Hacker News Reader

Comment by formerly_proven | Hacker News Reader

I keep telling people that and all I ever get in response is denial and „oh but the fireplace makes such a nice warmth“.

People also don’t understand you can’t regulate the output of fireplaces short-term. „Oh it’s getting hot in here, I’m gonna close the air supply” - and boom you’ve turned subpar unclean combustion into oxygen-starved combustion. Good job! But wood is CO2 neutral /s

View on HN

To be fair, wood-burning fireplaces are fine as long as they're used only for special occasions. (Think Christmas dinner and that sort of thing.) But any urban wood-burning fireplace or stove that's used regularly is a real problem in this day and age.

In that case I don't think anyone would bother to have it properly cleaned - a safety risk - and you just end up with the chimney acting as a source of heat and air loss when it's not being used.

What safety risk? You’re not going to get meaningful creosote buildup on any reasonable timescale using it so infrequently.

It’s trivial to plug the fireplace when it’s not being used, to mitigate heat loss.

If your stove has a catalytic converter then the oxygen-starved combustion is also very efficient at producing heat. It's common to put some pieces of wood in at night, turn it all the way down, and still have enough in the morning to keep the fire going.

I wonder if that could be somehow fixed in some kind of two step combustion. Like if you cut oxygen supply and are now basically pouring coal particulated up the chimney could that the somehow "afterburned" to be turned back into heat and CO2?

Catalytic converters basically do that with CO

This is how modern wood stoves work either with a catalyst or with oxygenating tubes that sit in the ceiling of the firebox to help more completely burn the soot. Big increase in efficiency and reduction in particulates.

FYI the article is talking about industrial power wood burning, not personal consumption.

You may enjoy this old piece by Sam Harris on what he calls The Fireplace Delusion: https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-fireplace-delusion

Reply on news.ycombinator.com