That first cold nip in the air signals it's time to stack up the split wood in preparation for winter. But it's buyer beware when it comes to whether your fire will be the cosy heat source you need.
Though upsetting and expensive, replacing old woodburners with ones compliant withthe new airshed rules for Hastings and Napier has reduced particulate matter in the air by some 54 per cent, according to regional council figures, resulting in only two exceedances of air quality standards last year.
So we can pat ourselves on the back for helping make the air cleaner and our lungs healthier.
Unfortunately woodburners can still smoke without much flame or warmth, depending on what you're burning. And increasingly people are burning wood that's unfit for purpose – because it's wet.
That doesn't mean it's been stacked out in the rain – though that certainly doesn't help! – but that the wood was only felled recently and so is still full of the sap and oils and resins of a living tree.
Wood needs to be down and, in effect, bleeding out for a good two to three years before it becomes "dry" - with a moisture content of 25 per cent or less.
But selling wet wood is not illegal, and there are plenty of cowboys out there willing to drop a tree today and sell the supposedly "dry" wood to you tomorrow.
Some is so full of moisture it's like trying to burn water.
But the cowboys are thriving because the wood comes cheap.
Bruce Bisset
When you're poor, faced with a choice of $200 for a trailer-load from Joe down the road, or double that for a decent cord from an approved wood merchant, price is the decider.
That no-one in your family will benefit – in fact, with excess smoke from a barely-warm fire, there'll likely be added health impacts – means this choice is arguably worse than not buying wood at all.
Sure, anyone receiving wet wood can complain via the Consumer Guarantees Act – because anything sold has to be "fit for purpose" – but a cash sale without receipt from some fly-by-nighter means the come-back level is zero.
Which is why the regional council started its Good Wood scheme, promoting merchants who got a stamp of approval for selling dry wood.
Trouble is, with no incentive to perform because there's no regulation to enforce quality standards, the initial seven merchants signed up to the scheme have dropped off or gone out of business.
Save one: John Caulton, who now owns and runs both Woodstocks and Donovans.
He doesn't think it's fair he's doing everything by the best practice book and getting undercut by anyone with a chainsaw and a trailer.
Mark Heaney from the HBRC doesn't think it's fair either, but argues that without a law change at central government level there's little council can do except try to educate people to support the Good Wood scheme.
Meanwhile councils wait on the Ministry for the Environment to consult over a promised review of fire and fuel standards. They've been waiting four years so far.
The real nonsense comes if John Caulton stops supplying and we're left having to buy wood that's not fit to burn. The pollution levels (and the bronchial problems) will start climbing again, right when the law says any exceedance of airshed standards risks onerous restrictions on our industry.
Someone needs to wave some big sticks about what is, in the regions country-wide, a burning problem.
