Preparing for Winter V

Uniscots97

Uniscots97 said:

LittleGem said:

Anyone know if it would be ok to burn fence posts and wooden slats in a log burner? We have some excess wood from putting up fences but I wasn’t sure how safe it is to burn indoors if the wood has been treated?

Please don't risk it. I do remember growing up (we had an old cottage and lived near an open coal seam) my Dad always saying don't burn untreated wood and saying he knew someone that had done it and ended up in hospital. My Gran used to add the junk mail (minus any plastic) to the fire along with toilet roll tubes stuffed with a few fir cones 

Mistype, that should have said don't burn treated wood! Sorry.

Cherryfudge

who's going to know if you chuck a few bits in your logburner at home?  Your neighbours won't be able to smell anything different.  But if you think it's going to kill you or hasten the planet's demise ...

Please, please, please - think carefully before following this advice.

Even a preliminary search shows that the chemicals released in burning can cause cancer despite being safe while on the wood. No, you wouldn't be able to smell it, but you can't smell oxygen or carbon monoxide either. Yet we can't live without oxygen, and we can die of carbon monoxide poisoning. Smell will tell us absolutely nothing about whether harmful gases are being released.

While I'm on the subject, as someone whose carbon monoxide detector went off in the middle of the night last year (with no fire alight), can I encourage people to have their chimneys swept? The man who came out when I called the emergency number had no complaints about being out on a stormy night at 2 am (it's his job) but he was fairly sure the log burner was the source of the CO. No further problems since the chimney sweep came out to it.

2Scratters

@LittleGem we will burn most wood in amongst our normal stuff. It is all fair game imo. This is not likely to happen again at your location for quite a few years either. We would make sure generally it is windy and disperses quickly. Also there is enough other pollutants out there already. As we are a small group of live fire users it is not likely to cause any extensive damage certainly no more than burying any other harmful chemicals or the emissions from aeroplanes. It is all about what you feel comfortable with. 

Si_Clist

Cherryfudge said:

who's going to know if you chuck a few bits in your logburner at home?  Your neighbours won't be able to smell anything different.  But if you think it's going to kill you or hasten the planet's demise ...

Please, please, please - think carefully before following this advice.

Not advice at all: merely an opinion.

We should all just do what's right for us, so long as it doesn't harm others.  And I shall forever remain unconvinced that burning treated wood in my logburner might harm others 

Cherryfudge

Si_Clist said:

Cherryfudge said:

who's going to know if you chuck a few bits in your logburner at home?  Your neighbours won't be able to smell anything different.  But if you think it's going to kill you or hasten the planet's demise ...

Please, please, please - think carefully before following this advice.

Not advice at all: merely an opinion.

We should all just do what's right for us, so long as it doesn't harm others.  And I shall forever remain unconvinced that burning treated wood in my logburner might harm others 

How do you know it doesn't harm others? Houses that share walls, such as a terrace or semi, have the potential to have gas come through the shared wall. I used to know when a neighbour smoked in the bedroom adjacent to one of our rooms. If cigarette smoke can get through, so can other gases. 

London_1

I don't have an open fire or a wood burner but reading through some of the posts I was reminded of back when I was a little girl in the 1940s/50s my late Mum had a large black kitchen range with an attached oven.Almost anything that was inflammable was burnt on the range. My brothers would collect wooden fruit boxes from our local street market on a Saturday afternoon and bring them home and they were split up to make bundles, that what our Mum didn't need, they sold off to local housewives as means to start their fires.  

When in the winter of '47 fuel was extremely hard to get hold of because of the dreadful snow falls and if you were lucky you may have got a cwt bag a week,depending on how nice the coalman was

But we had a large garden and often all sorts of wood appeared in there from unknown resources

In London at that time we still had trams, and often folk would dig out the wooden blocks between the tram lines and goodness knows what they were soaked in.

Bomb sites were raided for anything that would burn. In the early 1950s the smogs in London were dreadful, and one year just before Christmas I think it could have been 1953, London had a dreadful few days when the fog came down and stayed for 4-5 days, and many folk died as the result .
Eventually around 1955-6 the Clean Air act was brought in, and you had to burn coalite which was a cleaner fuel than coal. 

Its as well to be careful at least that you don't burn stuff that could make you ill or your neighbours 

JackieO xx

Primrose

I recall those beastly smogs.  They were truly terrrible for anybody with chest or breathing complaints and conditions  were made worse of course as everybody was burning more polluting coal types in those days.  Didn,t help hat  everybody was allowed to smoke in shops, pubs, cafes, trains,buses and  offices somyou couldn't,escape fumes.of some kind and if you ventured outdoors, even for a brief period, your face,  hair and clothes were covered in grimy smuts. Clothes needed washing more regularly as a result and there were no washing machines, tumble driers or even enough coal to light fires to dry them.

At one point I can recall my mum stringing a clothes line up across the living room and having to let wet clothes  drip onto the Lino  floor with newspapers to soak the water up when the weather had been too bad to hang laundry out to dry.

Si_Clist

Primrose said:

I recall those beastly smogs ...

I really must not check this thread without my reading glasses on.  I just read that as "I recall those beastly snogs ..."

sammy_kaye18

@Primrose and @London_1 I could read your posts all day. I love hearing about your childhoods. 

I have been brought up in a military family so mine was filling coal scuttles and learning how to light the fire from a young age. Still love the smell of a log fire and wish we could have one but being in a council house they won't allow it at the minute so roll on when we buy our own home! 

Winter preps are going ok here. 

+ Brought my thermos flask.
+ Have washed some blankets from daughter's room and they are on the line.
+ Big pink fluffy throw washed and dried for living room sofa 
+ Found out some net curtain wires so I can hang curtains on the kid's windows rather than putting up the poles as they have   steel bars across the top of their windows which makes it hard to drill into. 
+ Have another pressure pole for curtain to hang in kitchen in my amazon basket and just waiting for fund sot buy it. 
+ winter knitted socks all washed and dried. 
+ found a scarf and hat set in daughters clear out as well as 3 HWB
+ found an array of hats for husband to wear to work on cold mornings
+ brought husband a thermos cup to take coffee on mornings to work 


Next set of preps are
- restock cupboard with warming easy things - hot chocolate, cup of soups etc
- find / buy a microwave to save on energy this winter
- find curtains for kids rooms 
- attempt to turn one of my daughters old onesies into dog pyjamas to help keep our sighthound warm. (ANY HELP APPRECIATED!) 

Laura_Elsewhere

Fwiw, I spent three years having to take anti-histamines due to dope-smoking by a neighbour- three floors down and on the other side of the building… 

those of you merrily burning treated wood, maybe best not to mention it round anyone who doesn’t like you- it is illegal, plain and simple, whether it’s burnt on a garden bonfire or in a log-burner or an open fire…