Health and Diet Scottish Recipes Ferret for Ferrets


[pf] For an Opposing View on Wood!...
by Molly Williams
28 November 2000 19:10 UTC

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http://web.archive.org/web/20010514133349/http://www.ata.org.au/heating/wood1.htm
written by Colin Hassall, Mont Albert, VIC Australia

Which begins: 

The use of timber for heating can be disastrous for the environment! In
terms of its smoke pollution, carbon
dioxide (greenhouse gases) emission and its sustainability. 

To heat a normal suburban home with an efficient wood heater requires 4
tonnes a year of dry split wood, housed
in a 2x3 metre shed. To obtain this amount requires one hectare of
forest, which growth must be sustained if we
are not to deplete the forests. 

My recommendation is not to heat houses by burning wood, and this is
made to assist sustainability in the timber
industry and to reduce the high pollution effects of smoke and
particulates, particularly in the Melbourne
metropolitan areas. 

Do what you like in the country areas as the pollution is not
concentrated, nor is supply sustainability much of a
problem as most is retrieved from fallen and dead trees. Country
supplies can become stretched when Melbourne
freezes. 

Wood heaters are 70 to 80% efficient at best, 0 to 15% at worst for an
open fire place. That's efficiency, ie
energy out versus the stored energy in the fuel, and does not relate to
the cleanliness of the burning process. Go
outside on any winter night and smell the wood smoke in the street,
particularly on a foggy night or when a
temperature inversion layer has occurred. I suggest that heating in
Melbourne should, if at all possible, be done by
natural gas, and not by wood. 

Timber is an environmentally friendly product if used in the correct
way, and I believe the correct way is by
building with it, rather than burning it! 

The reduction of greenhouse gases in the domestic area can be obtained
by reducing energy consumption for
heating, cooling, hot water and lighting and hence reducing emissions
from the Latrobe Valley. This is the
traditional method and is recommended by all supply authorities for
reducing greenhouse gases. However there is
another major method of reducing these gases, and that is to build the
buildings out of low energy materials, that is
low 'embodied' energy. This energy is the energy required to convert the
raw material to a usable product. For
example timber requires 100kWh of energy to produce one tonne of timber,
brick requires 1200kWh, and
aluminium requires 56,000kWh. 

etc.

[posted by Molly]