And some food for thought:
These all reckon to use wood chippings/sawdust as well as paper…
http://www.mygreenerhome.co.uk/recycling-waste-9/dry-paper-log-maker-391.htmlhttp://www.mygreenerhome.co.uk/recycling-waste-9/paper-briquette-maker-395.html?...http://www.allthingsgreen.net/marketplace/recycled-waste-logmaker-p-443.html?_$j...And some comments from a BBC site on environmental issues:
Brian Wilson comments on the release of micro particulates (fine particles) from wood stoves. While most stoves produced in the UK do release particles, the USA has introduced legislation to have catalytic converters fitted to their stoves, these can be purchased in the UK. The down side to a cat, is that as the stove needs to run hot for the cat to work, these stoves rarely have a boiler of any real capacity fitted. Wood burning stoves have a place in the scheme of things, especially when the wood burnt would otherwise go to landfill or be burnt on a bonfire. Think positively and smile more! Every day in some little way I get a little greener.
Woodcrafts, Staffs. 2009-01-21
Do NOT try burning sawdust in a woodburning stove! It is too fine and extinguish the fire. Worse it can smoulder which releases the distillates in the wood, without burning them and they are probably worse pollutants than the CO2 released.
The bulk of timber waste is softwood, which burns very fast and is inefficient. The best wood for stoves are hardwoods, ash being the best, but they take much longer to grow. I seriously question the statistics for these stoves.
Baz, Shrewsbury UK 2009-01-11
We finished building our new house last year, it's in a semi rural setting with a resonable supply of wood available. I installed a 16kW wood burner with a wrap around boiler, this is connected in the return from the radiators before it enters the condensing gas boiler. A pump is fitted to the wood burner with a thermostat that cuts in when the water gets hotter than C.H. return. A by pass is fitted to the combi boiler to allow the water from the wood burner to by pass when the combi is not on.
The outcome is that on cold,not freezing days, the wood burner heats the radiators, when I get up in the morning the gas has heted the house, I light the fire and the gas cuts off on the combi boiler thermostat, gas saved, warm house to get up to.I know that the CORGI guys out there will not like the system and the stove makers wouldn't be too pleased, but it works, and how it works!
Meron, Ethiopia 2008-08-28
Biomass stoves are not readily available in stores around the world. I don't recommend burning wood to create a heating system, though it might lower the cost it nevertheless is one of the factors for chopping down of trees - resulting in deforestation.
Brian Wilson, UK 2008-08-03
Very concerned that emissions from biomass boilers contain levels of most hazardous pollutants fine particles, higher than oil and far higher than gas. There are in excess of 2000 peer reviewed studies linking exposure to particle pollution and consequent health problems and deaths with no safe level and WHO consider this the worst air pollutant and the EU have ratified a directive to reduce the existing level of air pollution. Biomass combustion produces fine particles mainly in the most dangerous size spectrum below PM2.5, straw apparently 80% submicron which allows access to the bloodstream. Biomass systems are known to be some 30,000 times dirtier than equivalent gas. CO2 is benign but sadly fine particles are deadly.
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So, gentlemen of the ATT forum, we might as well all just stick our f***ing heads in the oven.