Driving around and walking through a park last weekend with my bride, I saw a bunch of trees being cut down, along with a bunch more marked for removal (mostly dead pine and live ash trees). All these trees are being cut down by the city and will be turned into mulch. It got me thinking.....that's a whole lot of fuel, being wasted. It seems that there's a lot of houses that could be converted to wood stoves and outdoor wood boilers, and new construction could even be fitted for it. It could even be supplemental, with a regular furnace for when it's really cold out or people are gone on vacation. I see literal tons of trees getting chopped down and turned into wood chips, when it could be used as a green, carbon neutral fuel source. So why isn't wood used for a fuel source more? Is it because it requires more work than pushing a button on the thermostat? Fire hazard? Some other reason?

Environmental Nazism

My bet is insurance companies. It takes more attention to detail to burn wood SAFELY.

Yup, a lot of insurance companies won't cover it. Also the cost is more than you think. Saws, truck and time

HEAP! Growing up on a farm, you cut/split wood or you froze. No, I'll sit my dupaw on the couch and use the HEAP voucher.

A big part of the problem is that in towns and cities there are too many people with breathing problems (asthma , emphazema, etc) that are aggravated by the smoke. Therefore, many places prohibit the use of wood stoves. Also, the insurance companies don't like the home owner to install the wood stove, as they don't know how to do it with the proper insulation and safeguards.

A lot of it might be most people do not want to put up with the mess and effort required to put up/burn wood. It's a lot easier to just turn up the thermostat.

labor & transport , they can mulch a hundred trees into zero hauling and leave it on the ground rather than haul it back and pay someone to split it to fit stoves.

even faster the new brush machines for skid loaders can grind up brush and even trees to about 6 inches super faster

it isn't about energy savings or the environment it is about making it easy to deliver by a wire or a pipe with almost no labor so you can let it be computer regulated and never spend any time on your heat till it breaks and you call some one.

new wood stoves have a touch of smoke at start up , you can't even see it when they are mid burn

wood gasifiers can go even cleaner yet but you have to get the wood dry which means time and shelter.

you could absolutely heat some large buildings with wood and a boiler and you could run it hot enough to make it burn very clean.

but it is labor and not a bill that all your renters are just contributing to

most new apartment buildings have every single unit has a little hvac unit with NG running to every apartment so everyone gets their own meter and bill

I don't think wood is carbon neutral. Don't get me wrong, I don't care a bit about "carbon," but there have been a lot of restrictions placed on wood burners by the EPA over the past 4 or 5 decades.

BTW, I heat with wood.

We heat 100% with wood. House , domestic hot water , fur shed. Insurance company is pretty lenient on outside Boilers. Couldn’t imagine buying propane myself.

I also heat with wood.
it all depends what article you read and how you figure it , some say zero , some say more , some have a wide range of upper and lower ammounts

the zero folks basically saying it was releasing the CO2 through rot and decomposition

the folks who have a high number seem to think rot and decom bacteria count for nothing on wood but lots on manure

and heck they could be figuring on kiln dried camping wood

I don't know and I mostly don't care

the gas for saws , transport , splitters ect my saws and splitter might run me 6-8 gallons a year
the truck I burn less than a tank hauling a years wood so call it 20 gallons it is probably much less than that.

I was using 750gallons of #2 in 2006 before installing my stove
last year 120 gallons of #2
630 gallon savings seems good to me

ever notice the hypocrites that burn the kiln dried plastic wrapped , pallet delivered wood in an open pit for entertainment on a warm day camping then rail on your wood heat ruining the environment.

yeah they didn't think very hard on that

when you look at wood gasifiers we can burn wood in a very efficient way pull a lot of heat out of it

I think it is better I asked this question for years , what I posted were the answers I was getting but mostly I think because it is too much work , people want to turn a dial , push a button or now set the thermostat from their smart phone without leaving the couch.

think about this one 700 billion in bank bail outs has that been used to insulate homes in the US think out the energy savings that could have happened that would be like 2/3 of the houses in the US in 2009 get upgrades.

I am on my 21st years with the wood boiler and I can honestly say it has saved me $60,000-$70,000 heating hot water and my residence. Bottom line is most people are too lazy to heat with wood, easier to call the oil man.

City closest to me runs all the limbs through the shredder and dumps all the logs on a big landing on the edge of town.Go to city hall with $10 and you can go to the landing and take all you want.Pretty much free firewood.

dito but no charge

and people around town know it there will be 3-4 trucks there if a nice batch or 8-16 inch logs get dropped off they are open 3 days a week a few hours each of those days

I have never paid for wood , always some one with a dead or storm damaged trees
back in 2007 I was getting trees and wood people didn't want

then a guy at church said you can come cut all the dead ones on my 10 acres and there were some great big dead ones within 100 feet of the road
I had a guy stop one day while I was splitting and give me his number he said I had a wind go through and blow down about 30-50 hickory , if I cut them into manageable pieces he would even drag them to the road for me with his ATV at the time I had some many trees to clean up at the farm I never called him, I told him as much when he left me the number.

I have much more wood available than I have time in the day to cut , split and haul

At today's prices it costs me 1500 to heat with propane. I'm not cutting wood for that. There are times I would like to have a fireplace to burn some, indoor wood heat sure is comfortable

Wood has been my primary heat source at home for thirty-plus years, at camp for twenty-plus years. I use older, pre-Automatic Combustion Control Quadra-Fires, They were rated the cleanest burning non-catalytic woods stoves by the EPA back then.

Heating with wood is definitely more work and more mess than other sources of heat. You get used to it though. One thing I don't like is rebuilding a fire after we let the stove go out. I'll usually light it in late-October and keep it going into March. It's been too warm to keep it going though, it was in the high-sixties today so I let it go out. Mid-thirties tonight so the wife wanted a fire. It's kind of a PITA re-building one, especially after a hard day at work.

She helped though so I guess I can't complain to much. Come on colder weather so I can just let the thing burn!

Also,,the $10 charge is good for a year,,,not a one trip deal.

I too heat with wood. I have a masonry heater, most efficient way to heat with wood. No electricity required. One fire using about 50 lbs of wood/day, let it burn as fast and as hot as possible. Its reduced to coals in about 1 1.2 hrs. Give it another 1/2 hr or so when the coals are getting weak and then shut the air off. That will keep my house at an even temp with no hot spots thru out the house. I have a 2800sq ft house that uses about 2 1/2 cords/yr to keep it at 73-75.

There is some work involved with heating with wood. I don't mind it tho, and its easy when your retired an have the time. It gets me outside, gets me exercise and we don't worry about power outages.
I burn maybe 2-4 gallons making a years worth of firewood. We keep about 4 years of wood already cut, split and stacked on hand.

In the rural area I live in there are quite a few guys who heat with wood and are always looking for free wood. Not much wood goes to waste around here.