Many individuals question whether burning wood in an outdoor wood furnace is a good green energy solution or contributing to global warming. Well the answer is not that simple .... it depends! As with all things in life the answer can be muddled in the execution. If an outdoor wood furnace is designed and installed intelligently then it is a great, GREEN heating option. If not, then it may get you ejected from the neighbourhood. How does one know?
First maybe lets look at all the reasons why wood itself may be a good fuel source. In my case it is a no brainer. I have a wood business that generates large volumes of waste in the form of very thin and very long strips of wood. Disposal is always an issue. Thus, an outdoor wood furnace looks attractive.
Some have suggested cutting it up and bagging it for campgrounds as a source of fire starter, but the cost of handling is higher than what the campgrounds are interested in paying.
Stacking it in one large pile and having an annual bonfire certainly appeals to the guests and creates a wonderful social environment, but as municipalities tighten up on open burning regulations, for good reason, this option is rarely available... at least not that size. Thus considering outdoor wood burning furnaces as a method of disposal, if for no other reason, is not a bad plan... and if it saves on the heating bill and offsets oil consumption it is even better.
Likewise if you have access to local firewood using that as a fuel source helps to clear the forest of very low grade fibre and make room for better quality trees. In fact using wood as a heating fuel is endorsed by the U.S. Forestry Service especially when you use an outdoor wood furnace that contains the fire in an all metal container and presents no fire hazard.
The best reason to use wood is that it is renewable. We as human beings are getting a little smarter. We do know that trees can be replanted and many more jurisdictions are moving towards sustainable harvesting and silviculture methods that guarantee that we are not removing more wood from the earth than we are growing. That can't be said of many of the other fuel options: oil, coal or nuclear.
But the story gets better. Every tree is about 50% carbon. Where does that come from?As the tree grows, it breathes in all the pollutants that you and I persist in dumping into the atmosphere, and the tree is smart enough to convert the carbon in the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide into tree mater. The tree acts like a pollution repository.
Taking that tree and converting it to a desk would lock in the pollution and be the best answer, but in the worse case scenario even if we burn all this wood in an outdoor wood furnace, it still would not give up more carbon that what it originally absorbed as the tree grew to maturity. Thus although using outdoor wood burning furnaces is not the perfect answer, it certainly does not add more carbon based pollution to the environment than what would have existed if the tree had never been born. That can't be said of oil, coal or nuclear. Wood is carbon neutral!
The question then becomes how wood burning can be efficient in outdoor furnaces to minimize toxic exhaust. That is a story on its own including a larger discussion on intelligent furnace design, what metal to use for good thermal transfer, an article on water-antifreeze considerations for your hot water boiler.. and many more design paramaters covered on our website.
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