On Thursday, August 26, 2004, at 05:34 PM, Diane Wiley wrote:
I agree with your thoughts about wood fired heating systems being a disaster
in terms of the environment --
The older woodstoves were polluters, but the new ones meet tougher EPA standards and are much cleaner.
but there are systems where they use pellets
made from sawdust -- which is probably just going into a landfill otherwise,
and there are corn pellet systems. They are very efficient and I don't know
about heating an entire house here in Minnesota, but a friend has the
sawdust pellet system in Baltimore and almost never has to turn his central
heating on.
Agreed- and at current prices corn is about the cheapest heating fuel available. But the really neat thing about these new technology biomass heating devices is how user friendly they are- with no dangerous gas lines to mess with you can actually install one yourself.
Seems to me we have to use a variety of things in order to get off our dependence on oil and natural gas and monopolies.
I continue to be amazed at the hypocracy of our city, where politicians sing the praises of renewable energy but force us to buy dead dinosaur gas and nuclear power from monopoly suppliers. To add insult to injury after allowing these monopolies the privilege of access to our public right of ways our city fails to prevent gouging of consumers by mandating reasonable hook up charges in return. Thusly that cute little gas fireplace with the $1999 price tag costs $7000 installed...
And that's way too much money to invest in your home when the druggies are doing business unmolested in front of said home practically every night.
On another subject... I didn't mind the CUB cashier asking to see some ID to go along with my battered credit card- what bothered me was the sign, seen only at the Northside Cub, requiring such ID with every credit card purchase. Had the entire CUB chain instituted this policy I'd have no objection, but to see all hardworking Northsiders suspected as criminals is unacceptable. Given that CUB seems to be there just to keep WalMart out, I expect we'll see plenty more of this sort of harassment to drive customers away.
from Hawthorne-in-the-Hood,
Dyna Sluyter
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