apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Yes. I hope there's a ban on outdoor wood fires, too. (but in my town, not Montreal). My entire house reeks of wood smoke every time my neighbor has a get together. There are days I have to keep all my windows shut and stay in the one room where my air filter is running.

However, couldn't wood be considered a greener alternative than fossil fuels? It is, after all, a renewable resource. You can also burn wood without paying a utility company, making it a more economical choice.

One more thing: how much pollution do wood burning fireplaces really create? Wouldn't it be more effective for Montreal to ban CARS....

ya wood burning is a serious economical choice, no wonder they have pollution from it because everyone is heating their homes with woodburners...its catching on stateside as well. My family in Michigan just switched from oil to wood burning heat/hot water. They love it.

I believe that the bylaw was introduced to start a conversation about how people can stop contributing to the winter bad air days in the city. I have some doubts about the passing or, even more importantly, the enforcement of such a bylaw.

This is a city with a bylaw that prohibits the use of garbage bags that are not green or black and of a particular range of sizes. It never gets enforced.

Pretty Kitty,
90 percent of the heat created in a fireplace, goes straight up the chimney and does nothing but stink up the air. I wouldn't call that economic. Furthermore, fireplaces are usually placed at the edge of the house, and at the most heat one room.
Basement furnaces contain most of the hear, and then gradually distribute it around the house.
Plenty of that smoke hangs around the living room as well. Kind of like heating with a bonfire of cigarettes.

As for banning cars - great idea. Then lets reintroduce horses, and burn use their dung to burn in our kitchen stoves like they do in India.

On an intellectual level I get it but on an emotional level.... the smell of burning wood to me is the most comforting scent I know. Unlike kelleyk, I LOVE walking home and smelling bonfire... reminds me of my childhood. As a Montrealer with a serious dream to one day own a home with a fireplace, this news is heartbreaking. Are tehre filtration systems you can install in your chimney to filter out some of the pollution?

Several, if not many, places have already banned or restricted wood burning due to local air pollution. Nani is quite correct, that fireplaces are very inefficient. Since this appears to be Sweden thread day, the tile stoves there were introduced in response to a wood shortage (yes, really) in the 17th C along with double glazing. They use much less wood and produce more, longer lasting heat. Many houses in Sweden still use wood (not as many as use district heating - 80 some %) but it's mainly in the form of pellets and usually from a central, modern boiler with a hot water system (radiators or in floor radiant).

PrettyKitty has a point. Very few Montrealers drive -- we have outstanding public transportation and plentiful bike lanes. The city is clogged with traffic because commuters insist on driving in one-person-per-car. On the weekends, there's almost no one on the roads. (And my neighborhood actually does have horses).

Wood-burning stoves are much more efficient than fireplaces. They can actually heat several rooms, if not the entire house.

The Seattle area had serious and long-lasting power outages in the dead of winter a few years ago, and several of my friends only made it through by using their stoves/fireplaces. Does Montreal never have this problem? Requiring removal of homeowners' only source of heat in the event of a power outage strikes me as unreasonable.

Wood does not have to be such a poor ecological choice. There are very efficient, modern wood burning furnaces that put most of their heat into the building and pollute very little.

Aw... One of my big incentives for moving to Montreal is that nice old apartments with wood fireplaces are affordable there! I was in Montreal a few times this winter and the smell in the old residential areas was very cozy, but not overpowering.
I can imagine how a city with that many old fireplaces could have an issue, but I vote that they do something about the smoking first- waaay too many people smoke indoors (clubs/concert venues...) in that city.
Montreal does have some weird bylaws though. There was a recent one that pretty well made liquor licenses for bars near extinct, so all the bars are under restaurant licenses and either won't serve you unless you buy a meal (desserts and appetizers don't count) or they just tack a dollar onto your first beer, hand you a mayo cheese spread on wonder bread sandwich that you must eat if someone who looks like they might be checking things out comes in...

I do not think this applies to pellet stoves. I wonder if there is a difference between the two

Had to be the CA NA dians.

I rather they ban large SUVs than fireplaces. Fireplaces are romantic, warm, the scent, the beuty etc.

We are actually saving up to install one in our home.

@Nolann,
I don't know how long it's been since your last visit, but Montreal now has a smoking ban in all restaurants and bars.

Also, few rentals allow wood-burning due to insurance issues, though purchase prices are still relatively low compared to other cities. And that liquor-license thing only applied to residential neighbourhoods.

I'd love to see some detailed number about fireplaces. From experience I know that fireplaces like the one pictured just plain suck. They have little to no effect besides looking nice.

I'm not convinced that a good modern stove that actually meant to heat a home designed to be heated by a stove is that bad. But there are definitely a lot of poorly implemented fireplaces out there.

That's a shame. I wonder if it the pollution argument is completely true. Perhaps it has more to do with building codes, insurance, liability, etc.

I find it hard to believe that home chimneys couldn't be retrofit with some sort of exhaust to diminish the amount of harmful smoke.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more ridiculous it sounds. I'll bet there is more smoke emanating from cigarettes in a city at one time then there is from fireplaces.

I'm pretty ignorant in the sense that I've never been to Montreal. But I think cold, Northern climate, a romantic French vibe--the type of place that a wood burning fireplace would seem quite common.

"There are very efficient, modern wood burning furnaces that put most of their heat into the building and pollute very little."

I agree - They're called Rumford Fireplaces, designed over 200 years ago.

http://www.rumford.com/
http://www.superiorclay.com/
http://www.renaissancefireplaces.com/main.php?i=3&t=mainpages&d=1&l=e&

here in the bay area wood fires have been banned on days of bad local air pollution (spare the air days). as much as i love the smell and crackle, they do contribute to local air pollution in a big way, and as particulate emissions that can have health effects. for anyone who is interested, here's a link to our air district's informational pamphlet:

http://www.baaqmd.gov/pio/wood_burning/redwoodsmoke.pdf

I have had a wood fireplace; it was "romantic" but a PAIN to keep clean, drafty when not in use (even with the flue closed), and the creosote buildup in the chimney from burning the pine that fell in the yard was a house fire hazard. Chimney sweeps are hard to find and not cheap...

Now I have a gas fireplace. It's a LITTLE bit fakey (chosen and installed by the builders we bought our house from, not top of the line where the logs are even more realistic) but it's not bad, I don't have to shovel ash after every fire, and it throws out a lot of heat. I hardly ever use it, but when I want the ambience it does a nice job. It's a compromise (I build a mean fire and I love to watch real logs burn) but in the end, it's worth it to me. For the summer, we will turn off the pilot light and only turn it on again if we want to use the thing, thus saving even more energy. Much cleaner, no dust, no bark, no logs to store, no bugs...

In my town, outdoor fires have been illegal since I moved here, and smoking in restaurants (which includes all bars since they must sell food) is illegal, too, now. City trash pickup includes recycling and yard waste is composted by the city and sold to landscapers to offset the costs of the process... I like it here!

from that PDF:

"Burned wood [in the Bay Area] releases about 6,000 tons of sooty particles annually — more than the entire region’s vehicles and businesses emit."

Note that this is referring to sooty particles, aka particulate matter...not greenhouse gases (I don't know what the comparison is with those).

Vancouver has the same law. Unless you're grandfathered in, a new fireplace must be gas. We installed one last year and though it doesn't have the scent or the crackling sound a 'real' fire has, there are so many other advantages... the very least being the ease of flicking a switch to turn it on and off. Not so bad!

Wow what a dumb move. Really extreme. Like others have said... there are more efficient ways to burn wood. No need to eliminate the fireplace. Some fireplaces are immensely efficient. There are also other technologies that can be explored like scrubbers.

Not sure what the gas law is in Vancouver. My current place has a gas fuel source. Great for getting the wood started then I shut it off and let the wood burn.

There are other pollution sources that are higher in the list.

Akostalas -- great point. There is a HUGE difference. Sooty particles are not the same. We've done a good job of limiting sooty particles in CA. It's the easiest to control/eliminate. But the remaining gasses are the more difficult bit. Fireplaces produce a marginal amount of those.

i think this ban is pretty common in the rocky mountains. when i lived in steamboat they had one. i think it was due to particulates- and when you make your money off of beautiful views (and powder) on the top of mountains, smoggy air is a big no-no.

From what I've read online today, it sounds like some of the newer wood-burning stoves are far more efficient and not as likely to pollute. The hotter the fire, the more efficiently it burns. "Advanced combustion" is the buzzword (buzz-phrase) the industry and other provincial governments, such as Ontario, are tossing around.

I admit that I live on the West Coast of Canada, where we don't use wood fireplaces as liberally. We have a gas fireplace in our own home. But trying to enforce an outright ban on the fireplace seems incredibly heavy handed and lazy. There must be more creative ways to deal with the issue. Why not offer homeowners incentives to upgrade to a newer/more efficient wood burning insert or stove? Or ask homeowners to upgrade by a certain date?

nolan, you don't know what you are talking about, either the smoking, or the liquor license.

Ouch! Well as a former Montreal boy, I can say it is a good idea, and in this situation, Canada and the USA are behind Australia, where Sydney banned wood and coal fires before I left in 1995. The ban took place after the EPA and state government did the research that showed the pollution levels were dangerous, and instead of getting mad about it and dragging cigarettes into the picture let's just address one issue at time. The issue is that woodburning and coal burning fireplaces (the most commonly used) are environmentally harzardous and while I sometimes fantasize about one even now, I accept that an evening of romantic joy in my former Victorian homes, will not soothe the clogged lungs of a kid who can't go to school because the environmental effects are a physical danger.
For those who live in a rural area, then there is less of a concern, but to truly understand these issues people need to consider the geography of Montreal and Sydney and realise that soot and smoke remains in the air under certain (and not entirely unusual) weather conditions. Many cities share similar geographic and weather conditions in both hemispheres.
That is my take for what it is worth :)

Another strike against fireplaces (or conventional wood stoves) as a heat source is that they are extremely drying on the interior environment; both furniture and people (when you sleep and dry out, your nasal passages crack and let in pesky germs).

Think of a 100 g jar of instant coffee - that's the amount of sticky, tarry particles (all so tiny they bypass the natural filters in our bodies and penetrate the deepest recesses of our lungs) emitted every day by even a so called "clean efficient, modern wood burning furnace" or USEPA-certified stove.

Simple filtrations systems wouldn't work, Heatherbelle. It's pretty hard to imagine any filtration system able to cope with 100 grams of sticky, tarry mess every day. The stuff is pretty toxic even to handle, let alone breathe. Tumor-initiation tests on mice (and Ames tests using bacteria) found wood smoke was 12 times as harmful as the same quantity of cigarette smoke.

Far better to prepare for a power outage every 5-10 years by keeping a small gas cylinder (and heater that can use it) in reserve, than exposing ourselves to the toxins in wood smoke.

Here's an example of a town that hasn't controlled wood smoke and a local doctor is advising residents with respiratory problems to move out of town
http://blogs.abc.net.au/nsw/2008/07/smoke-gets-in-y.html?program=new_england_mornings

Surely it’s better to fall out of love with wood stoves, than force people to drive long distances to preserve their health.

Nolann- the others are right, there is no smoking allowed inside any bar, club or restaurant anymore in Montreal. It has been at least 3 years now actually. Smokers have to step outside for a light. And there was no such strange by-law concerning liquor licenses in bars, I've never once been forced to order food in a bar- and I've lived here all my life.

As for the ban on wood-burning fireplaces, I am very disappointed about it! I am a montrealer and consider myself a very true environmentalist on a lot of levels, but I feel that the ban here is overlooking much larger contributors to our pollution. I also feel that putting limitations makes sense but not completely banning them. I am an absolute sucker for the smell of fires burning when walking down the surburban streets on a cold winter's evening. Nothing brings a more comforting feeling! However, I am pleased that the companies that produce these kinds of stoves and fireplaces are finding more efficient alternatives.