I believe that this whole business got started by a few persistent but anonomous complainers enraged over a few specific wood burners. Rather than address the concern headon with their neighbor, they complained long, loud, and anonomously to the city/bourough. Instead of dealing directly with the (small) problem, the burrough allowed it to get out of hand. Now, the burrough is going to use a wide paintbrush to make sure a few misplaced wood burners are remedied.
We all want clean air. We all want to stay warm as economically as possible.
It seems that most people are under the false assumption that their oil fired furnaces exhaust clean air into the atmosphere. This is not the case.

Posted 1 Mar 2010 by blazer1

It was a battle with the cig smokers. Remember when they smoked in airplanes, offices etc. I can remember suffering a smoker in the waiting room at the Tanana Valley Clinic!!! ...and another time in the gym at the U of A, in a trade school classroom, on the original pipe line troop busses and many other places that are unheard of now days. It was their "RIGHT" as Alaskans and Americans to smoke up the place. Us air breathers have ruined their free Alaskan experience.

Wood stove pollution varies much more widely than oil fired boilers. You tune up your boiler regularly and one of the instruments that the technician uses is a smoke test measuring tool. He adjusts the air across the fire until the smoke reads zero.
On the other hand wood burners tend to deliberately turn down the air in their stove to make the fire last longer causing it to emit much more smoke than it would if it were adjusted or tuned to burn at it's cleanest.

Plus the fact that many people don't have dry, "seasoned" wood.

Also when you burn wood, you burn it 24/7 because it is inconvenient to restart.
On the other hand, a modern oil boiler runs only a few minutes to get up to temp then stops the fire and coasts circulating the heat. An oil burner may only run a few hours per day total on and off. The best boilers never run unless there is a thermostat call.

Posted 13 Mar 2010 by BilboB