Public Awareness

Public awareness campaigns can be designed to provide information on the proper operation and maintenance of wood-burning appliances, proper preparation and storage of fuel, and the options to replace older appliances.

Sample messages:

• Burn only well-seasoned (dried) wood
• Burning well-seasoned wood, in a newer technology appliance, will save you several cords of wood.
• Safety benefits of more efficient combustion (less smoke means less dangerous build-up of creosote in the chimney)

Sample Education Topics

• How to cure and store wood for use in wood-burning appliances (launch these campaigns in the summer, so people have time to cure their wood during the summer months before the start of the heating season in the fall.)
• Maintenance issues for various types of appliances

Demonstrations are very effective. It's the "seeing is believing" factor. For instance, considering setting up a public demonstration where you show an old and a new wood-burning appliance, so you can illustrate that the low-emission wood burning appliance emits virtually no smoke when burning well-seasoned wood.

Have a moisture meter on hand, and invite people to bring in samples of their wood supply for testing to see how dry (or well-cured) it really is.