Launceston is a city of northern Tasmania and most residents are...

Launceston is a city of northern Tasmania and most residents are positioned down in a valley. Approx 20 years ago 80% of the residents had a wood heater as there is an abundance of cheap firewood in the area and it does get bitterly cold there during the winter months.

The smoke issue got to the stage of being unhealthy for the residents due to the overnight burning of wood heaters. Reports of increasing respiratory problems from the local doctors to the government health authorities led the government to make a series of TV advertisements that were played regularly of an evening in an attempt to encourage residents to consider swapping to more efficient wood heating systems or other heating alternatives such as gas or electric.

Wood heaters had to be fitted with a mechanical stop which prevented the heater air intake from being fully closed off. This didn’t last that long as most of the wood heaters were of small capacity as they were mainly inbuilt models fitted to the existing fire places and with the small fire boxes they didn’t have the fuel capacity to provide for overnight burning. Hence most of the mechanical stops were illegally removed.

The Tasmanian Government were also encouraging the residents to go all electric by offering heating tariff subsidies to those that did. The campaign worked well with many making the conversion, however the price of electricity exploded when Tasmania joined the National Electricity Grid and this left householders feeling somewhat conned and out of pocket. Also