by 2020, phase two is scheduled to take effect and will require furnace manufacturers to lower their emissions 84% more. on april 16, the epa filed a legal brief saying they intend on revising the 2020 emissions rules this spring, likely granting the industry three extra years to design compliant appliances and other forms of relief. the house already passed legislation in march directing the epa to extend the deadline, though the senate so far hasn’t.<\/p>\n
while lamppa thinks the 2020 rule is fair and that he had ample time to refine his 30-year-old design to be epa compliant since epa first announced the standards in 2011, major u.s. furnace manufacturers that dwarf his company in sales have continually warned of an \u201ceconomic disaster\u201d for the industry.<\/p>\n
paul williams of u.s. stove, a top selling furnace manufacturer, testified before the senate subcommittee on clean air and nuclear safety in november 2017<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cpeople trust us and our products enough to have a live fire in their home. we take that responsibility seriously. we test our products for safety and durability, not just for emissions. we need more time to accomplish the task at hand,\u201d williams said in his testimony.<\/p>\n the lamppas wrote to the subcommittee a month later, saying their small business was able to meet the deadline years early and had to spend much of their family savings to do it.<\/p>\n \u201cto change the rules mid-stream would be incredibly unfair to lamppa and any other companies that took the mandate and the timeline seriously,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cif we can do it, so can they,\u201d lamppa added later. \u201cwhen i look at these results, i think these companies are going to have to completely rethink how they burn wood, redesign their furnaces, and retest again. when 2020 hits, a lot of them won’t be ready.\u201d<\/p>\n as epa moves to revise the 2020 emissions rules, it’s likely us stove and other major manufacturers will have until 2023 to clean up their wood-burning appliances.<\/p>\n dutch dresser, founding director of maine energy systems, sells another furnace that the epa has certified to be sold up until 2020. his austrian-designed and maine-assembled autopellet air furnace starts at $7,999. since the autopellet air uses low-moisture, pelletized wood, it has a natural emissions edge over furnaces that burn cord wood, as lamppa\u2019s does.<\/p>\n despite the technical hurdle of having to lower efficiency to bake moisture out of cord-wood, lamppa was still able to pass all four stages of epa testing. dresser hasn’t put his device through the same testing because he doesn’t have to until 2020. for now, epa is accepting european test results that weigh particulates differently. <\/p>\n \u201ctemporarily, the epa is recognizing the european testing as suitable demonstration of compliance. what i would like them to do is continue recognizing it as suitable beyond 2020 or 2023 if current legislation passes,\u201d dresser says. <\/p>\n daryl lamppa wasn\u2019t always interested in the family stove-making business. but when the gulf war was in full swing and fossil fuel prices skyrocketed, he saw a business opportunity. initially he set out not to make another heating stove, which are small and ill-equipped to heat a whole home consistently. rather, he chose to design a wood-burning furnace, which along with boilers, are built to heat whole homes.<\/p>\n he bought a furnace from a manufacturer in wisconsin to heat his new home, and swiftly took it offline after a dangerous chimney fire.<\/p>\n \u201ci used to load that thing at night and sit down in the basement for hours on end, looking and worrying, and then after that happened, i said, ‘no more of this, boy,’\u201d lamppa says. \u201cwhen you’re sitting there chewing your fingernails every night, you can’t relax.\u201d<\/p>\n in reverse engineering the furnace, he found the problem: smoke. it was only used for a short amount of time before the furnace lined his brand-new chimney with a flammable resin called creosote. the substance eventually ignited, though the fire didn\u2019t escape the chimney, it just forced flames and ash out of the stack, blanketing the snow around his home with black soot.<\/p>\n the experience convinced lamppa to design a replacement furnace that would emit far less smoke. in 1982, he and his father filed a patent<\/a> for their \u201ckuuma\u201d design, which touted what lamppa now calls gasification.<\/p>\n \u201cthe only way to get rid of the smoke is you have to burn all the (liquids and) gases. and that’s what we’re doing,\u201d he says. \u201ci haven\u2019t had to clean my chimney in 30 years.\u201d<\/p>\n smoke coming from a chimney represents wasted energy. in contrast to his now-shuttered competitors who opted to expel smoke as it was made, lamppa designs provide the right amount of air, temperature, and time to completely burn the energy contained in smoke while keeping the furnace at a constant 220-degree temperature. as the smoke burns, inhalable particulates settle into a bed of ashes inside the fire box.<\/p>\n what\u2019s ultimately emitted is exhaust that carries the same co2 that would be generated by burning the same amount of wood in a bonfire, though the reaction releases far fewer carbon monoxide and inhalable particles.<\/p>\n lamppa says the fundamentals of his kuuma design haven\u2019t changed much over the 30 years since he first started manufacturing them. like the sauna stoves he also makes, the wood burns in a finnish fashion \u2013 from front-to-back rather than from bottom-to-top.<\/p>\n in the late \u201880s as they started to sell their new furnaces, the lamppas and every other stove maker in the country were hit with a regulation: to bring the weight of particles emitted per hour by stoves down to 7 grams. <\/p>\n at the time, only heating stove manufacturers had to clean up their emissions. the epa left wood furnaces and water boilers capable of warming whole homes alone, all the way up to 2015. the lamppas successfully cleaned up their line of stoves to avoid fines that caused 90 percent of stove manufacturers to go out of business, says john ackerly, president of the alliance for green heat<\/a>.<\/p>\n furnaces and boilers were hit with new emission regulations for 2015 and 2020 along with stoves. since stoves went through it before, ackerly says almost all manufacturers that specialize in that technology are weathering the storm.<\/p>\n \u201cthis time around, in the stove side of things, nobody has gone out of business, and it’s not clear that anybody will. the boiler and furnace industry is different,\u201d ackerly says. \u201cyou did have some mom and pop kind of shops that didn’t have any real capacity to improve much, so there have been a bunch of those that have gone out of business.\u201d<\/p>\n while ackerly says he doesn\u2019t like businesses shutting down, he argues it\u2019s necessary. the rules were generated by the epa in part as a response to a lawsuit by states that wanted an emissions standard for whole-home wood-heating technology.<\/p>\n \u201cif you’re having a big fire in your house to keep your house warm, there should be some safety and emissions regulations,\u201d ackerly says.<\/p>\n \u201cit’s one thing if you’re in the middle of nowhere and your boiler’s just cranking out smoke 24\/7. but with a lot of these, if you’re in a valley, even the next farm or house is a mile away. these valleys have inversions and that still poses a pretty serious ambient air quality issue,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n since the 2015 rule went into effect, water boilers have drastically risen in price. furnaces have too, but stove prices have remained fairly level. with the rise in prices, retailers are struggling to sell to the historic audience of wood heating \u2013 the rural middle class.<\/p>\n \u201ci think the epa is going about cleaning up the air the wrong way, because they allow all the existing stock of wood burning appliances to exist. and they have driven the costs for new and cleaner equipment so high,\u201d says scott nichols, a boiler retailer in new england for tarm biomass.<\/p>\n nichols doesn\u2019t sell outdoor boilers, but rather an indoor variety of wood-fired water-heating boiler mostly manufactured in europe. he says emissions standards in america are stricter than in europe. he believes under the upcoming 2020 rule, retailers won\u2019t be able to sell and install boilers that burn cord wood without a thermal storage component, which costs somewhere in the ballpark of $3,000. boilers that burn pellets, he says, don\u2019t necessarily need the costly addition.<\/p>\n \u201ci’ve got customers who have boilers that are 40 years old, hs tarm boilers that are 40 years old. and i couldn’t discount my new boiler packages enough for these people to switch in most cases to a newer boiler. and meanwhile i continue to sell parts,\u201d nichols added.<\/p>\n states and non-profits have offered various buyback programs aimed at the oldest wood heat technology. in minnesota, the environmental initiative is wrapping up a program called \u201cstove swap,\u201d where they would discount a brand-new wood-heating device by hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars if a resident turned in a stove, furnace or boiler built before the early \u201890s.<\/p>\n![\"furnace](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/scatterplotsimpfinal_1.png\")
a war against smoke<\/h2>\n
![\"distribution](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/nationalgeographic.png\")
<\/p>\nregulations make wood heat more expensive<\/h2>\n