Rising power costs bring wood back in vogue – Local News – News – General – The Advocate.
Rising power costs bring wood back in vogue
There’s also a “catch-22″ with the householders affording to pay capital costs of up to $4000 for a new woodheater and installation, not the ones being locked into rising electricity prices because they cannot afford to switch to cheaper wood fuel.
Longtime heating retailer Ken Greig, of Newmans Heating Shop which sells wood and gas heaters in Burnie and Devonport, said there is about a four to six-week wait on new woodheaters as the store “struggles to meet demand".
“In a lot of cases it is the price of electricity which is having an effect (on this trend) but having said that, clearly, it is not a cheap thing to go back to wood," Mr Greig said.
“The people with limited financial resources can’t necessarily do it because of the capital costs."
The trend of people moving out of woodheaters due to pollution caused by woodsmoke and the labour-intensive nature of wood fuel was reversed last year on the back of rising electricity costs.
“This year and to a lesser extent last year there was an increase in (woodheater) sales and this year there’s been a lot of demand for people to go back to wood," Mr Greig said.
Some of the renewed demand came from people upgrading their old woodheaters.
They might not have bothered if power prices were not skyrocketing.
“Maybe they put a heat pump in and just used their old woodheater sometimes but now they are upgrading their old woodheater to use their heat pump less," Mr Greig said
“The feedback we get is there’s a lot of concern and resentment about rising power prices.
“Wood is brilliant if you have access to it but clearly it’s not everybody’s cup of tea."
Mr Greig said he did not use wood as he had a heat pump at his home.
Natural gas was also a cheaper option than electricity for heating but unfortunately Mr Greig said Burnie had “very limited access to natural gas".
Where gas reticulation was extensive in Devonport it was “quite a bit cheaper to use natural gas heating than electric heating options".
