2030 fossil fuel ban costs in the UK

Onder said:

Oh 'seasoned' wood is the way to go. Many times caught short and burned green wood and you get creosote build up very quickly and that is a prescription for some world class chimney fires...which can burn down your house.

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And, wet wood produces less usable heat as much of the generated heat is consumed boiling off the water in the wood.

When we lived in t’ country I renovated a very old cottage. The yokels warned us that power cuts were frequent. So I put a lot of effort into making it power cut proof.

I installed a reconditioned oil Aga, put an auxiliary boiler in it and a back boiler in the open fire. the hot water system and upstairs radiators worked off of Thermo siphonage. We had a mains pressure shower. All needed no sparks. We had heat, hot water, hot power shower, and hot food ALL without electricity.

I also had a wood burner in the workshop of course.

Then we moved to the big city and we are now completely 100% reliant on electricity flowing from the grid 24/7.

Thats progress !

Fast Eddie said:

And, wet wood produces less usable heat as much of the generated heat is consumed boiling off the water in the wood.

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I think if I build a burner for my garage I'll just use pallets
I have access to an unlimited supply of them
Albeit plastic ones

I was, of course, joking about burning old engine oil I realise the fumes would be toxic. But what
are the effects of smoke particulates and fumes from burning logs at home ? Especially as the use
of log burners are increasing vastly.

Does anybody know how small these mini nuclear reactors being made by Rolls Royce are?
And will one fit in the corner of my garage?

baz said:

I think if I build a burner for my garage I'll just use pallets
I have access to an unlimited supply of them
Albeit plastic ones

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Excellent. It will save the environmental cost of shipping the plastic pallets to the far east to be burnt there

Staytite said:

But what
are the effects of smoke particulates and fumes from burning logs at home ?

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The current fashion is to go on about PM 2.5 emissions which wood burner put a lot out. This is based on modelling, as it would be unethical to subject people to PM 2.5 and study them, so they took a study of coal miners and their deaths from lung related diseases and took that data to use in models for premature deaths from particulates.

Given the recent histrionics and manipulation of modelling data of Covid and its use to justify lockdowns all modelling, especially from a very small subset of the population, is suspect.

I am a lifetime asthmatic, I grew up in smog laden Birmingham UK, worked in heavy manufacture with furnaces including cleaning them out, spent months in polluted China where you can taste the pollution in the air and the back of the throat. None of these have set off an attack, what did was a summer thunderstorm in Birmingham. The huge rainstorm would normally have cleared out all the pollen from the air and reduced my asthma but this one did the opposite, I was close to going to A&E but just about hung on before the symptoms subsided. The local A&E's were in fact swamped with asthmatics and scientific studies were undertaken.

Air pollution was not a factor. The large and sudden increase in numbers of airborne fungal spores, especially Didymella exitialis and Sporobolomyces, around the time of the outbreak suggests that they may have been partly contributory, although a direct causal effect has not yet been established.

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But you can't ban Thunderstorms so its not bothered with.


Meanwhile the scare pollutants are on a long term trend downwards but why waste a good scare story.

In general, annual average concentrations of PM2.5 at urban background sites have decreased from 12.4 µg/m3 in 2009 to 7.9 µg/m3 in 2021.

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Staytite said:

Excellent. It will save the environmental cost of shipping the plastic pallets to the far east to be burnt there

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Plastic pallets can be used as the base for gravel driveways if you chop the bottom supports off, you can then use gravel on much steeper slopes than normal as the rain will not wash the gravel to the bottom of the slope. This is a variation I use which is a mesh but less robust. If I had access to plastic pallets then I would use the pallets.

Oh when I read FE's post about being self sufficient! Same story with me and now I'm facing a iffy winter fuel and power supply
and I cannot believe I have let myself into this situation when I knew better.
Such is life I suppose...:-(

Onder said:

Oh 'seasoned' wood is the way to go. Many times caught short and burned green wood and you get creosote build up very quickly and that is a prescription for some world class chimney fires...which can burn down your house.

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Keep a 10 pound bag of salt and a ladder handy when you burn wood. Then, if a chimney fire, pour the salt into the chimney top. The salt reacts with the burning carbon and converts to carbon tetrachloride, a fire extinguishing agent. As it is heavier than air, the carbon tet will sink to the bottom of the chimney. If no ladder, pour the salt into the wood stove ..... same conversion but not as effective getting the carbon tet to rise to the combustion zone in the chimney.

To prevent a chimney fire, sweep the chimney prior to the heating season.

Slick

Fast Eddie said:

When we lived in t’ country I renovated a very old cottage. The yokels warned us that power cuts were frequent. So I put a lot of effort into making it power cut proof.

I installed a reconditioned oil Aga, put an auxiliary boiler in it and a back boiler in the open fire. the hot water system and upstairs radiators worked off of Thermo siphonage. We had a mains pressure shower. All needed no sparks. We had heat, hot water, hot power shower, and hot food ALL without electricity.

I also had a wood burner in the workshop of course.

Then we moved to the big city and we are now completely 100% reliant on electricity flowing from the grid 24/7.

Thats progress !

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You obviously wasn't in London during the smog years - belive me it was a killer!!

Bernhard said:

You obviously wasn't in London during the smog years - belive me it was a killer!!

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I’m not sure what your point is Bernhard, or indeed what you think my point was ?

Let me explain, the post 1962/63 winter was responsible for an enormous amount of coal home fires, the end result, London smog, so thick you couldn't see past the end of your arm at times, until a good wind blew it away.

Fast Eddie said:

Glen,

You‘re looking at it all wrong mate.

You gotta follow ’The Science’.

The Science says, the carbon issues from growing and harvesting trees in Canada, is not the UK’s issue.

Similarly, so long as the ships are not registered in the U.K., the carbon footprint of that is not the UKs issue.

But burning green fuels in the U.K. helps the U.K. achieve it’s carbon reduction targets !

This is what happens when politicians impose, and chase, arbitrary targets.

And it’s all backed by ‘The Science‘…

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That's what is happening. The problem of Global Warming is real but we have Politicians running us in circles attempting to do something about it. None of their solutions work.
Most just involve making expensive purchases , no reduction in consumption, just the opposite.
We love to consume, so we mostly go along with it.

Glen

More trees. Less people

Global Warming is dead and gone the new science is climate change...or sometimes both (depending on if your up to date with the current science....as that changes like the weather )
I feel the real & true issues of our world that need to be seriously classed as a emergency is improving the quality of our drinking water ...because of the general Man Made Pollution that has got us to this point.

Alternative to fossil fuels:
Lithium extraction causes surface water contamination. It also destroys other water sources. So, it's partly responsible for the creation of toxic rain. Since lithium is mined in hot, dry and mountainous areas, the water cycle largely depends on the limited forests.31/12/2021

How has global/climate change/ science physically or personality effected you
You know like rising water levels etc ?
Look forward to any answer...

Bernhard said:

Let me explain, the post 1962/63 winter was responsible for an enormous amount of coal home fires, the end result, London smog, so thick you couldn't see past the end of your arm at times, until a good wind blew it away.

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Yes I am aware of that. But why are you making it a repost to my post?

You can't follow the game without a scorecard!....Get yours here!
gee...cannot remember which was the repost of the post and what WAS
the post? Er, was there actually a post? Sorry just got lost...:-0

Fast Eddie said:

Yes I am aware of that. But why are you making it a repost to my post?

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All Bernhard is doing is making the world aware that you are solely responsible for London's pea soupers !
You should be ashamed

baz said:

All Bernhard is doing is making the world aware that you are solely responsible for London's pea soupers !
You should be ashamed

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Oops,
I didn’t realise that burning wood and smokeless solid fuel in the middle of the Cotswolds in 2002-2012 had caused the smog in London in the 1960s.
Sorry about that Bernhard.

I don't suppose British Rail (as was) helped, either....