Free Republic

Woodstove owners in the Eugene-Springfield area have been pouring on the fuel during a cold snap, and air-quality regulators say a buildup of pollution means the burning has to be curbed. A ban on visible chimney smoke could last through Sunday, when warmer weather is expected. The ban imposed Thursday in Eugene-Springfield applies to the urban growth boundary. That includes numerous less-developed areas just outside city limits.

With the Government shut down going on and winter approaching, we were wondering who was going to protect us from woodstove smoke now? With less than 7% of EPA employees deemed essential, roughly 15,000 EPA employees are sitting at home during the furlough. This means that highly important jobs like regulating your wood burning stove smoke and dust emissions will go undone. If you own a wood burning stove, you may or may not know that the EPA deems any stove built before 1990 as being inefficient. According to the EPA website, older stoves waste firewood and pollute the...

I've been heating my home primarily with a wood burning stove for two years. A Napoleon 1400. In the past couple of weeks, I've been getting a smoke backdraft into the room when I open to load more logs. The wood is well seasoned, but I'm guessing I may have an obstruction in the air intake, preventing a proper draft. Anyone have a similar problem in the past and how best to deal with it? I have supplemental gas heat, but much prefer to use the wood stove. Thanks in advance!

Many Americans are bracing for high heating bills this year, but the frosty New England winter won't put a chill on Erik Fey and Kathleen Rutty-Fey's energy budget. The Feys are one of many families reducing their costly household oil or gas dependence by turning to a traditional fuel with new-found popularity: wood. The Feys first used a wood stove to supplement heat in their New Hampshire home, then migrated to sustainable wood pellets and have never looked back. "I was hooked immediately: no more wood piles, or chopping wood; no more wood critters crawling around inside, or wood debris...

Is a wood stove insert warmer than a regular fireplace, even without the fan (if there's a power outage)?

MADISON, WI -- JULY 14, 2009 -- The stress of rising natural gas prices is leading many consumers to rethink how they heat their homes. For some this means moving towards modern alternative energy options, while others have been turning to a more traditional method for a solution to these rising costs. In Canada and the United States, wood burning stoves have been reevaluated as a potentially viable option for home heating. The case for modern woodstoves has developed with the improvement of the products on the market, as wood heating technology has substantially advanced in recent years. With the...

Local fire crews are dealing with a big spike in accidental fires and some of them may be caused by compressed logs. Ramona Estay of Woodinville nearly lost her home because of the mistake she used a compressed log in her wood stove. "It was about ten o'clock and I noticed the fire was completely out of control and I went to open this up to push the log back, and the fire was literally coming out up to here. It was roaring," she said. Estay quickly closed the door and called the fire department. "It was so bad by...