Thread: You'll pay it off in five years

We had a wood heater slow combustion type for a few years untill white ants got into wood heap then they got into garage roof & had to build new garage. We now have ducted A/C , heats whole house & not just one room

Originally Posted by BMKal

No shortage of firewood around Kalgoorlie.

Next door neighbour & I regularly keep the woodpiles in our back yards stocked up. Having access to a couple of mine sites where they clear land for new open pits / waste dumps etc is often a ready supply.

Between us, we have a couple of decent size trailers and plenty of chainsaws, and he has a hydraulically powered block splitter that plugs into his Bobcat. We split the larger stuff in his backyard, and then just pick some of it up with the Bobcat and run up the laneway and tip it over the fence onto my woodpile.

Have a large slow combustion heater in the loungeroom, plus an old Metters wood stove in the kitchen which we use during the winter months rather than the electric stove. Nothing beats a decent roast cooked in the old wood stove.

I've also got an old open top earthenware chiminea out on the back verandah. Can put either a cast iron hot plate or a big camp oven in the top of this, and use it occasionally for cooking up a feed outside and keeping the area warm if we're sitting out there (usually only if we have visitors).

No offence mate but I would hate to be your neighbour, where do you think all of that smoke goes to, I'll bet it's straight into your neighbours home and a fair bit of it into your place as well.
Any waste timber that you burn will more than likely have been treated with a carcinogenic compound to combat rot and insects so be sure of what you're burning.
Don't mind wood heaters and cookers, as long as there are no neighbours to cop the smoke from your fires.
Out in the scrub like John JDNSW (Elong Elong) where the only person likely to be harmed is himself.
One of the longest health studies ever done was on Volunteer Fire Fighters (VFF) in BC Canada where they found that on average VFF (known as Firies here?) lived 10 years less than the rest of the population, 1400 people die prematurely every year in Australia as a direct result of PM2.5 emissions from Domestic Wood Heaters (DWH).
Die prematurely means people suffering lung, heart and respiratory diseases exposed to woodsmoke die prematurely because of that exposure, World Health Organisation (WHO) says there is NO SAFE LEVEL OF EXPOSURE to woodsmoke. WHO has declared woodsmoke the worlds biggest killer, taking the crown from the Mosquito, India alone has 3 million deaths /annum as a Direct exposure to woodsmoke.
I know there are some macho types out there that think it's cool to work a chainsaw and throw another log on the fire, but when you consider the most at risk are the elderly (with some health problems), children, Babies (SIDS) and pregnant women, if these people were your family would you be wanting them to breathe woodsmoke that has the same Carcinogenic chemicals as Tobacco smoke, but is 20X more potent, how young do you want your children to start smoking.
Medical authorities say that if you can smell woodsmoke then it IS doing you harm, my old man had Emphysema (not sure of the spelling), he was found dead on the floor beside his bed curled up in a ball and was purple all over, coughed himself to death, middle of Winter with every neighbour around him with wood heaters (6 wood heaters within 50 metres), windows wide open, house stinking of woodsmoke, my old man said woodsmoke never worried him, not any more anyway.
Please remember this when you allow your wood heater to smoulder for up to 18 hours a day,"NOTHING ELSE MATTERS WHEN YOU CAN'T BREATHE".
Regards Frank.