DATELINE: PORTLAND, OREGON A New Era For Masonry

Green, Yellow, RedOn a green day, when there'slots of ventilation and none ofthese inversions are socked in,just about anything is allowed toburn. When it gets a little worse,most communities call it aIout their old woodheatingsources and upgrade to a varietyof heating sources - gas, pelletstoves, Phase I1 stoves. It wasalso authorized to set up a statewide low interest loan p r o wto help accomplish the samething.days, but I cannot guarantee thatat this point.We have a lot to learn aboutthem. We know about thetechnology generally, but wehave not delved into it yet.We could make therecommendation to localThere could very well be electricity shortages in Washington state. "yellow day, and only EPA Phase2 stoves are allowed to bum. Ona red day, no woodburning isallowed.What I've passed out to yougives you an indication of whatwe see as the relativecontribution of woodstoves and .fireplaces in the premiernon-atttainment area of the state,Klarnath Falls. They mailed out19.000 surveys in 91 to getwoodburning trends andcompared them with a similar,smaller survey in 1987.Fireplace UseDeclininaIf you look at he chart you'llsee that homes equipped withregular fireplaces dropped fiom19 to 17% - the overall use offireplaces is declining,appreciably.We feel that the measures takenin b a t h Falls are necessary toget the air quality problem undercontrol. However, we don't seethem as the long term solutions.You may be familiar with apiece of legislation introduced bythe DEQ this summer - House.Bill 2175. It basically says thatthe air shed is not a freedumping ground, and that ifyou're going to pollute then youare going to pay. It not onlyapplies to industry as it has donetraditionally, but applies toeverybody, including residentialwoodheating.There are pqmsed fees onsources,including woodstoves,to run the aaainment programs.This is a fee per cord applied atthe cut level to get a forestrypermit for wood The money willbe used to help low incomepeople in these areas to changeThere will be restrictions onsale of used woodstoves. There isa provison to require buildingcode ammendments. After July1995, local authorites may bannon certified units. There is anincreased sales fee on new stovesto 15 from 5 for education andenforcement activities.So, we are still hoping that thelong term solution for the state ofOregon is to get the people intothe latest designs and not onlyget them into new stoves but toeducate them - change the waythey burn.A point made by the industryand well taken by the DEQ isthat a heating system is not justthe woodstove, but relies on theflue system, a critic. component,and operator practice - a criticalcomponent.-Oreaon DEQNext on the agenda was DavidCollierfrom the Oregon DEQ(Deparment of EnvironmentalQuality) to talk about Oregon'sAir Quality Regulations.(Question by Tom Sfroud toDavid Collier regarding theexemption of masonry heaters):David Collier I believe thatthe curlailment programs havebeen locally adopted and thelocals are free to exempt whatthey want. I'm not sure, but Ithink that masonry heaters rightnow are regarded as fireplacesand required to stop burningprobably on yellow days and forsure on red days.Unlike Washington state, wehave not dealt with masonryheaters. If we were to design astate wide program, I think thatmasonry healers would probablybe allowed to bum on yellowIgovenments, if they asked uswhether they should be exempton yellow days, I think that ouranswer would likely be yes.(Question and discussion ofslash burning, and whether it isnot more significant thar woodheating, and what basis there isfor making the claims)David Collier: We havelooked at this in a number ofdifferent ways, where wedocument how many homes, howmany cords, when they burn,which gives us an estimate of thetotal number of tons used byresidential woodburning. Wecompare this with other surveys,other pollution inventory datawhich gives you tons fromindustry, tons from automobilesand you can compare it that way.There has been chemical massbalance modelling done wherewe have confidence that you canisolate the chemical fingerprintof various sources. When you say30% of PMlOs come fromwoodburning, you're obviouslynot saying 30.0, but the relativecontributionsare very close.I'm also saying that in everyarea,the impacts are different. Inthe Willamette Valley there areimpacts from slash burning, fieldburning. In some areas there aresignificant impacts fiom dust.Washinaton DEQThe next speaker was FredGreeffrom the WashingronDepartment of EnvironmentalQualityFred Greet I'm going totalk a little bit about our firstClean Air Act and the 1990ammendment to it and finally the1991 ammendment to it, which

takes on the question offireplaces.Wood is probably one part ofthe necessary energy mix to meetall of our needs at this time, andit is renewable which fossil fuelsare not There could very well beelectricity shortages inWashington state, and we havetaken several approaches tosome interpretation in there as towhat the law actually means.When we write the newregulation on that, there's goingto be some controversy. Anemmission test may have to bedeveloped for them, and it willhave to be comparable in someway. It may have to be a differentfuelling mechanism and mayFurther, we encouragemunicipalities within ourjurisdiction to adopt their ownwoodstove regulations if theyfeel that ours are not strongenough. This has includedenhanced education efforts.where towns felt that ourmeasures were not doing the jobadequately. We also encouragethem to adopt enforcementJohn Crouch: "Anybody here from California? Nobody? That is so sad.That is so typical. Those people are going to be hit by a freight train. "dealing with the wood smokeproblem.We've followed Oregon's leadin requiring certification, andwe've also looked at burningbans and opacity. We've lookedat several things at once to tryand push the woodstovetechnology to cleaner burningmodels, but we're not looking tooutlaw wood heat use. It is anecessary part of the energy mixtoday-.A Lot of SmokeOriginally. Mother Earth Newstold everyone to buy an airtightstove, load it full of wood,. andtum the air down, this was howyou were supposed to burn them.Everbody started making woodstoves in their garage, and therewere a lot of problems with thesestoves. Many of them made a lotof smoke.We did an extensive survey inthe state and started finding outabout health effects. We foundwe were in violation of federal particulate standards in severalparts of the state and we had todo something about i tIn 1987 the Washington CleanAir Act was passed and there wasa lot of suppon for it in thelegislature. Then in 1990 and 9 1ammendments were made withfireplaces being included in 1991.The non-masonry standardactually requires fireplaces tomeet the current 7.5 grams perhour woodstove standard. For thenew masonry design standard, itcalls for something comparableor equivalent, so it does leavehave to be something other thanbrands. You're always goingfrom a completely cold start andthen burning for three or fourhours, so its going to have to besomething a little bit differentNaydene MaykutNext on the Agenda wasNaydene Mayht, who is SeniorScientist for the Puget Sound AirPollution Control Authority(PSAPCA)Naydene Maykut:PSAPCA takes into account fourcounties, and these are at the coreof the populated region aroundPuget Sound - about half of thepopulation of the state ofWashingtonOur (local) woodstoveregulation is called Article 13and is part of Regulation 1. It ispart of the solid fuel deviceregulation standard. Thisincludes fieplaces as well.Its policy and purpose is-to control and reduce airpollution cause by woodstoveemmissions-to educate the public on theeffects of emmissions,particularly the health effects-to educate the public aboutother heating alternatives such asgas, ol. electricity-for those people committed tousing wood heat, about betterperformance through usingcertified stoves.This year we added somethingto our policy and purpose. It wasto encourage the replacement ofuncertified stoves.programs or to join in with ourown enforcement programs.DefinitionFirst, I'll go over thesedefinitions real quickly:Adequate source of beat 70F three ft above floorFirst stage of impaired airquality- 75 micrograms per cubicmeter of PMlO on a 24 houraverage. Can also be invoked ifCO reaches 8 parts per million,although this provision has neverbeen usedSecond stage - PMlO'sgreater than 105 mcg1cu.m.In regard to the fines, we aretelling people that if they come inand show us that they got a phaseII stove, we'll waive the fine.We're trying to change people'sbehaviour.The WHAPerspectiveNext on the agenda was JohnCrouch, Wood Heating Alliance(WHA)Emissions Specialist totalk about the industry (WHA)perspective:John Crouch: From anindustry standpoint, the problemis not in the Northwest. TheNorthwest continues to have aproblem that is woodstovedominated and that has to getcleaned up. The focus is prettymuch in the sunbelt and inCalifornia - largely from agrowth standpoint.You look at where new homesare getting constructed, and you

will see where fireplaces havebecome, or are going to become,an issue Las Vegas, Fresno, SanObispo county, Sonoma county.You look at the growingperimeter of metropolitan areasin the sunbelt and that is wherefmplaces are being talked aboutor thought about or draftregulations are in effect or beingkicked around.-California FreightTrainThe other issue - who here isfrom California?Nobody here from California?That's so typical. That is so sad.Those people are going to be hitby a freight train.Forty nine states of the countrydeal with the federal standard forambient air and particulates,which is 150 micrograms percubic meter average over 24hours. California's standard is 50.Their legislature blithely did thisa couple of years ago, and Ihaven't found anybody whounderstood what the impact ofthat was going to be at the timethe bill was passed. Theimmediate impact is that theentire state, with the exception ofMurdock county, isnon-attainment for particulates atthe state levelNow, if you're non-attainmentat the federal level at 250micrograms, you're not going tosay anything publicly, butprivately you're going to laugh.The net effect is that its going toallow a growing area with countysupervisors who are going to say"My God! We're non-attainment!We've got to do something!" Andthey may be talking about 60 or70 micrograms as their worstcase day.Well, as Naydene states, in theSe.aI.de area, when it gets to 75micrograms, there's a fmt stageburn ban. When it gets to 105 wego to a second stage bum ban.Second stage bans are called atdifferent levels all over the states,and you should never assumethat what you heard in one areaapplies to another area. Themeteorology and the localpolitics create huge differencesacross the West.The other key area isdefinitions. Tha creates a lot ofproblems for fireplaces and pelletstoves - Jeny can tell you aboutmasonry heaters.EPA."Originally, EPA decided theywere not going to regulatewoodstoves. It was getting dealtwith in the West on a local levelin places like Oregon andColorado. The NationalResources Defense Council suedthe EPA on the premise thatwoodstoves were too large apolluter and that the EPA couldnot fail to regulate them.A federal judge in New Yorkstate agreed, and that forcedfederal woodstove regulation.That's of importance tofireplaces, because the suit dealtonly with woodstoves so thatwhat EPA did was create a boxthat contained only woodstovesand left everything else out fireplaces, masonry heaters, coalstoves, about two thirds of thepellet stoves, the cookstoves.It didn't matter if any of themwere cleaner or dirtier. The courtorder was over woodstoves.There is much, much confusionafoot across the land because ofwhat happened here.So a lot of this conhsionrevolves around this term "EPAexempt", which in itself isactually a misnomer. Onlycookstoves are EPA exempt. Thecorrect tern is "non-affectedfacility".A pellet stove with a fuel to airratio greater than 35: 1 is anon-affected facility. You get aletter from EPA that says "Congratulations, you don't haveto deal with us."And if people have wanted toget certified, that is a verydisappointing letter to get.Because there are regions whereyou can do things if you havethe certificate that you can't ifyou are a non-affected facility and can't get one.Besides this definitionalproblem, there are a couple ofother things that set a woodstoveapart from a fireplace. First is themore limited use that a fireplacegets. Study after study shows thata certain percentage in anycommunity fails to light a fire intheir fireplace at all. Anotherlarge percentage -will burn one ortwo fires a year. At the other endof the continuum, for reasonsunknown to me, are people whotry to heat their house with afireplace. ?hey go through a lotof wood.By and large, every study yousee in the midwest, fireplacepeople use a lot less wood thanwoodstove people both on a perseason and often on a per nightbasis. As Skip and others arepointing out here today, its not ona seasonal but rather on aper-night basis that this wholeissue is premised. I'm not sayinga fireplace is beuer, I'm sayingits differentThe other major differencebetween the two types ofappliance, as you all well how,is that fireplace combustion isessentially non-controlled. And,in recognition of the fact that theconsumer can tinker with thewoodstove combustion,woodstoves have to demonstratetheir emmissions at four differentburn rates.Fireplace DefinitionFor your reference, thedifference between EPA 90 andthe previous standard is thatwoodstoves now have todemonstrate that they burn cleanon all four burn rates. In the pastthey were allowed to average theresults. That has been extremelydifficult for the industry, and ithas been a watershed event.Some companies were not able tomake the final cut into the 1990standard.However, that's not germane tofireplaces because in fireplacesconsumers cannot control the air.I think that will turn out to be theprimary definitional difference.The EPA definition of thisdifference between a fireplaceand a woodstove was an air tofuel ration of 35: 1 or a burn rategreater than 5 kilograms per hour.A couple of small companiesover the years have opted out of

the woodstove definition usingone or the other of these criteriaPellet stoves turn out to be righton the cusp. They can be tuned tobe on either side of the fuel to airratio.A third difference which Ifailed to mention is the 800kilogram weight limit, or 1780fireplaces burn wood, so they'rea wdbuming appliance, so theyhave to be certified."If I were a masonry fireplaceperson. I would see that as verydestructive since it totallyconfuses the distinction betweenthese two appliances.Now, I'm going to pass outWell, I need to wind up here. Iwant to add the caution that theseare. draft o r h c e - s .Virginia Tech TestsThree years ago we convenedour people in August to beginworking on a study that we didthe initial stage of with the Brick"One of the problems that Colorado has is that it dossn't have a goodconstituency for masonry heaters. In fact, where you have the bestconstituency for masonry heaters, Washington, that's where they're themost recognized. "lbs. EPA did not want to get intothe business of regulatingmasonry fireplaces.The point of all this, folks, isthat if you want to design anappliance to burn clean, you haveto avoid becoming a woodstovein the process, and this narrowsyour parameters dramatically or, meet woodstove standards.The existing method ofregulating fieplaces is verysimple, and I run into thisconsistently in California, whereregulators are very sophisticatedabout regulating carbonmonoxide and ozone, but not yetvery sophisticated when it comesto particulates. To them, you putwood into both appliances andsmoke comes out of bothappliances, so they're the same .thing, right? This is very funny topeople who may have beenbuilding fireplaces all their livesbut may never have put in awoodstove - and its also funny tothe woodstove folks.The main fonns of control onfireplaces are episodic controlsand bans on new construction.Episodic controls tend to workreal well because fireplace usersare.not that committed to usingtheir appliances and tend to wantto be good citizens.FiglaceBans.".In some areas there is a defacto effort to ban the installationof fireplaces in new constructionby simply saying that allwoodbuming appliances have tobe certified. "Fireplacescan't getcertification". "Well, I don't care,some draft ordinances. I'vewriuen "draft" on them, becauseI have seen draft ordinances thatturn up as legislation in otherparts of the country years later. Infact I was quoted something inthe Bay area two weeks ago offthe King county draft ordinancethat was in fact never passedWhat you're going to see is aproposed ordinance for the cityof Aurora Colorado. Aurora is asuburb of Denver which has hadan episodic conml program anda real heavy history ofwoodbuming issues. Vailsimilar, although dissimilar inmany respects - recently changedtheir ordinance. Their oldordinance said no woodbumingin new consuuction - this gotpicked up on the AP wire, in factI got clippings from all over thecountry. What didn't get pickedup on the wire was that in Augustthey ammended it to allowcertified stoves or pellet stoves.One of the problems thatColorado has is that it doesn'thave a good constituency formasonry heaters. In fact, whereyou have the best constituencyfor masonry heaters, Washington,that's where they're the mostrecognized. In California I thinkyou could do a lot more if therewas more of a constituency formasonry heaters.I'm kind of setting up what youare going to be dealing withtomorrow. That is why you needto get busy and get a strategy formasonry fireplaces that hits thestreets pretty quickly with a lot ofdata behind it.Institute and the Masonry HeaterAssociation at VirginiaPolytechnic Institute. Ourprimary concern is that if you testa fireplace with the wood loadthat you use to test a woodstove.it will drive you towards definingand designing things that workand look like stoves.What you are dealing with hereis critical. How you load theappliance determines what youend up with in terms of cleanburning appliances later on.So the WHA has created whatit considers to be a reasonablefuel crib - and Skip has hisopinions on that that you willhear later - reasonable fuel cribfor fireplaces.Masonry HeaterPaper at PMlOConferenceAnd we will essentially overthe next couple of years beengaging the air qualitycommunity - beginning with theconference on PMlO in Phoenixthat Tom (Stroud) is going to bepresenting a poster paper onmasonry heaters at. The head ofthe WHA's fireplace technicalcommittee, Frank Broom, will bepresenting a paper on thedevelopment of a clean bumingfireplace relative to thatemmissions crib.I'll just wind up by saying thatwithing the last thirty days, on ofthe larger manufacturers offactory built fireplaces has put anappliance on the street that willreduce pollution byapproximately two thirds over

the baseline data that they haveseen on their own appliances. So,the factory built industry ismoving. We'll see three or fourmore of those in the next year. Ithink it goes without saying thatthe masonry freplace industryneeds to keep moving if theywant to not fall too far behing.I'm dealing with regulatorypeople all the time who don'twant to create any niche forfireplaces. So, if there's going tobe a niche for a third way, a newgeneration fireplace, the industry2.Chemical Composition ofWood and Air3,Chemical Composition of AirEmissions4.Pmducts of IncompleteCombustion5POMs and RelatedCompounds6.Acidity7.Size Distribution of Particles8.RWC Particulate Impacts9.Air Toxics0.1% level. You won't see that inany regulation.So what's important is thatthere are potentially a lot ofsimilar compounds that nobodyhas keyed on yet that could bequite toxic.What's a PMIO?One thing about combustion particles produced bycombustion processes tend to besmall compared to particles"One of them is retene.Thepulp and paper industry is very concernedabout it. We've measured it in woodsmoke at the 0. I % level. You won'tsee that in any regulation "has to respond, and it has torespond quickly.The Chemistry ofWoodsmokeSkip: The next person I'd liketo inmduce is Dr. James Houck.He is an environmental chemistat OMNI. He is a PhD inchemistry who has doneextensive work with the physicaland chemical characteristics ofwoodsmoke and biomass burningin general. So, he's had a widevariety of experience in this fieldfor a long time, at least a decade.Dr. Houck is going to talk to usabout the chemical and physicalcharacteristics of woodsmoke.He's also going to talk a linle bitabout the early question of justexactly what is the impact ofwoodsmoke in some airsheds andhe has some data that he willshare with us on that.Dr. Houck:I want to talk a littlebit about what really comes outof a woodstove and a fireplace.There's a lot of chemistryinvolved, so you can nod off ifyou wish.(Piclure of smoke in a valley)'Ihe bouom line is, you see thisstuff in an airshed and you say"What is that stuff?"That's whatI want to talk about.Outline of Dr. Hwck'spresentation:1.Mass Balance1O.RWC CO Impactslllight Extinction12.Water VaporLiquidPartitioningO.K., we've talked about themajor constituents. Now we'regoing to talk about the minorconstituents that people are reallyconcerned about These are thePOM'S - Pol ycyclic OrganicMolecules. PAH's. PolycyclicAromatic Hydrocarbons - samestuff.These things are the benzenerings that are joined together.These compounds are consideredcarcinogenic. Also. regulatorsestimate that something like 40%of these compounds nationwidecome from woodsmoke, so this issome of what is driving theregulations.I'm not going to bore you withall the chemistry of these things.I just want to point out that tracelevels of these substancescan'tbe ignored.(slide) This is what I talkedabout a little earlier. Peopleanalyze woodsmoke for POMcompounds, but there are lots ofsimilar compounds that no-onehas ever looked at. They are notin your cookbook EPA methods.One of them is retene.Thepulp and paper ipdusny is veryconcerned about i t We'vemeasured it in woodsmoke at theproduced by mechanicalprocesses such as dust Just tovisualize it - hot gases come outof the stack, they condense, sothey form lots of little

of heating sources - gas, pellet stoves, Phase I1 stoves. It was also authorized to set up a state wide low interest loan prow to help accomplish the same thing. days, but I cannot guarantee that at this point. We have a lot to learn about them. We know about the technology general