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Residential wood heating has gone through many changes over the centuries. Fireplaces in Europe were replaced with more efficient masonry heaters when wood became scarce. The Franklin stove, invented in 1742 in the United States, heated colonial homes more efficiently and with less smoke in the home than standard fireplaces and stoves in use at that time. Today, wood stove innovation continues, driven by the need to improve air quality and provide economical heat at the residential scale. In the 1980s, the United States Environmental...
SEELEY LAKE - Seeley Lake's winter air quality has improved since the community successfully replaced more than 160 old wood stoves with new, lower emission stoves during the 2012-2014 wood stove change out program. The Seeley Lake "Number of Winter Day Over 24-Hour PM2.5 Standard" graph shows that PM2.5 concentrations are trending down over the last nine winters. (Note: The winter of 2016-2017 had a long-lasting high-pressure ridge that caused high PM2.5 levels throughout western Montana.)...
The Missoula City-County Health Department has started an update on the Missoula City-County Air Pollution Control Program rules. One proposed rule creates a Seeley Lake Wood Stove Zone where only the cleanest and most efficient stoves can be installed. A map of the Seeley Lake Wood Stove Zone has been included with this article. The zone is centered around the Seeley Lake Elementary School where the highest wood stove smoke concentrations are found. This rule would not affect existing stoves bu...
SEELEY LAKE - Recent cold snaps have been instructive about the role weather plays in Seeley Lake's winter air quality. Since the wood stove change out program of 2012-2014, Seeley Lake winter air quality has varied with weather patterns and temperatures. Immediately following the change out program, winter air quality in Seeley Lake improved, with far fewer days exceeding the 24-hour National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for fine particulate than was observed before the change out....
The Missoula City-County Health Department continues to look for strategies to address the high wood stove smoke levels that occur in some Seeley Lake neighborhoods. This past winter we launched a pilot project to look at an alternative wood-based fuel source (manufactured wood fuel logs) to see if it would be effective at reducing smoke emissions and if it would fit the home heating needs of Seeley Lake residents. Manufactured wood fuel logs are made of compressed sawdust or wood chips with or...
SEELEY LAKE - The 2016-2017 winter has been a cold snowy affair for western Montana. Because of the colder-than-usual temperatures, people are burning more wood to heat their homes and the temperature inversions are more persistent than in recent years. These factors have contributed to a large number of days over the particulate standard. So far this winter, the Seeley Lake air monitoring station has measured 32 days over the national ambient air quality standard for particulate matter in the...
SEELEY LAKE - With the abundance of wood and no natural gas pipeline in the area, many businesses and residents of Seeley Lake use wood stoves as an affordable heating option. Unfortunately, winter wood stove smoke emissions are the main reason Seeley Lake exceeds a national air pollution standard for particulate matter (specifically, PM2.5). PM2.5 is particulate matter in the air with a diameter of 2.5 microns and smaller. The National Ambient Air Quality Standard for PM2.5 is 35 micrograms...
SEELEY LAKE - With completion of the woodstove change out program, most areas in Seeley Lake appear to meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for small particulate matter in the air (PM2.5). However, more steps are needed to reduce woodstove smoke in the neighborhood near the elementary school. The graph, "Seeley Lake Days Over the PM2.5 Standard by Winter Season," shows that progress has leveled off over the last couple of winters and the area continues to exceed the daily PM2.5...
