Liberals bring the love for woodheaters in Molonglo

I enjoyed the novelty of a fireplace on a recent romantic getaway but can’t say I’d like it as my permanent way of heating a house. My reverse cycle does well, and running one of those power-chewing space heaters if I only need to warm up one room for a bit is okay too.

They say gas heating is cheap(er) but I remember an enormous bill from living in a gas heated house for one winter.

Banning them though, what next? I’m with Zed on this.

Chello said :

Electricity and gas prices going up what do you expect. People will use their fire places and there is no reason to change the way in which they heat their home.

Except that there aren’t any fireplaces in Molonglo, they’d have to build them after the fact.

Electricity and gas prices going up what do you expect. People will use their fire places and there is no reason to change the way in which they heat their home.

JC said :

Then there is the practicalities of it too, I remember before I moved to Dunlop I couldn’t hang clothes out on a winters day because they would stink when they were brought back in ….

That doesn’t follow at all.

There was obviously nothing preventing you from hanging your clothes outside, just as there was nothing preventing you from thanking your neighbour for providing a faint but pleasant aroma of woodsmoke to bring back inside with you, on those rare days when the laws of physics take a holiday and hot air sinks instead of rising.

Of course, the real problem could be that you have some kind of psychological condition causing you to have a neurotic phobia of woodsmoke – not really your neighbour’s responsibility though, is it?

I don’t think you’ve spotted Zed’s long-term vision. Bringing back wood burning will actually generate lots of chimney/flue cleaning jobs for the potential young workers he will create when he removes those nanny-state child labour laws.

Hey Zed, do you not remember that it was the Canberra Liberals under Trevor Kaine that first introduced the wood heater ban in Dunlop! So was that a nanny state decision?

BTW it is hardly a nanny state decision. Next you will be telling us that (cigarette) smoking should be once again allowed anywhere and everywhere, after all what is the difference. Both cigarette and wood heat can cause discomfort and ill health to those breathing the fumes.

Then there is the practicalities of it too, I remember before I moved to Dunlop I couldn’t hang clothes out on a winters day because they would stink when they were brought back in all because the neighbour had wood heating. There was no escape from it!

Mr Gillespie said :

gooterz said :

Thought the idea of no fires was the same as no lights up into the sky at night.

To protect Mt Stromlo from a cloudly haze

They should never have approved the development at the foot of Mt Stromlo in the first place!!! God, talk about making the light pollution problem WORSE!!!

We have had enough developments, CANBERRA IS FULL.

Considering how many people on here go on about house prices, this comment made me smirk.

Mr Gillespie said :

gooterz said :

Thought the idea of no fires was the same as no lights up into the sky at night.

To protect Mt Stromlo from a cloudly haze

They should never have approved the development at the foot of Mt Stromlo in the first place!!! God, talk about making the light pollution problem WORSE!!!

We have had enough developments, CANBERRA IS FULL.

lol just lol

gooterz said :

Thought the idea of no fires was the same as no lights up into the sky at night.

To protect Mt Stromlo from a cloudly haze

They should never have approved the development at the foot of Mt Stromlo in the first place!!! God, talk about making the light pollution problem WORSE!!!

We have had enough developments, CANBERRA IS FULL.

Mr Gillespie said :

Well, if I want a fireplace and a fire on a cold winter’s day, no greenie environmental redneck should be able to dictate that I can’t.

If your next door neighbour wants to spend time in their garden or dry their washing on the line, your behaviour shouldn’t stop them either. If you can control your fire properly or arrange for your smoke to remain inside your boundary, go for it. If not …

Liberals lost my vote on this too.

In the old house one neighbour was an example of the worst type. With the amount and smells of the smoke churning out I’m sure they were tossing anything flammable they could find on their fire. We then moved here, stinky next door being a big reason for the move, and one of the neighbours was an example of how good someone who knows what they’re doing can be. Just sometimes there were small wisps of visible smoke which didn’t smell too bad when I could even notice it and didn’t last long (starting up or adding another log I suppose?). Those people sold the house and different people moved in and the amount of smoke from that very same chimney increased. So there’s something to be said for making people do courses on operating wood heaters properly and consequences for non-compliance.

Madam Cholet said :

I think they lost my vote too. I was willing to give them a go but this one pushed me over the edge and I’m sick of the whole “we’ll change anything that Labor did”.

But I still think banning wood heaters in an environment like the Molonglo Valley is a sensible idea and anyway the “we’ll change anything that Labor did” isn’t impressing me either.

Thought the idea of no fires was the same as no lights up into the sky at night.

To protect Mt Stromlo from a cloudly haze

Well, if I want a fireplace and a fire on a cold winter’s day, no greenie environmental redneck should be able to dictate that I can’t.

Labor + Greens = Nannyism

Nannyism on plastic shopping bags
Nannyism on fireplaces

‘Nanny state’ seems to be Poppin up everywhere.

Matt says it, Zed says it
Nanny, Nana-nannee…
A chimney’s as good
as a chimney can be…

Gin please.

schmeah said :

Giulia Jones was handing out flyers saying ‘we’re bringing back plastic bags’ and now Zed is ranting about bringing back wood heaters … it’s like they’re incapable of independent thought.

Either that or they want to undo the stupid policies of the existing idiots.

I live next to two people with wood heaters and the smell has never bothered me. The only thing that has is the sounds of a wood delivery onto the driveway at 7am. What I have noticed however is that I hardly smell the smoke from the more responsible neighbors who buy fire wood as opposed to the non-responsible ones who also frequently have outdoor barrel fires. But what bothers me most is the smell of the never-cleaned chicken coop that the non-responsible neighbor keeps against our common fence, especially in summer. Perhaps they should ban chickens but I think like wood heaters it’s a matter of responsibility, which is something the government should try to instill with consequences for non-compliance rather than outright bans.

I think they lost my vote too. I was willing to give them a go but this one pushed me over the edge and I’m sick of the whole “we’ll change anything that Labor did”.

Living in the Tuggeranong Valley is bad with the wood smoke. Our local offender two doors down seemingly vacated this winter and the air was noticeably better at night so anyone who does anything to improve or at least not worsen the air quality will get my interest.

GardeningGirl –

There is a good reason to not stack against the home boundary line, and it is termite related but it doesn’t really matter what you’re stacking. The idea is to be able to see whether termites have formed one of those tunnels up over your concrete block. The wood can attract wood-eating insects, but the simplest method I’ve seen to avoid that is to stack it on a piece of sheet metal.

The smell of smoke will also be stronger on a humid/wet day because our noses are simply more sensitive in those conditions. This is why if you’re having a shower, odours become a lot stronger.

While I do burn wood, I wouldn’t recommend it in denser environments, or in low wind areas. I don’t think anyone wants to burn wet wood. I’m not sure where you would even store wood on those tiny ACT blocks. That doesn’t mean you should legislate against it. If you want a HOA, live in a HOA. If you want your HOA to ban woodfire heaters, then vote within the HOA.

Gardening girl, all wood heaters can burn clean. It’s the people who don’t burn the right wood or try to burn wet wood to start. If you put wet hardwood on a hot fire = no difference but if you try to start a fire with wet wood that’s when it’s bad.
Clean flu, only burn seasoned hardwood or pine, make sure the fire is hot and fully burning before turning the air vent down and it’s clean and efficient.

Maybe people should be made to do a course before being aloud to have a fire installed?

‘nanny state approach’
‘keep costs down’
‘control their lives’

Incapable of independent thought and addicted to x number of word answers so it seems.

Someone send Zed a link to this asap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85dKvletfSo

Try living next to a couple of houses with wood heaters. Outside its impossible to breathe on a still day in winter. Whatever rules you make about heater and wood standards you still get people that either overnight or if they are working during the day will fill the heater chock a block with minimum air setting so that it smoulders for 8 hours & they don’t have to re light the fire when they wake up or come home from work.

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :

GardeningGirl said :

I live in an area new enough that wood heaters are not as common as in our old suburb and what ones are around here meet the newer emmission limits, BUT they’re still a problem, especially after rain because still nothing’s been done about requiring proper firewood storage. It’s less of a problem than before but enough to affect choices I make like whether to put washing outside on the line and when the wind is blowing a certain direction its enough to be mildly irritating inside. Banning them in the Molonglo VALLEY where the houses are packed in like sardines sounded like an intelligent idea to me. It just ocurred to me too, what about firewood storage on those tiny blocks, might there be a bigger risk of termite problems because people stack their wood against their neighbours wall on the boundary? “Nanny state” rubbish! The government GOVERNS, I want them to govern intelligently for the benefit of the community.
I just decided how I’ll vote.

Termites are zero threat to a new house. Sounds like you are just scaremongering.

Wood needs to be policed, not so much storage, but what type of wood is being burnt. Hardwood does not absorb water just from rain, it will make the outside wet only and will evaporate straight away.

Termites, I don’t know, I just remember always being told not to stack stuff like that up against walls, even if the house has termite treatment, it was just a genuine question that ocurred to me. I know of people who worry about mulched garden beds against the house so there’s bigger “scaremongering” questions than mine out there. And anything stacked up like that will attract various creepy crawlies, perhaps not a problem on an old-fashioned suburban block but on those tiny blocks?

Rain and firewood, I don’t know. I suppose there could be other explanations. Perhaps people with two choices of heating are more likely to light up the fire in wet weather cos it seems cosier so there’s a greater number of wood heaters going? Or something to do with the smoke coming out the chimney and hitting the humid air? But I’ve seen the advice in various places that firewood ought to be stored in a dry place so I assume there’s a reason for that. And whatever the cause or causes, I can SMELL the difference when there’s rainy weather, that is my experience. Your right though that there’s more to it about the wood, not just the homeowners storage.

Getting back to what Zed said, I suffered enough in my old house. Since then politicians have supposedly worked on fixing the problem by homeowner education and improved emission standards and so on, and it’s not fixed enough so I can hang washing outside in winter any time and leave thicker items out overnight like I used to in Canberra many many years ago. I don’t know how far technology could go in making wood heaters burn cleaner. Geography and cold air inversions we’re stuck with. If the Liberals did something to replace existing wood heaters with new clean ones and PROVE it solves the problem in existing problem areas and THEN look at overturning the Molonglo Valley ban I might feel differently, but for now they lost my vote with this.

“Like many Canberrans, we’re sick of this nanny state approach and believe government should support people, not try to control their lives.

Good, let’s see you rip up the rest of the nanny state policies then.

Giulia Jones was handing out flyers saying ‘we’re bringing back plastic bags’ and now Zed is ranting about bringing back wood heaters … it’s like they’re incapable of independent thought.

The government banned shopping trolleys?

News to me.

GardeningGirl said :

I live in an area new enough that wood heaters are not as common as in our old suburb and what ones are around here meet the newer emmission limits, BUT they’re still a problem, especially after rain because still nothing’s been done about requiring proper firewood storage. It’s less of a problem than before but enough to affect choices I make like whether to put washing outside on the line and when the wind is blowing a certain direction its enough to be mildly irritating inside. Banning them in the Molonglo VALLEY where the houses are packed in like sardines sounded like an intelligent idea to me. It just ocurred to me too, what about firewood storage on those tiny blocks, might there be a bigger risk of termite problems because people stack their wood against their neighbours wall on the boundary? “Nanny state” rubbish! The government GOVERNS, I want them to govern intelligently for the benefit of the community.
I just decided how I’ll vote.

Termites are zero threat to a new house. Sounds like you are just scaremongering.

Wood needs to be policed, not so much storage, but what type of wood is being burnt. Hardwood does not absorb water just from rain, it will make the outside wet only and will evaporate straight away.

I live in an area new enough that wood heaters are not as common as in our old suburb and what ones are around here meet the newer emmission limits, BUT they’re still a problem, especially after rain because still nothing’s been done about requiring proper firewood storage. It’s less of a problem than before but enough to affect choices I make like whether to put washing outside on the line and when the wind is blowing a certain direction its enough to be mildly irritating inside. Banning them in the Molonglo VALLEY where the houses are packed in like sardines sounded like an intelligent idea to me. It just ocurred to me too, what about firewood storage on those tiny blocks, might there be a bigger risk of termite problems because people stack their wood against their neighbours wall on the boundary? “Nanny state” rubbish! The government GOVERNS, I want them to govern intelligently for the benefit of the community.
I just decided how I’ll vote.