(NYtimes)
Updated: 2008-02-19 15:24

Taylor Swartz, 15, carted wood from the backyard for a furnace in the garage of the family home in Orleans, Vt. [NYtimes]

The Environmental Protection Agency has set clean-burning performance standards for wood stoves manufactured after 1988, and many communities, including Truckee, Calif., and Dayton, Ohio, have programs that allow owners of older stoves to turn them in and receive rebates or coupons to buy a new wood stove.

Sally Markos of the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency in Springfield, Ore., said that air pollution from stoves had gone down since the 1988 regulations took effect, but that it was still a problem. On Jan. 24 the authority asked residents to refrain temporarily from burning wood because tests showed the particulate level to be extremely high.

“The air pollution will get worse on days that people are feeling the economic pinch,” Ms. Markos said.

The E.P.A. developed similar standards for outdoor wood boilers last year, but unlike the stove standards, they are not mandatory.

Many counties and towns, however, have banned or restricted the use of wood boilers. Last year Vermont became the first state to set emissions limits on new wood boilers.

Air pollution is not the only concern. New Hampshire’s state fire marshal, J. William Degnan, said that heating systems were the top cause of fire in the state, and that many local departments were reporting an increase in fires from wood stoves.

“They’re seeing a rise in chimney fires,” Mr. Degnan said. “Many have fired up stoves they haven’t used for years and haven’t been maintained. There’s creosote in the chimney, and some were improper installations, just a tinderbox waiting to happen.”

Randy Swartz of Orleans, Vt., said he spent months researching safety and prices and would not go back to oil. He spent more than $6,000 last fall to buy a new wood boiler that heats his home and water.

Mr. Swartz, the maintenance manager at the Cabot Creamery, said he had to buy heating oil at work, and seeing the price of crude oil rise from $18 a barrel when he started his job a decade ago to almost $100 a barrel now made him want to change his personal energy consumption.

Courtesy of The New York Times

 

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