UTAH Wood Burning Ban

[pennsywoodburnr]

My parents weren't exactly flush with cash either while I was a youngster. My mom turned the heat off at night because everything in the house was electric. Guess what? When it came time for school in the morning she got the kerosene heater going and we used to grab our clothes out of the dresser and literally go running to the heater to stay warm while we got dressed. I'm not sure how cold it was in that house because I was too young to care about indoor temps then, but I remember seeing the condensation coming off of my breath. Are you going to fault me for not letting my 4 year old not have to go through that? I'd rather bust a little more butt in the spring summer and fall collecting wood up from tree jobs and roadside scroungings than relive those days. And BTW, 70-72* inside a house is not abnormal for being in the dead of winter. It's considered comfy. We've got friends who's houses range in size from being a little bit bigger than ours to borderline McMansions. When they come over they're amazed at how inviting the house feels. They're house feels like a meat locker because they're getting reamed on their heating bill. Several have inquired about wood heat. After I've told them what it entails to actually get it into my fireplace, from start to finish (from a scroungers perspective), that's usually a deal-breaker for them as they view it as too labor intensive. Hell Slowp, you've scrounged up enough wood in your time too to know what I'm talking about. Very few want to deal with it because it's too much of a hassle. So.......maybe we are becoming a country of wimps like you say, but I doubt you could lump wood cutters into that category if you tried .

I read that smaller power plants that are local will be the way to go. They require less grid and less infrastructure.

That might work out by where you're at, but it's a completely different story out here. The grid has been around for decades upon decades out here. PPL subsidized the power out to smaller companies, but the actual electricity transmission is still through their lines. We've got friends in areas where if anyone so much as sneezes, there's an outage. I'm exaggerating of course, but you know what I mean. I'd be willing to bet a lot of the wood cutters on here too deal with that problem since I see a lot of talk about backup generators and such. There's no way possible for most of them to heat with anything but wood. Could they stuff more insulation in their walls and attic and put new triple pane windows in? Sure. Wouldn't get them that far though when they're dealing with the temps they gotta deal with though.......especially those mid west state dwellers. Don't get me wrong Slowp, I like you, I really do. I've read your posts about when you used to fight wildfires with your trusty Tinkerbell, and your posts about being a first responder into areas hit by massive mudslides and having to dig out dead people and animals. That's hardcore, no two ways about it. Plus you have a lot of respect from those old loggers on the Forestry and Logging forum, so that speaks volume as well. But what you're proposing is not a one-size-fits-all for everyone's heating needs. I for one, would rather not be dependent on a power grid.

 

[Chris-PA]

I for one, would rather not be dependent on a power grid.

Good choice. I've spent 26 years designing equipment for the electric grid. In that time I have seen major changes in the organizations we sell to, and I would advise anyone to hedge their bets on reliance on the grid. If I could afford it I would dearly love to go entirely off grid but it is an investment I can't afford now. In the mean time I can at least heat my home without it and I'm making provisions for basic light and water without it.

Power outages at my place are common, often over a week long. Since they added a disconnect down at the main road now they can just cut us off when a tree takes out the lines - triage like this is more common now with fewer crews and less tree trimming.

We'll be getting ice tomorrow and I've got the generator battery on a charger, and will be going out for fuel later.

 

[H-Ranch]

70 to 72 degrees? Wow. We didn't have a lot of money when I was growing up, and we lived in a tiny house that had oil heat, and it felt cold in the winter--we lived on the cold side of the mountains, where it was not unusual for temps to drop below zero and the snow stayed around. We had these strange clothes called, sweaters and long underwear to wear and our thermostat was not set that high. It would cost too much. We kids still spent most of the day outside and coming in when our feet were numb. When my house gets up to 70 it feels too warm if I'm doing things.

My goodness, have things changed! We are a country of wimps. By the way, my cushy pension was something I paid a lot of my wages into and worked for. It's called budgeting and saving for retirement. A concept that seems strange to some.

Looks like you might want to elect some folks who will inject more gubmint power and socialize your power companies. Our socialist power companies are excellent and yes, costs do go up each year, but not by much. That's a better answer than advising everybody to burn more firewood. I read that smaller power plants that are local will be the way to go. They require less grid and less infrastructure.

Actually, our county is in a bit of control. We people upped our own rates to build a dam. The dam is about 6 miles away and provides power to us. There's another, smaller hydro project for the next community to the east, and that one even keeps their power working if the lines going from the dam are damaged.

We don't have many options, yet, but there is still insulation, orienting a house for passive solar, and keeping the size affordable.

I came home last night looked at the woodstove, and flicked on the wall heater--to 65.

That's all a very nice distraction, but you still have not defended your original comment: "You folks who live in the spendier fuel places could go without a chainsaw or gun and spend that on heat, if it got right down to it." There was no discussion of spending money on insulation, windows, or even a new house - simply that everyone could buy alternative fuels if they chose to. It's just not as easy as you want to box it in your little world.

Nobody suggested that more people should heat with wood, but several of us did try to let you know that worsening economic conditions (with whatever cause) will likely lead to that as people would struggle to pay for the alternative fuel methods that you seem to believe are so cheap and plentiful.

 

[olyman]

My opinions are not neccassary or required and neither are yours.

like it!!!!!!

 

[John R]

“For everything we do, we require best available control technology,” he says. “And for space heating, the best available control technology is natural gas or electric.”

In other words, we can't get any tax money if we let people burn wood.

 

[Old Goat]

"Tooele County hosts angry crowd at first wood burning ban hearing" KSL.com Mobile

http://m.ksl.com/index/story/sid/33102950

Here is a link that may shed some light on how this burn ban is going to turn out. Tooele County (two-will-la, or as their high school rivals call them "Toolys") is the county just west of Salt Lake County, on the other side of the Oquirrh (oak-er) mountains and south of the Great Salt Lake. This is the first of several public hearings. The hearing in Salt Lake is later today, 6pm, and it looks as if it is going to be a major gathering of very upset TAX PAYING and VOTING residents. I wish I could be there, but I'm on the road with employment, currently in Montana.

Funny thing is that they scheduled many of these "public hearings" during the middle of the day when most of the public is at work.

If you have time you may want to read the comments that were posted on the KSL article.

 

[ddd]

Old Goat, I like your posts but just had to sign up to make one correction that I may have missed in all the pages here. This is not a proposed law that the legislature is going to vote on. It is an amendment to an existing rule that has already been voted on by the beurocrats at the Utah dept of environmental quality. They are the agency in charge of making the rules for the laws that the legislature passes relating to environment. According to law they have to have a 40 day comment period after rule changes but the rule has already been changed by them. When they say proposed rule I think they are being "disingenuous". Now with enough stink they may rethink some things in the law and give some exemptions but don't bet on it. No one is going to vote the DEQ officials out of office. So this is a way gov Herbert has power just as Obama does the same thing at the federal level through promulgation of rules by the regulatory agencies such as the EPA.
Anyway as a woodburning resident of Cache County Utah I am doing what I can to fight it and it does not hurt to contact your state reps etc.

 

[Cerran]

The peak oil deal is much easier to understand if anyone "you" stops thinking in terms of money/currency units, and think of it as energy in to get energy out.

Chris is right, Hubbert was right.

Back in the dsay when they could randomly stick in a shallow well and get a bonafide gusher..that was cheap oil. Really dang cheap, BOTH in terms of energy in to energy out and dollars in to dollars out. 20th century second industrial revolution was based on that.

Those are the olden days.

If we fail to use the last dregs of "cheap" oil to transition to another energy source that is better/cleaner and safer, that's it, party's over. Frittering it away like we do now and have been doing for the last several decades is going to look-to future historians-as one of the most boneheaded moves mankind has ever done.

You got an extra around 3 billion people now who are getting a taste of what western styled "middle class" life is all about it, and they want it.

Enjoy the cheap at the pump fuel now. Next generation, the babies crawling around today, will never see it.

But over time extraction methods improve as well. Imagine how cheap oil would have been at the turn of the century with today's refining and extraction capabilities. The price of oil should be allowed to develop naturally and increase over time which will push alternatives to develop organically.

 

[Chris-PA]

But over time extraction methods improve as well. Imagine how cheap oil would have been at the turn of the century with today's refining and extraction capabilities. The price of oil should be allowed to develop naturally and increase over time which will push alternatives to develop organically.

I don't understand your logic - it is the difficulty of refining and extracting this stuff that makes it so expensive - combined with how fast the output of the fracked wells fall off, requiring ever more drilling. Much of what is being done isn't new technology, it's just that the price of oil wasn't high enough to justify extracting it - and it isn't now either.

 

[zogger]

But over time extraction methods improve as well. Imagine how cheap oil would have been at the turn of the century with today's refining and extraction capabilities. The price of oil should be allowed to develop naturally and increase over time which will push alternatives to develop organically.

Oil is so intrinsically entwined with other aspects of modern life, including military expenditures and resources, I seriously doubt it will ever evolve organically. It hasn't so far. Too much geopolitics involved. Big money/politics/second most valuable natural resource after fresh water access.

I still think the human race is being pretty shortsighted in not using this abundant resource to develop diverse and other forms of energy now, rather than waiting for a critical period in our collective history. I think it is being squandered unnecessarily, and we are kicking the can down the road with techniques like fracking, which I would bet, sometime in the future, historians and scientists will admit was fairly short sighted.

You put away for the future-save and invest-when you are in a position of fatcity...we aren't doing that with petroleum, it is "party down"! time as much as possible.

I personally try to not be too hypocritical about my views, I use petroleum directly and obviously indirectly as part of modern life and employment, but my frivolous use of it is pretty limited. My attendance at the Georgia get together this summer was the first time in well over a decade I did some travelling for fun, something I just wanted to do, not had to be done. so..I am guilty of some hypocrisy here and there, but it is not often and still fairly limited. but...still guilty.

One of the reasons I am on this site is because I am "green" by nature, and I consider firewood to be pretty good as far as these things go, I liken it to "stored solar power". We use some petroleum products in firewooding to get to use a lot more "solar powered" fuel, firewood, which is still in such abundance that to extract useful winter time heat from it is much preferable to just bulldozing it up into piles and burning it off as "waste". In my way of thinking, it is a useful non wasteful way to use the petroleum products.

burn fuel oil directly for heat, or burn a much smaller amount to gether and process firewood.

We ain't making any new petroleum, well...not too fast anyway, but it is possible within human lifetimes to regenerate the trees, which I think is a good idea.

 

[Cerran]

I don't understand your logic - it is the difficulty of refining and extracting this stuff that makes it so expensive - combined with how fast the output of the fracked wells fall off, requiring ever more drilling. Much of what is being done isn't new technology, it's just that the price of oil wasn't high enough to justify extracting it - and it isn't now either.

And the refining process has become astronomically more efficient allowing more production at a lower relative cost.

 

[Chris-PA]

And the refining process has become astronomically more efficient allowing more production at a lower relative cost.

Well, that is news to me, but that is a separate issue. The price of oil generally quoted is prior to refining.

 

[Old Goat]

Old Goat, I like your posts but just had to sign up to make one correction that I may have missed in all the pages here. This is not a proposed law that the legislature is going to vote on. It is an amendment to an existing rule that has already been voted on by the beurocrats at the Utah dept of environmental quality. They are the agency in charge of making the rules for the laws that the legislature passes relating to environment. According to law they have to have a 40 day comment period after rule changes but the rule has already been changed by them. When they say proposed rule I think they are being "disingenuous". Now with enough stink they may rethink some things in the law and give some exemptions but don't bet on it. No one is going to vote the DEQ officials out of office. So this is a way gov Herbert has power just as Obama does the same thing at the federal level through promulgation of rules by the regulatory agencies such as the EPA.
Anyway as a woodburning resident of Cache County Utah I am doing what I can to fight it and it does not hurt to contact your state reps etc.

I stand corrected and better informed. Thank you

 

[Old Goat]

Here are some more links for those of you that may be keeping track of what is going on in Utah with regards to the proposed wood burning ban.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=33119459&fm=related_story&s_cid=article-related-1

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=33134889&ni...ning-stoves-shouldnt-be-banned&s_cid=queue-17

 

[Old Goat]

Here are how the public comment meetings are going in Utah with regards to the proposed wood burning ban. I believe that this one was held in Cache County, northern Utah a few days ago. Most of these are scheduled during the day when they thought that everyone would be at work. It looks as if there is more of an outcry than the bureaucrats were expecting.

 

[Idahonative]

Here are how the public comment meetings are going in Utah with regards to the proposed wood burning ban. I believe that this one was held in Cache County, northern Utah a few days ago. Most of these are scheduled during the day when they thought that everyone would be at work. It looks as if there is more of an outcry than the bureaucrats were expecting.

Thank you Old Goat for posting this update. After watching the vid I can only say: GOOD JOB PEOPLE OF UTAH for standing up against this ridiculous, knee jerk reaction of your State Government.

I said it at the beginning of this thread and I will say it again now, slightly modified: Regardless of whether this passes or fails, vote anyone who had a hand in this out of office starting with your Governor. By proposing this, they are showing you their true mentality. What will be next? Vote these idiots out of office before they try to cram something else down your throats. Make an example out of them so the next batch of morons will understand better that they were hired to make smart, informed decisions for the taxpayers.

 

[pennsywoodburnr]

That lady in the video hit the nail right on the head when she said the town meetings were only a formality and that the governor had his own personal agenda already set before any of this started. Well spoken.

 

[Old Goat]

The Utah state legislation is in session right now, until the end of February. They are feeling the heat from their constitutes. It looks like they are going to try and rein in the bureaucrats. They might also have to help the governor see the error of his ways.

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=33340510&ni...rning-ban-faces-likely-revision&s_cid=queue-4

 

[Idahonative]

The Utah state legislation is in session right now, until the end of February. They are feeling the heat from their constitutes. It looks like they are going to try and rein in the bureaucrats. They might also have to help the governor see the error of his ways.

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=33340510&ni...rning-ban-faces-likely-revision&s_cid=queue-4

Thanks again Old Goat for keeping us up to date on this important issue. The more I read and learn about the players in this dilemma the more evident it is they are either corrupt or so ignorant as to defy logic why they still have jobs. Bryce Bird is the Director of Utah Division of Air Quality. The article states:

"Bird said a University of Utah study shows that wood burning, like automobiles, area businesses and industry, is part of the air pollution problem that has the state out of compliance with the Clean Air Act."

So he says wood burning (although a very small percentage) is part of the problem along with automobiles, businesses, and industry. Did they try to ban those other polluters? No, and I will tell you why. Because the poor sucker stoking his wood stove while trying to save a buck is unorganized and has no voice. They thought they would have free reign over shoving this crap down people's throats who they perceived as being powerless. Unlike proposing changes to auto emissions, businesses, and other industries who have the means to fight back.

The article also states:

Bird said the public hearings that concluded last week in impacted counties nevertheless show that people feel strongly about burning and that more households are potentially involved in a ban than the division initially thought.

"It is not tens, hundreds but thousands who are interested in this, and many of them let us know that they burn on a daily basis and they will continue to burn regardless of what we do," Bird said.

To say these officials are out of touch is a gross understatement. No kidding Mr. Bird, you really think people feel strongly about burning? You really think a persons basic need to stay warm in the winter is important? And Mr. Bird, you might have underestimated how many people this would affect? Wouldn't it be your Divisions job to understand how many people this would affect before you propose it? You sir, are an EDUCATED IDIOT.

 

[Chris-PA]

So he says wood burning (although a very small percentage) is part of the problem along with automobiles, businesses, and industry. Did they try to ban those other polluters?

Automobiles, businesses, and industry are what the society is built around. None of it works anymore now that fuel costs and accumulated debt service costs are so high, but we will do anything to try bring back the "growth". If there is an air quality problem (and there probably is), nobody's gonna touch the fossil fuel based infrastructure. Somebody else will have to be the scapegoat - it doesn't matter if it works or if it makes sense as long as the system can pretend to be working.