Davis fired up over proposed limits on wood-burning in homes

[Mugu]

By Hudson Sangree, sacbee.com

As nights turn cold and days stay gray, the city of Davis is weighing a ban on a symbol of domestic warmth: the wood-burning fireplace. Not just fireplaces, but wood stoves that don't meet strict environmental standards. Even the cleanest-burning stoves could be used only about half the days of winter, and then for just six hours a day, under the proposed ordinance. If enacted, it would be one of the toughest wood-burning measures in the state.

"It will restrict burning more than any other ordinance that we're aware of," said Alan Pryor, an environmental consultant who has spearheaded the effort. The proposed fireplace ban has caused a ruckus in Davis, which currently has few restrictions.

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Residents concerned about environmental health, including folks with asthma and other breathing problems, are firing off letters and phoning city officials.

Pryor said he first proposed a total ban on wood burning after caring for his mother, who died of lung cancer last year. He said a neighbor in Merced stoked his wood stove night and day, and the smoke seeped into his mother's house, even with the windows and doors sealed. He realized that wood burning could be a localized health hazard, with smoke drifting to neighbors' houses, even on days when regional air quality allowed it.

http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/1459138.html">Complete article

[Diane R]

1. Smoke from woodstoves is very hard on asthmatics.

It's such a difficult dilemma. Many people have to rely on wood to heat their homes, yet it is costly for people with breathing problems. It's a difficult choice. I have asthma, and don't want the burning, but my own mom uses wood to save money. I don't know the answer.

[Lerkfish]

2. well, its a mere drop in the bucket to other sources and to boot, it relieves some

dependence on other fuels that are equally polluting.

[sui generis]

3. well modern wood stoves are extremely efficient

and sorry - wood smoke seeping in your windows is cookoo bananas. Seriously. Fix the wb stoves and license them or only license pelletized.

Wanna know what gave your mother lung cancer? Cooking your meals every day over vaporized protein and grease, cleaning with comet and ajax and bleach and ammonia and using air fresheners, furniture polish and even just dusting and sweeping.

Seriously - this is craziness and completely off base, fix the problem, not the symptom.

[hedgehog]

5. Smoke is smoke regardless of whether it is coming from a car

or a woodstove. I doubt the neighbor's wood fire caused the lung cancer, but the smoke may have made breathing harder during her last days. If the particulates from the stove are small, they could very well seep into a house.

[Warpy]

4. An outright ban is silly and self defeating

because it will encourage massive civil disobedience.

My own city is in a valley and issues alerts on high pollution days. People with catalytic converters on their wood stoves can use them on those days, as can people who use pellet stoves. The rest of us have to rely on other heating sources until the air clears.

Coincidentally, the high pollution days are also the warmer days, so it all works out fine.

There are people who do drive around on "red alert" days and ticket people who use wood stoves and fireplaces. Some people in the city have hardship variances when there is no other source of heat in the house.

The system here works and perhaps that's what Davis should be considering.

[Winterblues]

6. Where I live there are ordinances that restrict wood burning during certain conditions.

In front of the Glacier, that is Mendenhall Glacier, there often is what's called an air inversion which traps the smoke at about roof top levels. A very large portion of the population of the Capital city of Alaska lives in the Mendenhall Valley and every year during the coldest part of the year wood burning is banned. Has been like that for well over a decade..Kind of sucks if you don't have a lot of money to buy heating oil...

[blondeatlast]

8. Interesting; I live in Phoenix and we have very strict bans on yes--inversion days.

My son has asthma and they keep ALL the kids inside on inversion days. You can cut the air with a knife on those days--yuck.

Interesting that you have them in your area too. I thought it was a product of our climate. :shrug:

[B Calm]

7. Right wingers will run with this and rightfully so!