MaC
Moderator
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64261624
Log burner rule change in England could land users with £300 fines
Log burner rule change in England could land users with £300 fines
Log burners on a sticky wicket
- Thread starter MaC
- Start date
Jaggededge
Explorer
That's good in my eyes. Loads have fitted them round here and burn anything they can find. Pallets and owt else. I like my windows on the airer all the time but sometimes have to shut the house up tight. We're supposed to be smack in the middle of calderdale smokeless zone.
MaC
Moderator
I don't know how they'll do it, but I'm with @Jaggededge on this. One of our neighbours cheerfully burnt the offcuts of tanalised timber decking.
It stinks like burning TCP.
I actually asked what they were burning (newish neighbours, one doesn't really like to start off with a complaint, but we had to close down every window and door because of the eye watering stench) and got a snippy reply about candles...but the stench stopped until they had a bbq in late Summer and lo and behold they decided to have a post dinner fire indoors when it got cool outside.....and got yelled at by other next door neighbour who threatened them with the Environmental Health folk.
We got rid of coal fires for a reason; replacing them with wood fires in any kind of urban setting is just stupid.
M
It stinks like burning TCP.
I actually asked what they were burning (newish neighbours, one doesn't really like to start off with a complaint, but we had to close down every window and door because of the eye watering stench) and got a snippy reply about candles...but the stench stopped until they had a bbq in late Summer and lo and behold they decided to have a post dinner fire indoors when it got cool outside.....and got yelled at by other next door neighbour who threatened them with the Environmental Health folk.
We got rid of coal fires for a reason; replacing them with wood fires in any kind of urban setting is just stupid.
M
BorderReiver
Moderator
By a Tory MP/Donor/Chum owned private company.
Woody Girl
Happy Camper
They'll take my burner out over my dead body! I do use smokeless coal most of the time though, and you can barely see any smoke. When I use dry and properly seasoned logs there is a little more, but the other two with woodburners in our road produce far more smoke than me, as they burn anything they can get their hands on.
Just imagine how much money they will raise fining 1 and a half million people £300, .... and how much it will cost them to do it. I doubt it would ever break even. More taxes wasted.
But then I am very rural, so it's not a big problem. Towns and cities are different tho.
We have more problems with bonfires.
Being a valley, if it's a still day, it can fill the whole town with smoke from just one person having a burn up.
Just imagine how much money they will raise fining 1 and a half million people £300, .... and how much it will cost them to do it. I doubt it would ever break even. More taxes wasted.
But then I am very rural, so it's not a big problem. Towns and cities are different tho.
We have more problems with bonfires.
Being a valley, if it's a still day, it can fill the whole town with smoke from just one person having a burn up.
MaC
Moderator
The thing is that the particulate matter is so fine that you can't see it. You can't 'see' the pollution, we can only see it's effects. On health as much as anything else.
Woody Girl
Happy Camper
I'm more aware than most, being severely asthmatic. I can remember as a kid, walking to school with the smell of coal fires in the air, and weezing my self to a standstill on very cold mornings.
I have to keep my central heating on to 18° as affording more heat right now is too scary, I'm able to buy in the coal during the summer, at a cheaper price, a bag or two at a time , so that's affordable(though I don't know if it's any cheaper in the long run)
Tonight, I haven't lit the fire, and despite my new thermals, wool socks, thermal lined jeans, a wool jumper, and hat, plus a wool blanket, I'm feeling cold to the bone, which makes moving around hard work, as I sieze up.
I need my fire, to stay warm and reasonably mobile. I don't have a family around to bring me a cuppa, or cook a meal for me while I stay warm and immobile in bed which in itself isn't healthy. I have to get up, shop and cook etc. To do so, I need to be able to keep warm enough. Its my only option this winter.
Last winter, I could afford to just have the central heating up high enough to stay properly warm. Once electric goes down to an affordable price, I'll use just the central heating.
If the government wants us not to use wood etc to keep warm, they will have to bring the price of electric down drastically.
I'd be happy to have solar on my roof, but I can't afford to do it myself on a rented property, and the h/a won't do it, so I am where I am.
All new houses should have been designed and built with solar as a normal specification , and something I've been saying for about 20 yrs. Trouble is, orientation means sometimes only 6 houses can be built instead of 10 and that doesn't fill the house builders pockets.
I know solar isn't perfect, but it would help many to keep bills lower at least, if not provide totaly free power to a household.
MaC
Moderator
That we're in the mess we are is the clearest indication that there are no easy answers.
Our housing stock is not good enough for the lifestyles we want to live, not without costing an arm and a leg to heat.
My grandparents stone cottage only ever had one fire lit in it unless there were visitors or it was the New Year. Then the second fire, in the "Room" was lit too. Away from the fire the house was cold. The loo was positively arctic at times, even in Summer it was perishing cold in there.
There is a characterisic smell to those old cottages, and it wasn't that they weren't clean, because they were scrubbed and polished religiously, but they had a smell of line dried washing, of polish and persistent damp. Like an old bookshop.
Folks just lived with it. They lived with layers of clothing, of stone pigs in beds, bedwarmers of hot coals in a brass pan, of draughts and soot and endless cleaning.
We don't want to live like that now, but many are still living in those stone cottages, and those not built with decent insulation, homes.
Add in ill health and it becomes a constant worry and a juggle to pay the bills and still keep warm.....just as you wrote above.
Not funny, and I'm not belittling the struggle one whit, but in this economic climate I think it's going to get worse before it gets better, and all the while folks are going to demand clean air, silence (which is an issue with heat pumps in close proximity to neighbours, wind turbines, etc.,) and low bills.
Something's not going to add up. I cannot see you burning trash wood like our neighbour did, but he's far from alone in it.
When our children were small and I was involved with everything from the Scouts to the playgroups, Mothers and Toddlers to Young Wives, jumble sales were commonplace. I ran/helped out with them for years, we made a lot of money to subsidise the groups from them, and once the public had left, and the dealers had taken anything left they wanted for a couple of pounds more, we bagged up everything else for the coup.....except leather shoes. One lady always came in at the end and bought the bag(s) of left over leather shoes for 50p.
I once asked her what she did with them, and she replies, "Oh, h'en, they burn. They burn really well, they'll burn aw night long. Keeps the hoose warm"
There you go, I didn't know that, leather shoes burn long and slow.
I'd hate to see us go back to days like that, but I think some folks are already there.
On the more optimistic note, Spring is definitely on the way, even if Winter's not quite done with us yet.
Our housing stock is not good enough for the lifestyles we want to live, not without costing an arm and a leg to heat.
My grandparents stone cottage only ever had one fire lit in it unless there were visitors or it was the New Year. Then the second fire, in the "Room" was lit too. Away from the fire the house was cold. The loo was positively arctic at times, even in Summer it was perishing cold in there.
There is a characterisic smell to those old cottages, and it wasn't that they weren't clean, because they were scrubbed and polished religiously, but they had a smell of line dried washing, of polish and persistent damp. Like an old bookshop.
Folks just lived with it. They lived with layers of clothing, of stone pigs in beds, bedwarmers of hot coals in a brass pan, of draughts and soot and endless cleaning.
We don't want to live like that now, but many are still living in those stone cottages, and those not built with decent insulation, homes.
Add in ill health and it becomes a constant worry and a juggle to pay the bills and still keep warm.....just as you wrote above.
Not funny, and I'm not belittling the struggle one whit, but in this economic climate I think it's going to get worse before it gets better, and all the while folks are going to demand clean air, silence (which is an issue with heat pumps in close proximity to neighbours, wind turbines, etc.,) and low bills.
Something's not going to add up. I cannot see you burning trash wood like our neighbour did, but he's far from alone in it.
When our children were small and I was involved with everything from the Scouts to the playgroups, Mothers and Toddlers to Young Wives, jumble sales were commonplace. I ran/helped out with them for years, we made a lot of money to subsidise the groups from them, and once the public had left, and the dealers had taken anything left they wanted for a couple of pounds more, we bagged up everything else for the coup.....except leather shoes. One lady always came in at the end and bought the bag(s) of left over leather shoes for 50p.
I once asked her what she did with them, and she replies, "Oh, h'en, they burn. They burn really well, they'll burn aw night long. Keeps the hoose warm"
There you go, I didn't know that, leather shoes burn long and slow.
I'd hate to see us go back to days like that, but I think some folks are already there.
On the more optimistic note, Spring is definitely on the way, even if Winter's not quite done with us yet.