Wood smoke in Willamette Valley? (Portland, Eugene: transplants, appliances, neighborhood)

[NW4me]

I don't mean smoke from summer wildfires, I mean smoke from fireplaces in winter.
Is it a problem in the Willamette Valley cities (Salem, Corvallis, Eugene) on cold nights?

[FogartyCreek]

I grew up near Silverton, OR, but it has been a few years since I have been there.

The northern section of the Willamette Valley (i.e., Multnomah County and Portland) often impose restrictions during the winter on wood burning stoves, but I have not heard much about such restrictions further south like the cities you mentioned.

But now that I Googled the subject, there are restrictions for Eugene and Lane County:

https://www.lrapa.org/181/Home-Wood-Heating-Program

[Cloudy Dayz]

Originally Posted by NW4me

I don't mean smoke from summer wildfires, I mean smoke from fireplaces in winter.
Is it a problem in the Willamette Valley cities (Salem, Corvallis, Eugene) on cold nights?

In general wood burning is pretty common all over Oregon. Yeah, its irritating, but it's been going on forever and is probably not going to change anytime soon.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Lots of people heat with wood. Some of the large cities will ban wood stoves when there is a temperature inversion layer, but no place has them banned outright.


If you have some sort of problem with fireplace smoke, perhaps Oregon isn't a suitable place for you. best to know that before you invest all the expense of moving.

[Metlakatla]

Originally Posted by NW4me

I don't mean smoke from summer wildfires, I mean smoke from fireplaces in winter.
Is it a problem in the Willamette Valley cities (Salem, Corvallis, Eugene) on cold nights?

Yes. And even when they ban it, those who have no other source of heat except wood-burning appliances still get to use them. That likely won't change despite efforts from transplants to ban it altogether.

[Silverfall]

Originally Posted by NW4me

I don't mean smoke from summer wildfires, I mean smoke from fireplaces in winter.
Is it a problem in the Willamette Valley cities (Salem, Corvallis, Eugene) on cold nights?

I live in Salem and I don't think it is a problem. I live in an older neighborhood where people have wood fireplaces and/or wood stove inserts. You will occasionally get someone that has it going but it isn't like the whole neighborhood is blanketed with the wood-burning smell. If you don't like the smell, then just buy in a new neighborhood and you will have no smell. It isn't like there are thousands of fireplaces going at the same time.

Many people don't use their fireplaces or have converted them to a gas insert.

[ejisme]

Mom's in Newberg and has a fireplace, and many of the neighbors do too. When out walking I can smell some smoke sometimes, but it's pretty local to the house(s) burning wood at that time. I've never smelled it inside her house, like I sometimes do wildfire smoke here in Idaho where I live now.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

The price of fire wood is getting up there to the point where it is no longer the most economical way to heat, unless you go out and cut your own. That should reduce the amount of wood stove smoke in the winter.

[509]

Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke

The price of fire wood is getting up there to the point where it is no longer the most economical way to heat, unless you go out and cut your own. That should reduce the amount of wood stove smoke in the winter.

Back in the 1990's the Forest Service got sued on its firewood program by the Sierra Club.

I got to do the economic analysis for the environmental assessment.

The lawsuit was filed in Yakima County by the Sierra Club (a local organization with a 206 area code!!) The breakeven point in those days....electric prices at .045 cents per kilowatt hour meant firewood costs had to exceed $185 per cord.

In those days the Washington State Energy office had a handy calculator for economical method for heating your home. I could not find it on the web a couple of years back.

BUT that said, people know and have pretty good sense of prices.

Firewood is cheap for many reasons. People cut wood to make extra money and if their poor that is a significant motivator.

In the case of Yakima County, much of the firewood came from orchards. At that time orchards were on a pretty short rotation and the orchadists would sell the wood cheap to get some extra money. That wood would be "wet" and a significant health hazard, unlike like Forest Service wood.

Of course, with the switch to "trellis" orchards these days the supply of fireplace wood from orchards has decreased.

We have an "epidemic of trees" in this country. I suspect firewood will remain "cheap", much cheaper than the alternatives well into the future.

[texasdiver]

I think it is worse in the southern end of the valley like Eugene where I grew up and where winter thermal inversions are common. I understand it is problematic in the Rogue Valley as well. But winter wood smoke from stoves and fireplaces is generally nowhere near as bad as summer smoke from grass burning, wildfires, and the burning of logging slash piles if they still actually do that.

When I was in HS we made money cutting firewood on forest service land or state lands mostly east of Coburg. With a permit you could basically go in and cut non-commercial hardwood species like Alder for free as long as you didn't touch the Douglas fir, hemlock, and cedar. I don't know if they still do that. But I cut a lot of cords of firewood that way.