When the last tree has gone!

Has anybody thought when the last tree is cut or falls down, what will you use then?
I see waste beyond belief in Australia with wood fires, and I guess it happens in many places.
Rocket heaters or masonary stoves from Russia evolved to save wood, but I see many people who want large fires, such one has to remove clothes or sit 5 M from becuase of radiant heat.

But is there a balance, are there alternatives?
- I built a small house, well insulated.
- I dont have snow, I get to about minus 5 degrees.
- I only light up if the house drops to 14 deg. C
- I wear 3 layers of warm clothes first.

What is available;
- old engine oil
- mass masonary inside
- passive solar heating of interior where possible
- heat pumps

Is there a solution at all.
Will the richest person have the last wood stove in the end?
How much attension to insulating do people apply?

Are there trees you can coppice there? Growing natively in my area, I have hazelnuts and maple. Both of those coppice beautifully. I can cut down trunks and have a whole bunch of nice straight trunks grow right back up. Both are burn pretty hot, too (at least compared to our alders).

If you have fruit trees, the prunings can also become wood. When I prune my apples, pears, plums, peach and cherries, I save all of the wood. It dries in the sun all summer, and then I fill big containers with the branches. Those branches make excellent fire starters.

If you have trees (native, or that do well in your area) that coppice, it might help to plant a stand of those trees, and maintain it like the medieval Europeans did via coppicing or pollarding. A coppiced woodland seems like a good thing to place in your permaculture zone 3 or 4, a bit further away from your house (especially if wildfires are a concern). Though, I admit, my coppiced hazels and maples are scattered from zone 2-4! I really love having the hazel nearby, because it's so handy for making fences and tomato cages!

There's a photo of early Cincinnati , taken from across the river.
It is entirely denuded, not a tree in sight.
Today our hills are covered with trees and brush.
Not old growth, just trees.

I think trees will outlast humanity.

If we ever get down to the last tree, I think there will be bigger things to worry about than staying warm.

I think there are lots of threads here on permies about improving the efficiency of housing, but I'm less sure that the general public is absorbing that info as fast as I'd like them to. If a person pays attention to costs as well as looks, it's pretty easy to get comparisons of different ways to insulate a house while it's being built, but too often the pressure is for "affordable housing" even though "energy efficient" housing is far more affordable over time! I do think the entire concept of "thermal mass" is being missed. If a house has any, to often it isn't insulated from the great outdoors, so although it still makes the house more comfortable to live in, it doesn't make it more efficient.

I personally have been trying to educate a lot of people about coppicing. Hazel grows well here (except last winter when I lost one - sigh), as does big leaf maple and it coppices well.

John mentions "heat" but there are areas of Canada where keeping a house cool without electricity is equally dependent on good insulation and good management. If you don't have windows in good locations to get a chimney effect, it can be *really* hard to cool a house. Simple things like adjustable awnings can make a big difference, as does the ability to grow annual vines on trellises a few feet from the house during the summer to absorb lots of the sun's energy, but let it through in the winter when we want the thermal gain.

The Vikings in Iceland did cut down all of their trees at some point. Now they harnessed thermal heating so it's not a big deal anymore, although they do have other serious environmental issues - see the amazing movie "Woman at War" by Benedikt Erlingsson.

I can't imagine ever killing all the Hackberry trees here, and they can definitely be copiced.  I have one stump I completely strip of every hint of growth a few times each year and it still won't die.  

I'm coming from another climate where good house design is for cooling.  You can't see most of the old farmhouses from a distance, here.  Even if overgrazing has completely stripped the fields around it there with still be a thick stand of trees shading the building.

We even have a native tree which has good quality firewood that self prunes.  My father would pick up enough fallen Pecan branches to supply our wood burning needs every year. I have a fire place and during that historic freeze a couple of years ago we kept a constant fire burning using just the collected wood from maintaining our yard.  It definitely doesn't require destroying a lot of trees to heat a home here.

Actually a cool bit of trivia, https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2017-05-16/in-an-evergreen-battle-against-heat-austin-turns-to-trees

I some point or another I recall someone telling me that Austin, TX might have more trees now than would be here if it weren't developed.   There are strict guidelines about maintaining and planting trees in all new developments.  On the rare occasion I see a yard without at least a trees, the homeowners will inevitably plant one within the next two years.  If you don't have shade you don't have usable outdoor spaces for most of the year.

Now to put that information into perspective, we're naturally a mix of oak savannah and grasslands so it's not like we're competing with dense woodlands or rainforest, so it might actually be true.  I don't know where they picked up that story in the first place so I can't actually say if it's accurate or not.

John, your question reminds me of the story of Lizard Hole, Afghanistan. There are places in Afghanistan that used to be covered by trees. But they were all cut down for firewood. In Nepal and other similar places, biogas is being used for cooking fires with great success.

Gobar Gas

EDIT: Link fixed.

As a backcountry ranger in a place that was getting over-visited and stripped of woody debris necessary for the coastal rainforest ecosystem, I often reminded people:

“A wise person builds a small fire and stays close by, while the fool builds a large fire and gets cold while gathering wood.”

I also like the approach of Arne Naess, philosopher, mountaineer and founder of Deep Ecology, who figured it made a lot more sense to do some pushups and heat the 1% of the room that was his body rather than heat the other 99% in order to warm him. I had a Norwegian girlfriend who met him in his 80’s and went on a kayak tour with him around some of the coastal archipelago. At one point the wind and waves picked up, and he ended up towing her and a friend in their double kayak for a couple miles back to the dock.  Those pushups did more than just warm him. Arne Naess was also an amazing philosopher bridging western and eastern philosophy and helped get biodiversity’s inherent right to exist into the Norwegian constitution, so check out his work!

John said, "Has anybody thought when the last tree is cut or falls down, what will you use then?
I see waste beyond belief in Australia with wood fires, and I guess it happens in many places.

It would be good if everyone kept planting more trees.

Perhaps I should have phrased my question in a different manner.
I was aiming to be 'cheeky' about the waste of firewood in many instances, rather than create a topic about re-foresting.
But you all read it your own way.
I was prompted by the topic 'cost of getting firewood' and I started to think about the waste I have seen.
I live in a forest and there is a big issue of tree stealing for firewood, and the damage it causes.

BUt this quote from Ben is a gem
“A wise person builds a small fire and stays close by, while the fool builds a large fire and gets cold while gathering wood.”

I think Jeremy caught your intended point when he posted the link above. It took me a while to read through the article.  I think the most amazing thing about it is that it's not really about biogas. It is really about how to get a society to accept and integrate biogas as an everyday social norm.  

In different countries different approaches are working.sometimes the biogas itself is just a happy byproduct of the main motivation focus. Towards the end there's a comment about photovoltaic technology being exciting while this one isn't.

If you haven't read it yet, please do.  

Getting back to usage of wood.
Has anybody thought about the way they use it,
- having huge fires that are too hot,
- wood heater going with windows open
- sloppy insulation
- or none.

John C Daley wrote:Getting back to usage of wood.
Has anybody thought about the way they use it,
- having huge fires that are too hot,
- wood heater going with windows open
- sloppy insulation
- or none.

When we used to camp, we would use the smallest fire we could get away with, or use a camp stove. The only "huge" fires we had were before we got a chipper/shredder and had to decrease the wood-load on the forest floor. We disliked doing that so much, that I talked hubby into the chipper/shredder for the tractor. It was big bucks, but would be easy to get most of the value back out if we ever decide to sell it. The results can be used for all sorts of things around the farm from animal bedding to mulch to a medium to put under dead animals so they will decompose without harming our groundwater.

Our house is leaky enough that we don't open windows when running our high-efficiency wood stoves. The lower level one is used the most, but if we get a bout of really cold or wet weather, we will light the one in the living room. I would love to have an RMH, but at this point in time, the codes haven't caught up with the concept.

Sloppy insulation: We highly suspect so. The house we bought was owner built, and they were definitely *very* sloppy about the electrical system. Unfortunately, it was also built in the era when dry-wall and dry-wall mud was often contaminated with asbestos. So long as we don't disturb it, it's not considered a health risk. However, if we try to reno to improve the insulation, we're going to have to get everything tested and we just don't have the time at this point. However, even if the insulation is better than we think, it has aluminum frame windows, and 2 sliding glass doors on the north (cold) side of the house. What were they thinking??? There's also an aluminum-framed "plant pop-out" on the east side of the house, north of the chimney which blocks any solar gain it would give us in the winter. We had one week to find and purchase a house, and this one had an adequate house but a super property and an excellent location.

What you didn't mention was the design of the house. Our house has a small bathroom on an outside wall with a "bump out" for the vanity area. I have no choice but to run some electric heat there because to get it warm using the wood stove would cook the rest of the house. It is totally a "design flaw" by my standards, which could have been easily corrected by making the hall bathroom a bit smaller.

I get your concern that so much wood is "wasted" by burning it when there are better options. I read the article that Jeremy posted and so much of what they said made sense - if the dung is there, turn it into biogas and fertilizer, and stop burning wood that would be better used to feed the soil. So much depends on one's location. I'm in a similar eco-system as Nicole and we mostly burn trees/branches that Mother Nature knocks down or that are blocking needed sun. Many of those trees are softwood and don't make great firewood if your climate is really cold, but ours is moderate enough that they give us all the heat we need.

some ideas;
- Aluminium window frames can be covered with timber and the helps
- your vanity may be heated by fitting a 'capture and move ' heat system built around you fire flue.
 It uses a small fan and suitable sized often 6 inch ducting.
- design is always important, but the topic covers current situations
- sling doors can be changed for double glazed or covered with bubble wrap in winter.
- leaking houses being repaired is a no brainer.

What are the details of your house, I am surprised when you said this

it was also built in the era when dry-wall and dry-wall mud was often contaminated with asbestos

I dont recall asbestos being used as plaster.
UPDATE I FOUND THIS https://www.mesotheliomahope.com/products/drywall/
FROM THE 1950'S.........Until the early 1970s, practically all drywall building components contained asbestos.
Originally, manufacturers added asbestos fibers into drywall materials to make them lighter, stronger and more fire-resistant.
That turned into a national disaster that compounded the entire asbestos exposure problem.
Working with asbestos-containing drywall products exposed thousands of American construction workers to deadly airborne asbestos fibers.Sadly, many of those workers developed asbestos-caused diseases like mesothelioma.

Also,

When asbestos-laden drywall is dried and sealed with paint, it’s virtually harmless because it doesn’t emit loose airborne fibers. It was at the install stage that construction workers experienced severe airborne asbestos fiber exposure.

You may actually be able to work with it damp or insulate from the outside.

I don't know about the asbestos risks, but when I was a very young child we lived in a tiny drafty house with floor to ceiling, single pane, aluminum frames picture windows in the living room.  We were too poor for an ac in the summer so we appreciated opening those during warm seasons.  Each winter my mother carefully taped up sheets of plastic over the whole structure. The house also had electric heating and when we didn't have money to run thar heater the whole family would set up in that front room with the wood burning fireplace.   Without the plastic sheeting it would not have been enough.

I think it goes without saying that one would minimise heating requirements as a first step, Surely reducing waste is a Permie principle! Our house is also old and draughty, it's a slow and expensive process of improving it. working towardsjust using our own coppice woodfuel to heat it.
If we didn't have the wood....
Locally the traditional fuel (since the trees were cut down...) is peat - dug from the local common grazing bogs, dried out, and brought home. I tend to think of it as a younger version of a fossil fuel as it takes something like 10 years to grow 1cm (source)  (that's less than half an inch) so not a preferred option really - just replacing one problem with another.
We have a lot of wind, so a mechanical method of creating heat with friction might be an option. This thread discusses it - https://permies.com/t/2134/Producing-heat-wind-power, I'm sure I've seen more recent thread in the low tech forum too.

John said, "I was aiming to be 'cheeky' about the waste of firewood in many instances

This is a perfect reason to build a rocket mass heater:

heat your home with 80% to 90% less wood

https://richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp

https://permies.com/t/41635/Top-Questions-Rocket-Mass-Heaters

I think we have to look at why we're not using wood heat efficiently. The structure the envelope and the heating appliance itself. We built a house recently super insulated even the interior walls.  We can close off rooms we aren't using to conserve. If you ask me it's too big at 1600 sq ft. We addded an attached greenhouse on the south side. On a sunny winters day opening the french doors and allowing that warm air in is so nice. Requiring trombe walls on new construction?  Require wiring for solar panel installation in the future?   What is the appliance being used to heat the house, the efficacy of that component has to be considered. Home sized biogass wouldn't be able to keep up with heating requirements, espescially in my cold climate. Building codes love them or hate them to develop compliance standards. Peak oil, peak wood, peak peat, what is going trigger an awakening? Maybe this winter and Europeans previous reliance on Russian oil and its availability will give a jolt.  

I think having a small house makes the most difference. The footprint of ours is less than 200 square feet. Our insulation is good, but we have leaky windows, a lot of them. Our woodstove is probably oversized for our space, but much smaller and we'd have to feed it constantly, which means all our houseplants would freeze while we were at work and I'd be up multiple times overnight dealing with the stove. We keep our house hot and sometimes open windows, but that's usually more for humidity control.

Even with all those inefficiencies, we burn less than two cords of wood in a winter, sometimes not much more than one cord. Our winters aren't as cold as some, but they're cold. We'll have an occasional fire starting in September some years, definitely in October, then heat through to march, sometimes April. Then it's occasional fires sometimes into June, like in a crappy cold year like this one.  We easily get enough wood from the trees that die off naturally, mostly white pines, and from keeping the right of way under the powerlines clear. We've got birch, alder, and maple we could coppice, but haven't needed to yet. The hazel here doesn't really get big enough to be worthwhile, but we could coppice that in a pinch.

Everyone I know who heats with wood uses waaaay more than we do. Most of them have tighter, more efficient houses and keep colder (but more reasonable for most people) temperatures than we do. But their houses are way bigger.