I did hear that Quebec has banned all open fires or wood burners on the grounds of the smoke discharge ?

Don't know where you heard that, but it's incorrect.

I remember something about this and it was suggested it may go province wide but the date it seems is 2020 for the start.


Montreal wood-burning fireplaces could face restrictions by 2016 - Montreal - CBC News

Was a while ago on the radio when i was still on the road so cant remember the details of it.

Yes, Montreal & some other towns have municipal bylaws about wood-burning stoves, & Mtl is looking to restrict - possibly ban - them even further, but it's by no means a provincial movement/inclination.

The US recently brought in new regs for wood-burning furnaces - they have to recirculate the exhaust, which eliminates most of the smoke. And because smoke is indicative of poor combustion, there is also lots of carbon monoxide, and burning carbon monoxide is strongly exothermic, so the latest wood-burners burn both cleaner and hotter.

I was at friends at their new place outside Edmonton recently and they have a big wood burner in the living room, I did notice when he said he was turning it up it sounded like a fan or something, They said it was a "high efficiency" wood burner so maybe that was one that recirculates the exhaust ?
Really nice looking big one with glass in the doors and man did it throw out some heat.

Yesterday the power was out for a few hours, that happens in spring due to wind (and in winter due to freezing rain and in, well, nevermind). I thought of my colleague who's basement dryness depends on the sump pump working and how little fun it would be to be in Hawaii trying to enjoy being in a different Costco (adventurous he isn't) and having to worry all the time about the home basement filling with water.

Given how many people in Canada live in new housing projects I wondered if fear of their home infrastructure failing is one reason why people here don't typically take holidays. If I had a new house I think I'd want to be there when the shingles blew off the roof, the basement flooded or the subsidence cracks appeared. Both the insurance and the home warranty programs have very tight deadlines (three days for insurance) in which to make a claim.

We have wood burner insert, which is a wood burner in the hole where an open fire used to be. It has an emissions re-burner gizmo built in so the smoke emission is minimal. It also has a variable speed fan on it to blast out the heat. Admittedly it only heats the floor of the house it's on (it's a big house), but we haven't bought any heating oil for 2 years. Some nights we have to have one of the deck doors open to get some cooler air in! (I know we're on Vancouver Island, but still). We get through 4 or 5 cords of wood a year at $200 a cord, so our heating bill (if you don't count the fan heater I use in the office downstairs during the day) for the year is $1000. We also have 4 or 5 trees ready for felling so I anticipate our bill to be even less in a couple of years.

That's actually the main issue with my stepson's place at the moment.

He's been in Edmonton for about six weeks. He's got a mate popping in from time to time to check (and we did tell the insurance company about that).

The main worry is heavy rain/a sudden thaw coupled with a power outage that knocks out the sump pump.

Does this mean your woodburner requires another powder source in order to work? If so, will it work without power at all in a power cut?

There is such a thing as a battery back up power supply for sump pumps, I suppose they're like the ones we used to have for computers. I've no idea if/how well they work but that's an option.

And big wall mounted radiators aren't ugly in uk homes? Apples/Oranges.

Are you looking for answer to that question?

Most aren't big though are they? At least not in a prominent sticky-outy sort of way. Typically they are flat against the wall and often not really in view.

The only big ones I can think of are the sort one might see in a church or a school where relative to the size of the room they wouldn't be so big.

They're a lot bigger and more intrusive than the 10cm× 25cm holes in my floor and ceiling!