New burners using much more wood

FIREWOOD is in short supply in Timaru as it faces its first winter with only new burners allowed in the city.

The council banned burners more than 15 years old last year, in a bid to tackle air pollution, a move that sparked outrage in the community.

Timaru resident Helen Henderson got a big shock after she installed a $7000 new lowemission burner in her home last October.

‘‘We found that we are using a lot more wood,’’ she said.

‘‘The difference between the lowemission burner compared to what we previously had is that you can’t shut off the air supply, as it burns more wood more rapidly.’’

Last winter, with her old burner she spent $400 on firewood. This year, she expected to spend $800.

Ms Henderson said her new fire easily burnt through twice as much wood as her old burner.

Ms Henderson said it seemed to get harder to source dry wood — an essential ingredient to a warm, nonsmokey fire.

She said this was creating a perfect storm.

‘‘I don’t think it is impacting people at this point in time, but in time and as the winter goes on and it continues to be cold, it will impact people.

‘‘We are sort of in a catch22 because we all want clean air but we know how cold it gets in Timaru in the winter.’’

Point Lumber usually sold both dry firewood and unseasoned firewood.

But sales manager Phillip Burns said the company ran out of dry firewood more than a month ago.

‘‘We’ve got no dry firewood left . . . we’ve only got next year’s firewood here now,’’ he said.

Wet wood, which was all he had left, was not an ideal fuel for log burners.

‘‘Your fire will go out because it’s got to be dry . . . if you use wet wood, it will smoke more and you will have trouble burning it.’’

Other Timaru firewood sellers said their stocks were low, or they were deliberately not advertising, so they did not run out. — RNZ