Too difficult for me that one. But there is a net deposition of carbon mainly in shells mostly as a result so your "every tonne/one tonne" is a little out.

I discovered this thread ironically whilst searching for advice on how to deal with nuisance smells coming from my neighbour's wood burner. The initial post from 'Justin' is uncannily what I would expect from my own neighbour. Since I will have to assume this is a different case I can't speak for Justin's neighbour directly, but I can describe my own experiences from what appears to be an identical situation. Justin’s original comments in quotes…

"I'm looking for opinions or anecdotes if anyone has had to deal with stupid neighbours, (I'm sorry for that gross simplification - only no other description quite fits my irritation right now), regarding our wood burners?"

'Justin', just because 'you' are irritated does not automatically make your neighbour stupid. As other commentators have suggested, it is quite feasible that you are in the wrong and acting without showing consideration for your neighbours.

"In these days of fossil fuelled gas boilers, the scent of a little woodsmoke hanging the night air is a little unusual. (Our visitors say they like it!). So how to deal with the aforementioned neighbours who have been banging on my door grumbling that it is making them cough (I say rubbish), and coming indoors (well I say probably rubbish, and if this means not using it in certain wind directions OK, - but these sort of people don't even seem to comprehend what "wind direction" means!)."

'Justin', your visitors don't have to live with it so their opinion is pretty irrelevant. Visitors to our property have commented on how the smell from my neighbours is like a bonfire. Have you asked your visitors how they would feel about the same smell lingering in their living room, bedrooms etc.? I suspect not. From my own experience, I can assure you that such smells do penetrate into the house even when windows are closed – it’s called ventilation, look into it! We all have a right to clean air and even if the smell did not penetrate the house with the windows closed (which it does) we should be free to leave windows ajar without having to smell smoke from selfish people who install wood burners in built up areas. Come to that, why stop at the house? I'd like to be able to sit outside on an evening and breathe clean air. I would be very surprised if your neighbour did not understand a simple concept like 'wind direction' and average wind direction should not be used as some sort of mitigation for your fumes.

"We are describing rich lard arses with no concept of sustainability, whose attitude when quizzed about their 500W halogen security light (mostly on) is a shrug of the shoulders because they can afford the electricity, and who run their car engines on cold mornings for minutes on end polluting my front garden as I get on my bicycle."

'Justin', that’s a pretty defamatory statement, very brave of you I'm sure when hiding behind an anonymous alias. Different people can choose to support the environment in different ways; that they don't agree with your approach is no justification to insult them like you have. For my part I have solar water heating panels installed that are efficient, unobtrusive and emit zero pollution or smell. Hands up; we run our car engines for a few minutes on very cold days to remove frost; I don't claim to be a saint. I find it very hypocritical that you expect your neighbours to tolerate wood burning smells for long periods of time whilst you object to engines running briefly, perhaps a dozen times a year??? for the amount of time it takes you to get on your bike.

"I'm not in any special air quality area, this is a small 6KW stove burning only seasoned hardwood, and yes sometimes there is a "autumnal" smell in the air. Neighbourly relations are already frosty over one or two of their other dumb ideas (Which I won't bore you with)."

'Justin', I would double check that you are not in a smoke control area, many areas of the UK now are. In my situation we do live in a designated smoke control area and my neighbour by his own admission is burning wood on an unapproved appliance. He is breaking the law and so is the firm delivering the wood. My neighbour has threatened that if I report him he will purchase an approved appliance and run it even more frequently out of spite. Given that you appear to hold a minority view (based on this thread) of the right to run a wood burner in a built up area, perhaps your neighbours other views are not as dumb as you would lead people to believe. Also, isn’t ‘autumnal’ over-romanticising something that is essentially a carcinogenic smell?

"I can't be the only one who has experienced these sort of people. - Just what do we do?"

'Justin' it sounds like 'these sort of people' could represent the vast majority of people in the UK who just want to lead their own lives without impact from selfish neighbours whose actions can be felt (and in this case smelt) beyond their boundaries. I am certainly heartened by the comments from many other posters who despite the possible bias of your original posting appear to sympathise more with your neighbour. Perhaps you would like to explain why you believe that your neighbours do not have any right to live free of the smell of your wood burner.

Your not exaggerating then? A gallon of fuel? How may times a year? Is the smell entering your house? Does the smell surround a sleeping 18 month old child as in our situation?

"Live and let live", would you object to somebody playing music at 80 decibels outside your house? Smoke polution, noise polution, either way it is anti-social.

I am honest enough to own up about idling my car for around 5 minutes perhaps a dozen times a year at most and so far without complaint. We are literally talking about less than one hour total - annually. Please don't try and compare this to a wood burner running for 4-5 hours per night and often longer at weekends. If I received a complaint from my neighbours about my cars very occasional idling I would stop, no question about it.

He says he is burning only seasoned wood. By his own admission, his appliance is not approved for use in a smoke control area. I don't know enough about these things to know what difference an approved appliance would make and since he has threatened to ramp up his output should I complain I am not sure (yet) if I want to find out. This week it was particularly bad, my visiting in-laws said they smelt it at the start of the lane - some 100 yards down the road.

Another bit of background, we live on a descending lane with his property being below ours. His flue output is roughly parallel with our windows which I am sure does not help the situation.

I'm not doing it for personal comfort, simply to defrost the windscreen so I can see safely before I set off. Can we get this into some sort of perspective, so far I have defrosted my car in such a way approx 4 times this year. I hereby promise not to do it again, can we get back on the subject of wood burners?

Posted By: tonyI always tip a bucket of hot water over frosted up windscreens works very well above -3.

It works at -10C as well. Below that (here at least) the air is so dry there is no frost. If there's solid ice on the windscreen then all that we can do is scrape. As for wood burners, smoke will always be a potential problem, even with "low emission" appliances, especially when the fire is first lit. As they say, there's no smoke without fire and the reverse is also true until the fire gets going well enough.

Paul in Montrela.

Thanks Robo for bringing this thread back to the top of the list - I haven't been on this site for a long while...

I am 100% on the side of those expressing resentment of their neighbours' 'clean burning' wood burners. Before moving to New Zealand 5 years ago, we lived in the USA where our neighbours across the road, whose house at street level was perhaps 5 feet below ours, often had a fire going even on warmer spring/autumn days. I seriously resented their smoke coming into our house, even through closed windows, day after day - it made me cough and choke, and I was concerned too about the health effects on my small children. We were admittedly very unlucky in that these neighbours were the only people on the street who used their fireplace to actually warm their home. I just could not enjoy my life there, especially in winter, because of the smoke problem.

So we were very thrilled to get a chance to move to New Zealand where we assumed, based largely on the hugely successful 'clean, green' NZ PR campaigns run by the NZ gov't, that we would finally have clean winter air to breathe again. Well, as the Kiwis love to say: yea right!

The smog problem in NZ from logburners, especially on the colder South Island, is one of the worst in the world - here is a country where STILL the majority of people in the colder areas rely on burning wood for heating their homes (and often their water). Many councils are trying to phase out open fireplaces and older more inefficient logburners, but it's been very very slow going, and now with a recession looming there is even less likelihood that clean air advocates are going to have much success in prying many more of these much-loved/cheap-to-run (free firewood for many) pollution factories from their owners' hands anytime soon. The council in our area actually offers a choice of either a subsidy or an interest-free 10-year loan on replacement of the old burners with 'cleaner-burning' pellet or log fires, or heatpumps, or gas heaters. So good incentives are there. But one problem is that to qualify for the subsidy or loan, the council insists the old polluting heating appliances be removed. So many of those who have taken the council up on their offer have chosen the 'cleaner-burning' logburner or pellet fire options over the 100% clean heatpumps/gas fires. Much of NZ is powered by hydro plants that are already near or over capacity, and winter power cuts are a real threat - so one can imagine the reluctance all around (higher cost to run, uncertainty about reliable power supply) to go with a heat source that won't function in a power outage.

(It's 3:00 a.m. here, so will continue this tomorrow with a description of what it's like to live with large numbers of neighbours with 'clean burning' log burners/pellet fires', and with a suggestion or two to those who have, or are contemplating purchasing, this type of heating system. Cheers!)

Most of the time I also use a bit of tepid water over the windscreen. I only use the engine heat to assist when it is so cold that the applied water begins to freeze, like I say on only a very few occasions this year.

My neighbour has often mentioned the initial lighting period and that during this period smoke will be visisble. This does appear to be the case, possibly for say half an hour after lighting. After that time the smoke is no longer visible, but the smell is certainly still as bad and it is the smell I object to. Do these approved appliances do anything to reduce the smell or would I still expect it? Are there any rules about how high a flue must be in respect to neighbouring properties?

No you dont want to know what they are:-

Analysed Volatiles

Chloromethane, bromomethane, vinyl chloride. chloroethane, methylene chloride, acetone, carbon disulfide; 1,1-dichloroethene; 1,1-dichloroethane; trans-1,2-dichloroethene; cis-1,2-dichloroethene; chloroform, 1,2-dichloroethane; 2-butanone, 1,1,1-trichloroethane; carbon tetrachloride; bromodichloromethane; 1,2-dichloropropane; cis-1,3-dichloropropene; trichloroethene, dibromochloromethane, 1,1,2-trichloroethane; benzene, trans-1,3-dichloropropene, bromoform, 4-methyl-2-pentanone; 2-hexanone; tetrachloroethene, 1,1,2,2-tetrachloroethane; toluene, chlorobenzene, ethylbenzene, styrene, m,p-xylene; o-xylene.

Semivolatiles
Phenol; bis(2-chloroethyl) ether; 2-chlorophenol; 1,3-dichlorobenzene; 1,4-dichlorobenzene; 1,2-dichlorobenzene; 2-methylphenol; 2,2Õ-oxybis (1-chloropropane); 4-methylphenol; n-nitrosodinpropylamine; hexachloroethane; nitrobenzene; isophorone; 2-nitrophenol; 2,4-dimethylphenol; bis (2-chloroethoxy) methane; 2,4-dichlorophenol; 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene; napthalene; 4-chloroaniline; hexachlorobutadiene; 4-chloro-3-methylphenol; 2-methylnaphthalene; hexachlorocyclopentadiene; 2,4,6-trichlorophenol; 2,4,5-trichlorophenol; 2-chloronaphthalene; 2-nitroaniline; dimethylphthalate; acenaphthylene; 2,6-dinitrotoluene; 3-nitroaniline; acenaphthene; 2,4-dinitrophenol; 4-nitrophenol; dibenzofuran; 2,4-dinitrotoluene; diethylphthalate; 4-chlorophenylphenylether; fluorene; 4-nitroaniline; 2-methyl-4,6-dinitrophenol; n-nitrosodiphenylamine; 4-bromophenylphenylether; hexachlorobenzene; pentachlorophenol; phenanthrene; anthracene; carbazole; di-n-butylphthalate; fluoranthene; pyrene; butylbenzylphthalate; 3,3Õ-dichlorobenzidine; benzo (a) anthracene; chrysene; bis (2-ethylhexyl)phthalate; di-n-octylphthalate; benzo (b) fluoranthene; benzo (k) fluoranthene; benzo (a) pyrene; indeno (1,2,3-cd)pyrene; dibenzo (a,h) anthracene; benzo (ghi) perylene.

Tony, is wood smoke more harmful than coal smoke? On a personal level, I've never had a problem with smoke from a neighbours' flue or chimney, but have from bonfires in gardens (and have been a cause of such problems also...) burning green wood and brash. When I see bonfires now (being more enlightened) I think what a terrible waste of a resource.

Majik, I have been following the Christchurch (NZ) clean heat project where in a large part of that 300 000 strong community, they have recently banned open fires (am I right?) and are phasing out dirtier wood burners in favour of wood stoves only emitting either 1g / kg or 1.5g /kg PM10 particulates maximum (I can't remember which it is, 1 or 1.5). They are also phasing out coal fires.

Do you have any knowledge of this. If so, I will be glad if you would share what you know.

Cheers, Simeon

Posted By: tonyWhat do you think about the British governments drive towards much greater use of biomass burning to produce so called zero carbon energy then Paul?

I don't think it makes much sense, though in CHP stations it may be quite good. Problem is that there isn't enough land to produce the requisite amount of biomass in the first place. If you think of what it's being used for, people may as well eat more and sweat off the excess calories since at least the heat is then applied directly to where it's needed. I think land is better used for growing food rather than firewood. Not to say there aren't sources of waste biomass that shouldn't be used, but I don't think biomass should be produced instead of food. Look at the insanity in the US with the push to bioethanol, even though the EROI is break even at best. Food prices are going to rocket due to this.

Posted By: CWattersThey've just scrapped the tax ddifferential on biofuel in the budget.

Good as such tax incentives are effectively a hidden subsidy which distorts the market (c.f. bioethanol in the US again).

Paul in Montreal.

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: Robo</cite>He says he is burning only seasoned wood. By his own admission, his appliance is not approved for use in a smoke control area. I don't know enough about these things to know what difference an approved appliance would make and since he has threatened to ramp up his output should I complain I am not sure (yet) if I want to find out. This week it was particularly bad, my visiting in-laws said they smelt it at the start of the lane - some 100 yards down the road.

Another bit of background, we live on a descending lane with his property being below ours. His flue output is roughly parallel with our windows which I am sure does not help the situation.</blockquote>

An approved appliance should give the odd whisp of smoke, certainly not enough to penetrate into your house or indeed 100 yds up the lane!

I guess the combination of things hills etc not helping. You could always check if you are in a smoke control zone vefore you complain officialy. As I commented on live and let live this chap just sounds like "people" as I like to call them, no common sense or consideration!

Good point Sune, hence I cant smell anythig from my 2 flues, dry wood burnt fast and hot.

I would comment as well, my neighbours often sleep with a window open and have no issues as I have discussed it with them since this thread started.

Elequently put.