The Inver Grove Heights City Council will soon begin a one-year moratorium on new installation of outdoor wood burners.

But resident Armando Lissarrague isn't breathing a sigh of relief yet.

He wants the council to ban all outdoor wood burners permanently or else set tough regulations, including how far one can be situated from a property line.

After Lissarrague complained to the city about his neighbor's smoke blowing onto his property last winter, Inver Grove Heights became the latest south-metro suburb to consider banning the controversial burners, which a few residents use to heat their homes, at least partially.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says such burners produce at least 3,370 times more smoke than do traditional interior gas and oil furnaces. The emissions can cause eye and nose irritation, breathing difficulty, wheezing, coughing and headaches, the EPA says.

The Inver Grove Heights council will use the moratorium to stop new installations while learning how other communities regulate outdoor wood furnaces, said City Administrator Joe Lynch.

Most popular in rural areas, the units are housed in tiny shacks with a smokestack, and are 30 to 500 feet away from a home or a building.

Inside the shacks, a water jacket surrounds the firebox and heat exchanger. Heated water is circulated via underground pipe to a house or building, and in one case, to an Inver Grove Heights swimming pool.

The city has asked staff members to draft an ordinance regulating the burners. That could include the stacks' height, distance from property lines, where they are allowed in accordance with land use rules, where they could be operated and any permits needed, Lynch said.

The staff looked at ordinances from 15 other metro cities. Some, including Stillwater, Burnsville and Savage, ban them except for those grandfathered in. Others regulate them with performance standards and go after wood burners and boilers as a nuisance because of their emissions.

Sore spot between neighbors

Among four outdoor wood burners or boilers known to operate in Inver Grove Heights, it's the one next to Lissarrague's home on Albavar Path that's drawn heavy criticism, mostly from him.

"When the unit is being used, sometimes the smoke settles at ground level, and then if the wind changes direction, it comes right toward our home, and it winds up inside our house," Lissarrague said. "Once it gets inside our house, we smell smoke. We start coughing, our eyes water, we get sore throats."

Lissarrague, 60, said his coronary disease and his family's allergies make them all the more sensitive to the smoke.

His neighbor, Doug May, said he believes that he and Lissarrague could resolve the issue without all the controversy or the city legislating,

May said he has not used his boiler much. And whenever the wind shifted toward Lissarrague's home or there was a temperature inversion, he shut it down, May said.

"I don't believe that they are the nuisance that my neighbor's making it, but quite honestly I want it to all go away," he said. "This year, I managed it better. I haven't had it on since the end of March, and I believe Armando would agree that he had hardly any smoke after the end of January."

May said at first, his stack was 8 feet tall, and atop a 4-foot-high shed. He added 6 feet and next winter will add another 8 feet so that the stack will rise 24 feet and better disperse smoke on his five-acre wooded lot. Lissarrague also has a 5-acre lot.

Lissarrague said that if no ban is enacted, he wants his neighbor's unit to be moved farther from the property line. He asks that any outdoor burner be 300 feet from the property line and 500 feet from the nearest neighboring home, and that smokestacks be at least 2 feet higher than any neighboring home within 500 feet.

Joy Powell • 952-882-9017