Log burning stoves

Well I love mine. Only lit with seasoned oak and birch, when damp and cold. I like the ritual of cleaning, screwing up the newspaper and putting on the sticks, sitting by it while it gets going. I do know they are polluters , but I don't have a car, and haven't flown for nearly forty years, so this is my little luxury.

Love my 'log man' who delivers, every November, six builders bags from his own woodland a few miles away. In fact this is my Christmas present to myself, and we both laugh that I'm so easily pleased!

I love to put on a bit of copper wire, then see the lovely blue and green flames.

They are a novelty/decorative thing

Not in isolated rural areas they're not. Ours heats our open plan lounge/diner/kitchen and I leave our bedroom door open at night so it heats that as well. We don't have any central heating and only use an oil filled radiator during sub zero temps - timed to come on when the woodburner has gone out around 5am.

I can also cook casseroles, soups and boil water on the top during power cuts.

We had an old farmhouse in North Yorkshire we had two big log burners, they each had a flat top and could take a casserole dish or pan, in power cuts when we had heavy snow, we heated the house and cooked on them.
Perfect.

I only use mine when it’s very cold.( It came with the house). I use kiln dried logs and the same on the open inglenook fire in the sitting room which is far more of a faff to clean out than the woodburner

I have one here , never lit it .
In our old house I dreaded every winter having to clean it stoke it , regulate the air flow , take out the ashes , then the room needed vacuuming and dusting before I could even grab a cuppa
Everyone who came in loved it , the look , the great heat ! We bought kiln dried wood and still got smoke . I breathed a sigh of relief every Spring when I could stop using it
My family insisted on putting the new one in but I have a jar of fairy lights on a timer in and that does me ?

Just got rid of ours, we now have a pellet burner, no wood chopping, easy to regulate, pellets available in most supermarkets. Life is a lot easier now.

Oldwoman
I don’t mind cleaning them out, I don’t even mind going out in the dark every morning often in the cold and rain to get logs.
Love my fires

The air pollution problem refers to mainly to urban areas where air quality is already poor www.miltonkeynes.co.uk/news/environment/coal-fires-and-wood-burning-stoves-should-be-banned-throughout-milton-keynes-say-pollution-experts-1376233. It is not a problem in rural areas.

I am surprised it is such a problem and I can only presume that some people have these fires on a lot or use thm for their main heating.

We live in a village and have a log burner, we light it on Sunday afternoons and during really cold weather, because when external temperatures fall to around 0 degrees or lower, our central heating struggles to keep the house at a reasonable temperature.

I love our wood burning stove. I pick up fallen twigs and small branches to use as kindling and a big Ash Tree was blown down in the wind and chopped into small logs. We then store it in the undercroft.

To burn the wood we dry it out on the floor of the conservatory to make double use of the underfloor heating. Then before ANY wood goes on to our small burner I check the dryness of the wood with a moisture meter. It has to be below 20% before We will use it but it usually below 5%. This means it does not give off smoke. Green unseasoned wood does which is why the Government are banning it and quite rightly so.

Hopefully the current trend for them will soon be over. The only ones I like have a plug on! The smoke from them is extremely unpleasant and like a bonfire.

Peasblossom

One of the biggest growing contributors to pollution.

Now there’s a topic for argument ?

We still have two - they're not on much but we only use clean and properly dried wood now. I'll admit that in the past we used to put anthing at all in..

Several people near me have had then installed, and I love the smell of wood smoke on a cold evening. But not the wood chopping, cleaning out and laying of a new fire before it can work.
I gather they are regarded as causing pollution. The other morning I looked at my hideous but very efficient gas fire, 'flames' flickering, and thought, all I have to do is press a button and it ignites and there is instant warmth.
I am aware there is a war on gas heating as .well

Fake it til you make it! I now have a gas stove, looks the part but no cleaning issues.

Love a fire though, it's a much nicer focal point than a TV.

Love them, we always had one in France, no central heating and bottled gas for the cooker, we have a pretend one now which we never use for heat, just have the flickering ‘flames’.

I have a woodburner and after 20 years I have grown to hate it!! Yes, they are cozy and give out a lot of heat, but also a lot of pollution and are an absolute pain to clean out. Even during the very cold weather recently I didn't light it - much easier to leave the central heating on for a bit longer!

Georgesgran
Same as you

They are a novelty/decorative thing, I think, like agas. Most people have central heating these days. I'm sure open fires and the like contributed to childhood illnesses in years gone by. All that smoke and the fumes.

Wood burner here too - not lit often because of the cleaning out malarkey. Yes, they are a pollutant but I take the view that it balances my total carbon footprint. Unlike many others I went nearly 20 years from 1992 without flying and now not often. I do a low mileage in a car with 2 catalytic converters and it’s said my exhaust emits cleaner air than the engine took in. I buy British/UK Foods locally and in season, so I’m with nanna8 on this.

We never buy wood, can always scavenge around the garden. We use it only June, July, August because it isn’t cold enough other times. Saves having to chuck the wood out for the green waste who would likely sell it anyway. We mulch the little branches and put them back on the garden.

We have one inset into our fireplace. It's lovely when we light it.
We only light the fire when it's really cold. Our living room is large (20 ft long) and only has one radiator.
I dare say that we all burn fossil fuel. For those against log burners, how do you heat your homes? Gas central heating is an air polluter too.

We have always had one in every house we’ve lived in. We have three in this house, light at least one every day.
I would never buy a house without one.

Look lovely, really cosy, but shocking contributors to air pollution

I agree PeasBlossom.

I just knew someone would come up with that. I don’t care, shoot me!

Not too good for air pollution, I gather? We haven’t got one now, but have had several in other houses previously. Very cosy, as you say.