"Red Herring: (expression) - a topic of discussion brought out to cover, obfuscate, and confuse the issue when it's getting too hot for those seeking to explain the actual reason for a problem."

The latest poll from Grand Forks City Hall is too obvious in its attempt to manipulate public opinion, once more, against wood heaters as a major cause for our outrageous air pollution! Strange, but true! For example, let's look at question 10:

"10. It is important to curtail emission producing activities, such as outside burning or using wood heat on a POOR air quality day."

Note the complete lack of mention of the obviously major major source of air pollution on the poor air quality days - those when the one, two, or three plumes of dense smoke and/or steam and other obnoxious vapours may clearly be seen billowing into a motionless and increasingly dense pall of deathsmoke covering the east end of the city and valley. These are certainly days on which everyone who can in any way reduce smoke deposits into the smogbank, but to fail to mention the major polluters certainly brings out the cynic in this writer!

The Arguments Against

• The smoke problem is just as bad on bad days in the summer as in bad days in winter - and who's heater is burning in the summer?

• Drive around town on a winter day, and look for smoke from house chimneys. You will find very few making any kind of smoke at all, and much fewer making any amount of smoke, if any

• The idea in the mind of the average wood-burning home owner is to burn as little wood as possible, making as much heat as possible. It is only the extremely inefficient woodstove which makes smoke, due to using uncured or wet wood, or by completely wrong draft control. All but the newest of the newbie woodstove owners makes a point of being on top of these problems.

• Inneficient wood burning is self-limiting. Smokey, smoldery fires produce lots of chimney creosote, which leads to chimney fires, which in many cases burn houses down, or at least put enough of The Fear Of God into the homeowner that s/he will learn the error of his/her ways and correct the problem asap. If this situation applied in our Industrial Park, there'd BE no Industrial Park! - At least, not by now!

A Specific Case Study

Here's the chimney. The stove has been going for about 45 minutes this morning. Now let's go and open the door and see what the fire looks like

Here's the fire - this picture shot less than a minute after the chimney shot above. Note the stovetop temperature gauge, showing some 200 Deg. F.

Here's the chimney an hour after the first shots. The stove is now settled in for the day. To be fair, I have to admit there is the odd wisp of smoke, although not enough to show in a photo shot from 30 feet away. Compare with shots of the industrial park from 5 miles!

Once again, the stove was opened within 30 sec. of the chimney shot, and this is what the fire looked like inside. Seasoned wood, good heat, no smoke. Stovetop temp is now about 215F

Here's the stack temperature. A bit hard to see, but it's registering around 200F. Warm house, no smoke adding to the problems of our airshed! Conclusion: Where there's smoke, there's fire - but where there's fire, there isn't necessarily smoke! And if you take a drive around town and check every house chimney, I'll guarantee you won't find the total is anything like what you usually see exiting the industrial park! - Winter, or (and especially not!) Summer!

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