Household Annual Biomass Calculation

Used in

• Chapter 1 The Rhythm of the Hearth

In the Numbers

Firewood for the house

The rows that check it

• 6 confirmed
• 2 amended
• 2 marked for safety

• H7 amended Safety Do not spread stove ash on the woodlot or garden: it carries metals from the city's air
• H8 confirmed Safety Charcoal brazier in the yard for summer cooking, 25 % efficiency; no charcoal burned indoors at all because it makes CO without smoke to warn of it
• H24 confirmed Household: 116 m², 11,600 kWh heating, 3,200 hot water, 800 cooking
• H25 confirmed Stove efficiencies: masonry 85 %, steel 50 %, cookstove 75 %, brazier 25 %; charcoal a quarter of its wood; summer kWh costs sixteen times its weight in wood
• H26 confirmed 7.7 t seasoned beech a year: 4.2 t stove wood plus 3.5 t for 870 kg charcoal; 480 kg per Ster; about 16 Ster
• H28 confirmed Beech forest 10 to 11 m³/ha/a; coppice on sand 7; a hectare and a bit or a hectare and a half per family; 90 to 115 ha per village of 300
• H30 amended A coppice takes twenty years to yield; a flat insulated to post-2009 standard needs a third of the heat; straw in the roof and felt in the frames cut wood from 16 Ster to 6
• H34 confirmed Schornsteinfeger: Prussian institution older than the fire brigade; inspects every flue on a fixed round; only a licensed sweep certifies a stove; dust limit in g/m³

In the Index

Fire and fuel Wood, willow and the cask Berlin and Brandenburg