Myths About Burning Firewood

Recently a greater number of householders are turning to wood fuelled stoves as part of their overall heating strategy. This often makes sense financially as well as environmentally, not to mention enhancing the living space with a very tangible warm and homely ambience. However, there is often concern expressed about wood stoves and alleged pollution, plus cutting of wood to use as fuel, most of which is unfounded.

Myth: Cutting down trees for wood, will leave us wood less!

Fact: Almost all firewood comes from thinning operations during forestry management, and if demand for wood fuel is low then many areas of woodland can be neglected and not managed correctly. Increased demand for wood fuel will simply increase the amount of proper thinning and management that is done.

Correctly managed woodland will increase its bulk and grow better than non-managed firewood for sale in Sydney. It is easy to forget that trees are constantly growing; they are not a static resource, a hardwood forest might accumulate up to 7 cubic meters of new wood per hectare each year and softwood much more. When fully seasoned this is approximately 5 tones of useful fire wood per hectare per annum.

Myth: “Isn’t it just as environmentally friendly to burn logs in my open hearth?”

Fact:  Not at all. Open fires are very inefficient because combustion cannot complete and lots of warm room air is lost up the chimney whether or not the fire is burning. Open fires burning wood, or any fuel, are very inefficient and smoky and must be avoided at all costs. A modern closed wood stove will produce around 4 times the heat from the same amount of wood as an open fire plus massively reduced smoke and particulate emissions.

Myth: Burning any kind of fuel produces carbon dioxide and that is bad for health!

Fact:  This is not completely true. Sure, burning wood does emit carbon dioxide (CO2) like any other fuel, but the big difference is the carbon cycle that is operating when using wood fuel. Coal, oil and gas are ‘fossil’ fuels so-called because the carbon inside them has been stored for millions of year’s underground – not in the atmosphere.

When we burn these fossil fuels we release that old carbon back into the atmosphere as additional CO2. When burning seasoned logs we are still releasing carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, but that gas has been absorbed by the wood in recent years. So as we burn wood, a new or existing tree is growing and soaking up that CO2 from the atmosphere quickly. As long as woodland is correctly managed, we are not adding to the overall burden of carbon in our atmosphere.

Myth: Cutting splitting and stacking logs is hard work and doesn’t it take up a lot of space?

Fact: Space is a big advantage for cutting, splitting, storing and seasoning wood at low cost but you don’t always need to do things the traditional way. One method of greatly reducing hard work and storage requirements is to buy prepared logs. These can be obtained just a few bags at a time from stockists or cheaper in bulk if a little space is available to store them. Be sure that your supplier uses their waste wood energy for the kiln drying process, and is not employing oil or gas, which impacts badly on the wood fuel’s carbon footprint.

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