Reason #78 Why I Love To Blog -- January 19, 2016

About one week ago I received a human interest story on "wood-burning fireplaces." I did not know whether to post it because I did not know whether it would be of interest to a wider audience. I decided not to link it but kept it in the queue just in case.

Today, I received this note from a completely different reader, who, of course, had no knowledge of the earlier story that I had but did not post.

This is the note I just received:

It seems that even wood isn’t green or renewable enough anymore. The EPA has recently banned the production and sale of 80% of America’s current wood-burning stoves, the oldest heating method known to mankind and mainstay of rural homes and many of our nation’s poorest residents. The agency’s stringent one-size-fits-all rules apply equally to heavily air-polluted cities and far cleaner plus typically colder off-grid wilderness areas such as large regions of Alaska and the American West.

While the EPA’s most recent regulations aren’t altogether new, their impacts will nonetheless be severe. Whereas restrictions had previously banned wood-burning stoves that didn’t limit fine airborne particulate emissions to 15 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3) of air, the change will impose a maximum 12 μg/m3 limit. To put this amount in context, the EPA estimates that secondhand tobacco smoke in a closed car can expose a person to 3,000-4,000 μg/m3 of particulates.

Most wood stoves that warm cabin and home residents from coast to coast cannot meet that standard. Older stoves that don’t cannot be traded in for updated types, but instead must be rendered inoperable, destroyed, or recycled as scrap metal.

The impacts of the EPA ruling will affect many families. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 survey statistics, 2.4 million American housing units (12% of all homes) burned wood as their primary heating fuel, compared with 7% that depended upon fuel oil.

Local governments in some states have gone even further than the EPA, banning not only the sale of noncompliant stoves, but even their use as fireplaces. As a result, owners face fines for infractions. Puget Sound, Washington, is one such location. Montréal, Canada, proposes to eliminate all fireplaces within its city limits.

Only weeks after the EPA enacted its new stove rules, attorneys general of seven states sued the agency to crack down on wood-burning water heaters as well. The lawsuit was filed by Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont, all predominantly Democrat states. Claiming that the new EPA regulations didn’t go far enough to decrease particle pollution levels, the plaintiffs cited agency estimates that outdoor wood boilers will produce more than 20% of wood-burning emissions by 2017. A related suit was filed by the environmental group EarthJustice.

The link for that story is here. 

Okay. So, "What's the rest of the story?" you ask.

This is the story I received a week or so ago from another reader:

When the Environmental Protection Agency tightened regulations on fireplace  carbon emission levels last year, a second-generation entrepreneurial spirit ignited at the Wilkening Fireplace Company outside of Walker.  

An EPA standard was announced a year ago which basically changed the terminology regulating fireplaces, owner Gary Wilkening explained of the built-in adjustable burn rate heater. The regulations “changed the defininition of a fireplace.”  

The changes sent him a mission to meet the wood smoke emission requirements, reading regs, meeting with attorneys and contacting the EPA.  “We ultimately redesigned our product,” he said, “creating a new category.”  

Wilkening’s late father Albert had invented the Fireplace Home Heater in his garage in 1971, opening the family business in 1973. “Prior to his design, fireplaces took out more heat from the home than it created,” Gary said.

Albert’s design “had the fireplace look, but it heated the house.”   

In February 2015, Wilkening faced a decision: the EPA regulations would either eliminate fireplaces’ heating capacity or create a whole new category of product.  The retail store would continue, he said, but the manufacturing of the fireplaces on site would close - unless he came up with a solution.   “We created opportunity from peril,” Wilkening said light-heartedly.  

EPA regulation of woodburning products began in 1988, he said of the initial 7.5 grams per hour of carbon emissions. The levels were tightened in the 1990s, “but nothing more was done for 20-plus years.”  

But in 2010, regulations began tightening. The proposed standards were published in 2014. The standards came out in early 2015.  Manufacturing was to halt on anything that did not meet the 4.5 grams of emission per hour regulations by May 15, 2015. And that was to go to 2 grams by 2020.  The Wilkening fireplace was 41 inches of glass short of viewing area. “Because of the size of the glass, we could not have an adjustable air control,” he explained.  

Experiments ensued, quarter-century assistant Scott Winter offering production advice.

 “We did it. But it didn’t come easy,” he said of the 12-hour days, seven-day weeks that ensued, watching a fireplace burning.  

He designed a fireplace that “met the definition,” 500 surface inches of viewing area and a single burn rate control.

"That’s the easy part,” Wilkening said.  “The trick is to make it efficient and meet requirements,” he said. “It’s a matter of carbureting air to fire at the right temperature, amounts and location.  “It literally came down to moving holes a quarter inch,” he said of engaging “years of experience and refining what’s been done in the past. I knew if I didn’t have it done by Sept. 1, I wasn’t going to be able to manufacture it,” he said of EPA deadlines.  

I would like to print the full story but that would be unfair to the original source. The link to the story is here: http://www.parkrapidsenterprise.com/business/3924276-wilkening-develops-epa-approved-fireplace.