after you cut your leg off with the chainsaw! Not to mention that if you are anything like me, you are driving ancient overloaded pickups around with old style drum brakes (no ABS). Is that safe?? Are you kidding!??!?!?

The reality is that living on planet earth is not "safe". Is the stove gonna cause asthma in your household? I doubt it. plenty of people heat many, many homes with wood. Handled correctly, no problem.

Okay, I stuck in my $0.25 worth here!! :hmm3grin2orange: :hmm3grin2orange:

-Pat

 

[rb_in_va]

Billions of people worldwide have been grown up in homes, huts, teepees, etc with wood as the only source of heat. I think you'll be ok.

 

[turnkey4099]

Asthma and wood smoke?

Will it cause asthma? - not that I have heard of.

Will breathing wood smoke if you already have asthma cause problems? - yes, just as breathing any polluted air would.

Should you be smelling wood smoke in your house? No, unless you have a window/door open somewhere and the breeze is blowing it in. If you smell smoke in your house (minus open/door window) you have a problem with the chimney or stove.

Bottom line. She is worried about nothing.

Harry K

 

[timberrat]

wood heat

wood heat is only as safe as the person using it. a good stove that is maintained is is the best way too prevent smoke leakage. smoke leakage is the biggest health risk.

 

[PA Plumber]

I didn't post this in the other thread running on this topic, so here goes:

In the spring/summer we do get a "smokey" odor in the basement from the house being a Cold sink. Air outside is warmer than air inside, causing air to flow into the house via the chimney. This only last a couple of weeks and completely goes away. If I clean the chimney right away after heating season, it helps.

 

[1CallLandscape]

dont worry about it

I second that!!! I grew up heating with wood stoves. i was born in a house that burned wood for heat ( NO ASTHMA from it ) now i heat with a wood stove. my wife has minor asthma and it doesnt affect her. i am careful about the ash dust and smoke in the house when cleaning it out/ sweeping the chimney/ loading in wood.

if you are a responsible operator of the unit ( ie.. turning the vent down before you leave the house, SMOKE / CO2 DECTOR) you shouldnt have any problems. as far as smoke goes, DONT burn pine (unless it is reallllly seasoned and hard) or any other really sappy soft wood ( they tend to smoke more)
Keep a hot fire to reduce smoke whil burning

As somebody else said about the height of your stove pipe above your roof...this is very important!! for example, i have a ranch style house with an attic, my stove pipe ( insulated) sticks 48" above the roof ( just low enoughf to clean'er out) your height may differ depending on prevailing winds etc..

-mike

wood heat is only as safe as the person using it. a good stove that is maintained is is the best way too prevent smoke leakage. smoke leakage is the biggest health risk.

 

[rb_in_va]

Air outside is warmer than air inside, causing air to flow into the house via the chimney.

The other side of the coin is that in the winter warm air is sucked out of the house through the chimney, right? I noticed the other day I forgot to close the flue and it was rather cool in the den. I put my hand on the fireplace door and it was ice cold. I got the flue shut right away! My father in law used to say that the chimney would suck the warm air out of the house and I never believed him. But he has an open fireplace with no door to keep air from flow out. Now it all makes sense!

 

[PA Plumber]

You got it RB!

 

[mga]

when you burn a fire, the heat and smoke rises up the chimney. all fireplaces, even air tight ones, need to replace the oxygen in order to keep the fire going. that fire is just like having a fan blowing air up the chimney.

the air in the fireplace is replaced by air in the house via any small opening, unless you have outside are ducts directly into the fireplace. the efficiency comes in when your stove or fireplace is able to heat the air in your home faster than the air being replaced.

basically, if you think about it, a fireplace is a good air exchanger to keep your home full of fresh air. however, the only way a fireplace or stove can be harmful is if you have a back flow where smoke returns or down drafts back into your home. if that happens you have a serious problem that should be corrected.

now, when you see people jogging along a high way for their health, how healthy do you think that is? they're running hard, breathing deep and hard, as cars and trucks roll by....go figure.

a fireplace is much safer "air quality-wise" than jogging!! :biggrinbounce2:

 

[whtwtreric]

Does anyone have info on health risks associated w/wood stoves?

My wife read somewhere that it can cause athsma (sp?) or other issues, even with the newer, more efficient, cleaner burning stoves. Especially with young children as their lungs are still developing and more sensitive.

Oil prices are high and I have endless supplies of wood. I'd love to burn but.....do I have reason for concearn?

Hmmm. No direct link between wood stoves and asthma that I know of...There are several epidemilogical studies have shown particulate pollution (caused by cars and industry) can significantly increase asthma probability in children. However, here is the logic that is probably being applied. Particulate air pollution is correlated to asthma in cities therefore, particulates output via woodstove causes asthma. This is outside the scope of the particulate studies done to date. There is an interesting fact in statistics that most people in the media seem to ignore. Correlation does not equal causation. What is also associated with polution are VOC, heavy metals ect. The latter (VOC's and heavy metals) have been proven scientificly to cause lung irritation and astmha (in rodents and humans). For a basic but not fully annotate/discussed association of particulates and peds and asthma see:

http://www.med.umich.edu/pediatrics/ebm/cats/asthma.htm

Now what about wood stoves. There is a basic threshold of raising the existing particulate count by 10-100 g/m^3 (depends on the reference, size ect). To get this amount you would have to burn a EPA certified stove in a 1 m^3 confined space for about 3 hours (assuming 2.9g/h). This assumes a confined space, no wind to dilute the particulates ect. This is not realistic.

Is it a good thing to breath in a lot of particulates...no. But lets put this into perspective. The U of M reference was talking about 10 g/m^3. Most highly polluted cities have a particulate count of 0.06 g/m^3 with high about 0.2 g/m^3. Is the output by a wood stove something to worry about? In an enclosed space...yes . With a good drawing chimney the particulate shouldn't change much.

Hope this helps.

-Eric

 

[TimberJack_7]

read and learn

www.woodheat.org

One of my favorite websites.

 

[turnkey4099]

Sort OT but on the subject of air pollution.

There is a lot of bluegrass raised for seed here in E WA, N ID. They burn the stubble to make it produce better. A storm has been raging over the air polution it causes with the industry just about shut down in E Wa but still going in N ID with severe restrictions. The antis are just as rabid as the tree huggers. The laugh was on them last season. One day it was approved to burn so they burned. The antis were out in force. Next day the paper pointed out that the pollution index that day was lower than it had been the day before with no burning. Of course there had been no protests _that_ day.

Harry K

 

[JAM]

Asthma

I have Asthma. I also have a woodstove. The woodstove doesn't affect my Asthma at all. The woodstove didn't cause the Asthma either.
In most cases there is a trigger that causes an attack; Heavy metals, oil smoke, particulate, pet hair or whatever it is that affects a certain individual will trigger an attack. I would suggest a visit to the local fireplace store or friend of the family to see if woodsmoke affects anyone. As long as you keep the smoke outside and the heat inside as well as keeping the ashes cleaned up there should be no problem.

 

[HUSKYMAN]

An outdoor wood burner would guarantee no smoke in the house, though it will probably use more wood