Well, this thread has certainly gone to the crap pile. Though I can only read between the lines, because many here have been in my AS iggy list for a long time now. Back on topic... if there is one... some comments I will make regarding the OP and what I have observed regarding my wood stoves and boilers over the past 10 years:
The Central Boiler non-EPA classic that we installed hardly smoked at all. The ex and I were scratching our heads over that one. We had read all these horror stories about them, the Ohio "environmental disaster" that the New England and New York DEQ/EPA had screamed so much about. Which obviously had to be staged. Our CB classic smoked for about 30 seconds after the damper opened, and that was it. Once the fire re-started the smoke was gone. When the damper closed, there was no smoke. Read: there was little or no smoke 99% of the time. No one ever complained about it around us, or even knew or noticed that it was there. We never had any smoke in the yard or in the house. I posted many photos of that stove in operation before on this site, and discussed this before (before the days when these threads have gone so far off topic that it is pointless to post here any more). That stove was non-EPA, but it worked fine. Not the most efficient being an OWB; it made charcoal when it was off. But we had over 100 acres of trees there, and windthrow to burn a plenty. But all OWB and IWB units are banned in this state now. I called the Oregon DEQ and asked why they banned them, and they said they were bad for the air. I asked if they had had any complaints about OWBs or IWBs in Oregon, and they said no. There were and are actually few of them here. There are supposed to be none in operation in this state now that they are banned. Basically it boiled down to the fact that the EPA had not come up with a standard means of testing them, and Oregon is involved in a multi-state legal suit suing the EPA for not having a measurement standard for IWBs and OWBs. The state level EPAs are suing the federal level EPA. Keeps lawyers paid at the tax payers expense, I guess. Meanwhile Washington State has come up with their own standards, and being more restricted than the EPA, are basically ignoring the federal standards for wood burning stoves and boilers.
My supposedly superior EPA-II/WA approved Englander 30 NC smokes as much as my old 'smoke dragon' Earth Stove did. Both smoke more than our classic CB OWB did. The 30 NC also puts out about the same amount of heat as the ES did, and I am going through the same amount of wood using it. I have about the same amount of creosote buildup, and the same amount of ash. I mean, there is near zero difference. But the old stove was not EPA approved, and banned by the state (well, not completely banned like the OWBs, but I could not sell this house with a non-EPA or DEQ approved stove in it). Resulting in? Much to do about nothing in my case. I burn clean dry wood though, all below 20% moisture as measured with my digital meter. Which is the real issue in many of these EPA smoke cases and a lot of these regulations. People burn green, wet and unseasoned wood. There is little that the EPA can do about that. Or they exacerbate the problem further. Case in point, the Oregon DEQ recommends that people dry their hardwoods here for ONE SEASON before burning. That is simply not enough time to get the moisture down to 20% here. But they are the experts making the standards, banning the wood burning appliances, and then they recommend that people burn 30+% moisture wood? Testing my black locust and white oak here, it took over 2 seasons to get it to 20%. And I split my wood and stack it on pallets that are over tarps to keep the ground moisture out, and I cover them with 2 layers of rubber roofing material in winter to keep the rain and snow off.
Few people here do any of that.
As I said before, people also tend to burn wood with the dampers closed down. That will usually result in the most heat in the house. However, when the burn temps drop below about 400 degrees the cats and air injectors simply shut off, and these fancy EPA certified stoves become smoke dragons. All the EPA built-in design features go to nil at that point. If you add to that the fact that most people burn wood that is too wet, you do not get a lot of improvement (if any), even with all the endless list of regulations. Burning dry wood and running your wood burning appliances properly would go a lot further than all these regulations imposed on us by the government regarding wood stoves.
I know, TLDR, so what... who cares... why bother... its all a pile of political ********...
) makes me go back and think things through more carefully. He generally does not step too far over the limits of acceptable discourse - though no doubt we all do at times.
