Saving fuel, spreading misery
Popular wood-fired boilers spur pollution concerns
FOSTER, R.I. - The bane of Steve Charette's once-bucolic existence is partly hidden behind a roadside stand of trees across the street from his house. It's little more than the size of a shed, topped by a short smokestack with a stubby nose in this uncrowded corner of rural Rhode Island.
The shed contains a wood-fired boiler, a home-heating device that is rapidly gaining popularity in an era of roller-coaster oil prices. But instead of admiring a quaint symbol of alternate energy, Charette is fuming over a byproduct that he said has sickened his 2-year-old twins, given his wife a pounding headache, and fouled his neighborhood.
The boiler's smoldering wood, Charette said, has spewed noxious smoke that seeps into his house through windows, cracks, and crevices.
"It's a disgusting, terrible, horrible smell," Charette said. "We go inside, and the smoke detector is going off. Our clothes get smoked out. And the boys can't play outside anymore, so we moved their swings into the basement."
Charette's concerns are echoed by a growing number of state and municipal officials in New England, who often lack the authority or staffing to crack down on boiler pollution as homeowners increasingly turn to wood for heat. So far, 35 communities in Massachusetts have passed restrictions on the devices.
In Rhode Island, only the town of North Smithfield has enacted regulations.
"There are real and serious health impacts at the neighborhood-to-neighborhood level," said Paul Miller, deputy director of Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, a nonprofit group that represents regional air-quality agencies. "We didn't know three years ago that something essentially the size of a large telephone booth would be in someone's backyard and smoke out their neighbors."
Much less efficient than wood stoves, the devices are designed to burn wood slowly, heating water in a sleeve around the firebox, then piping it into a house for uses ranging from heat and hot water to swimming pools and hot tubs.
Critics say the devices are particularly noxious because they restrict air flow in order to slow combustion. While that allows wood to burn longer, it also builds up large amounts of soot and creosote, which are periodically released in billowing plumes that air quality officials say are potential health hazards.
Critics also say that smoke pollution increases when green wood is used instead of properly aged fuel, and when owners toss yard waste, trash, and even tires into the furnaces. In certain weather conditions, the smoke can cling close to the ground and envelop a house like a thick shroud.
According to a 2006 report from the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, the average emission from one wood-fired boiler was equal to 22 federally certified wood stoves, 205 oil furnaces, or as many as four heavy diesel trucks. More than 1,300 boilers had been installed in Massachusetts by 2006, according to the group's estimate, and about 156,000 existed nationwide.
NESCAUM, the regional association, estimated that 500,000 boilers would be scattered across the country by 2010. The US Environmental Protection Agency has recommended only voluntary guidelines for boiler manufacturers, leaving the responsibility for regulation with local and state officials who often are not aware of new furnaces until someone complains.
"At a minimum, that smoke can be very irritating," said Mark Smith, deputy director of the Office of Research and Standards at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. "People who have preexisting health conditions like asthma or emphysema or heart conditions might be particularly susceptible to smoke from these units."
The agency is finalizing statewide regulations, including criteria for best operating practices, setback guidelines, thermal efficiency, and minimum smokestack height, that Massachusetts hopes to have in place by winter, said Ed Coletta, the department spokesman.
Manufacturers extol the advantages of the devices. On its website, Central Boiler of Greenbush, Minn., described its Classic Outdoor Wood Furnace as superior to an indoor wood stove.
The furnace, Central Boiler said, can heat "multiple buildings, hot tubs, pools, greenhouses, domestic water, and more" and "improve the indoor environment in your home or business, while eliminating the time-consuming chore of tending a traditional wood stove."
Charlie Hurd, who runs a dairy farm in Scotland, Conn., said the boiler he uses to heat his barn helps keep him in business. Hurd gets much of his wood from the fields, so his savings are consistent and significant.
"We used to spend $100 a week to heat water in the barn, and we're not spending anywhere near that now," Hurd said. "I love it. I think in their place they're very good."
Hurd, whose nearest neighbor is a quarter-mile away, considers boilers impractical in more congested areas.
By Miller's estimate, the boilers also are much less cost-effective than they might appear to owners who buy and install the smallest units for $8,000 to $10,000.
For a typical Massachusetts household, the escalating price of cordwood means a boiler would cost $4,200 per year, Miller estimated, compared with $2,300 for 800 gallons of heating oil.
In Foster, Town Planner Ann-Marie Ignasher argued that her community, where 4,500 residents are spread out over 52 square miles and the minimum lot size is 4.6 acres, is different from North Smithfield, a more suburban town where the first-in-the-state regulations were approved in October.
"This is Foster. This is rural. We burn wood out here," Ignasher said. "The people who have been born and raised here are very much used to it. Those who have just moved in are not that used to it."
Charette, who moved to town four years ago for peace and solitude, said his children have been coughing and waking up crying since the furnace began operating about two months ago.
Ignasher said Foster is studying North Smithfield's ordinance, but that the town has not issued a moratorium on new boilers while it considers regulations, as North Smithfield did during its review.
"As I said, it's a way of life out here," Ignasher said. 