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Why Isn't Heating Your Home Free?

The forests in Colorado are no longer merely worrisome. They are well on the way to complete destruction. Here's an example of what I saw near Little Texas #1:


I asked the visitor's center if the Rio Grande national forest was the worst. Surprisingly he said that it was worse elsewhere. Bark beetles.

Believe it or not, there is something good to talk about. I saw pickup trucks going up my road everyday to cut up and haul out a load of firewood. They are my heroes. 

I asked one about the catalytic converters in the chimney of wood stoves. His experience was bad. In fact he removed it. But catalytic heaters, oxygen sensors, and computer-based control of automobile engines are pretty reliable. So why couldn't the same be true of wood stoves. (Please don't complain about the cost. Wood stove customers will squander an extra thousand dollars for a stove that is nostalgic or fashionable, so what is wrong with a few hundred dollars for something that works?)

Why doesn't the forest service increase the amount of firewood cutting by a ratio of 50? Does it allow commercial companies to harvest dead trees and sell firewood? If not, the answer is pseudo-religious ideology (and lawsuits) of the well-funded Big Green lobby.

There are a lot of expensive McMansions in Colorado. Virtually every square foot of private land already has a house sitting on it. The ultimate status symbol is a house that sticks out prominently on a cliff or mountain, and 'borders the national forest', in real estate salesman cant. I saw some of those pretty close to where I was camped.

And what do they see out the prominent and expensive windows in their McMansions? Dead spruce trees, as in the photo above. Perhaps the real estate lobby will start fighting the Big Green lobby. That would be interesting to see. Then again, forests like in the photo are great for the woodpecker lobby.

I wish I knew more about the politics, pseudo-religious ideology, and junk-science of forest management around here. I suppose Big Green sees wood stoves as evil because they spit out carbon dioxide. If somebody pointed out that forest fires put out a little of that...


...the Green true believer would counter with, "Yea but that sort of carbon dioxide is natural and is coming from the Cathedral of Nature."

Comments

Ed said…
I don't know if CO 17 from Antonito, CO to Chama, NM is in the Rio Grande National Forest or the Carson but the dead spruce look just as bad. I noticed that the Scenic Train had a railroad motorcar following it, probably checking for fires with all that dead timber available.
sooperedd said…
Tentworms are having a similar effect on many Aspen groves here in Colorado also; Emerald Ash Borers are here too. The Tentworms eat all the leaves. I guess the Aspens can survive the first year of infestation but it won't survive a second year.

I camped a lot around Saguache last year and there were areas up near the Continental Divide that had so much dead kill the ground was barely visible, but that seems to be many areas now in Colorado. Last month we were camping near the Great Sand Dunes, at the southern end of the Sangre de Cristos, and saw much of the same.

I think the FS has adopted the policy of "Let it Burn".
I didn't know about those other infestations. Thanks for the information.

I guess I agree with "Let it Burn" in one sense: but I say let it burn in people's wood stoves, saving them some money on heating.
Shouldn't the railroad motorcar be in FRONT of the train? They need to watch for tree fall-down as well as fires.
John V said…
Unless you own forestland and want to spend most of your summer making firewood, heating with wood is a costly as well as inefficient option. Wood becomes expensive for the consumer when a commercial operation has to cut, process and transport it long distances. With all the other lower cost, higher efficiency heating options, most people wouldn't pay to heat their homes with wood from dead CO forests. That said, there's no reason those people living next to all those dead trees couldn't go into the national forests and cut all they want. I've never heard of any restrictions for cutting dead wood in national forests, but that wouldn't be nearly enough people to solve the problem you're describing. If you manage your forest properly, you can also limit the impact of the beetles. Everything's still green in Northern ID (for now).
"Inefficient" -- compared to what? Comparing wood stoves to natural gas or propane is misleading.

"transport it long distances" -- There is a large population in Denver, the rest of Colorado, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Albuquerque, and.Las Vegas, that are not so far away.

'Transportation costs' don't prevent firefighters from being shipped in from 500 miles to a wildfire. Look at the cost of that, with hazard-duty pay, overtime, governors declaring an emergency, taxpayer subsidized loans for rebuilding burned McMansions, etc.

High cost? How much of that is artificial, from arbitrary and theology-based restrictions against using modern forestry equipment. Those monsters can snip a tree with hydraulic shears, grab it, and pull it through a branch-remover, slice it and dice it in a matter of 1 minute (?)
Ed said…
John V, where have you been. "....there's no reason those people living next to all those dead trees couldn't go into the national forests and cut all they want. I've never heard of any restrictions for cutting dead wood in national forests,..."

This is only a snippet from this page http://www.fs.usda.gov/main/riogrande/passes-permits/forestproducts it goes into great detail what can be collected FREE, how much, or when a permit is required for how much and what the cost of the permits are.

Special forest products are botanical products, other than timber, that are harvested from public land. On the Rio Grande National Forest, this includes corral poles, firewood, tipi poles, fence stays, walking sticks, Christmas trees, boughs, pine cones, medicinal plants, berries, mushrooms, transplants, native plant seeds, basket making material, and decorative plants.
Permits may be required for individual gathering of products and are always required for commercial gathering of products (selling harvested products). Permits are either free or have a charge. Review the information below to determine if a permit is required. Permits may be purchased at any of our offices.

Firewood
Personal use: Dead or down only, $10.00 per cord, 20 cord maximum per year per household, $20.00 minimum purchase. Permits expire December 31st of each year.

Forest Products that Require a Free Use Permit
The following amounts per person/household per calendar year of only the products/quantities listed here will be allowed with a free use permit.

Aspen walking sticks - 2 sticks
Forgot something, Sooper. A guy in the Rio Grande national forest told me that he has seen so many tent caterpillars that a pickup truck would smoosh them and then lose traction. I wonder how much hyperbole is in that!
John V said…
It's different in the northwest than it is in the southwest. Up here anyone can go into the national forest and harvest all the dead timber they want for personal consumption. We have more wood than we know what to do with up here.
John V said…
KB

Inefficient: The cost per BTU using fossil fuels for home heating is lower than it is for pine. Mostly because pine doesn't have a very high BTU/mass ratio. Unless you are willing to harvest wood near your home, only if you take your labor and material costs to do so at zero, and only if your house is already configured to take advantage of wood burning. It also requires a lot of storage space to keep enough wood to get you through the winter. And they still use gas or propane in conjunction with wood. Most people up here have sheds 5 to 10 times the size of your trailer just to store enough for the winter. Not everyone in the big cities or the suburbs has enough space to do that. In addition, other than rural houses, most people don't have a house built in such a way that they can warm the entire house with just wood. Most people couldn't do that any more than you could do that with your rig (and live).

I don't disagree with you about the wasted money of fighting fires or the "green" initiatives that keep people in high density areas from using wood. You're conflating two entirely different points. My point is that the percentage of the population for whom burning wood as a sole source of heat is very small. It just isn't realistic to say we can heat the homes of eveyone (or even a majority) in CO, NV, UT, and NM with dead wood from CO forests. That solution is an oversimplification of the problem.
Perhaps it makes more sense to burn the dead trees at an electrical-generating plant.
Ed said…
"Most people up here have sheds 5 to 10 times the size of your trailer just to store enough for the winter. Not everyone in the big cities or the suburbs has enough space to do that."

WOW, that is a lot of wood. The trailer kaBLOOnie has could hold 1.5 cords 192 cu ft. So most people are burning 7.5 to 15 cords of wood each winter.
sooperedd said…
John V
I believe it against the law to gather dead kill without a permit. Everything in a National Forest belongs to them; trees, rocks, animals, flowers, signs, everything. Wood for a campfire is okay but taking cords and cords is illegal. Crazy.
sooperedd said…
While I think slipping and sliding on tent worms is a "tall tale" we camped in a spot that was heavily infested with them; a single tree would have thousands with hundreds visibly crawling up and down the trunks, mostly up.

We were in the Rio Grande NF.

The thing I thought was why aren't the birds eating them? They must be poisonous or distasteful to them.
sooperedd said…
I suspect the FS does not want a bunch of yahoos up in a heavily timbered forest slinging chainsaws without spark arrestors. It would kind of defeat the purpose.

For some reason I envision the scene from Jaws when all the locals are attempting to catch the shark.....all at once. Funny stuff.



sooperedd said…
Sorry for all the posts Boonie. I have a lot to say I guess.
Just came back from a scramble up one of the more prominent peaks in the Rampart Range; it is the area of Waldo Canyon Fire. The heart of the fire came right through where I summited. There were several non-government men cutting and collecting firewood. I should have stopped and talked to one of them to find out what wood they are harvesting, dead standing trees, dead burned trees or dead kill. From what I understand burned trees are not good for firewood.
Sondra said…
...that would be better than coal wouldn't it? I was in the Blue Ridge a few weeks back and in the high areas where Fraser Fir grows its been devastated by a balsam woolly adelgid...so I'd say problems are nation wide
Dave Davis said…
The life expectancy in London when wood was the primary heat source was about 40 years. Burning wood stoves and fireplaces was a big contributor to mortality. We spend the summer at a very nice campground. It becomes almost uninhabitable on the weekends when the camping population swells and many start campfire.
Forest fires spew out enormous amount of co2 and particulate emissions, but increased use of firewood to heat homes is counter productive. We only fight forest fires to protect the life and property of those who choose to live in those areas. If there is a fire, evacuation is the only solution. Spending resources of life and tax dollars fighting these fires is pure insanity.
Home heating with the proper emission control devices does not make wood heat any more practical.
I would have guessed that burned trees were "pre-dried", and therefore good for firewood. But there are tricks of the trade to learn about anything.
It isn't the fuel, wood, that is the problem. It is incomplete combustion that is to blame. The purpose of modern technology is run combustion like a precision machine. With complete combustion, you get only carbon dioxide and water vapor.
sooper Ed, the restrictions and permits for firewood remind of something I once read about serfs in the Middle Ages: if they went hunting/poaching in the noble's or king's forest, they were hung. But they were allowed to take out a cart or two of firewood.
sooperedd said…
I think the pitch runs out rendering the tree unfit for burning. It also happens to trees that don't catch on fire but get too hot.
edlfrey said…
One more thought about using the dead trees. Make woodbrick fuel out of them and/or wood pellets.
Ed, that's right, I forgot about those nice (and expensive) little logs that they sell at the grocery stores.