By Becky Polaski

For the past several months the Jay Township Supervisors have been working on drafting an ordinance defining and regulating the construction, establishment, installation, operation and maintenance of outdoor furnaces within the township. 

They have been requesting feedback from residents on the draft of the ordinance and recently discussed several aspects of it at their meeting earlier this month.

One aspect of the ordinance that was questioned was stack height for outdoor furnaces.

The ordinance will mandate that “the outdoor furnace chimney shall extend 20 feet above the ground surface and at least two feet above the peak of any residence not served by the outdoor furnace located within 300 feet of such outdoor wood furnace.”

“We have situations down here now where these furnaces are right up against the neighboring house against the side of the hillside and there’s no place for the smoke to go but in the kitchen windows,” Jay Township Supervisor Murray Lilley said.

The mandated minimum stack height is an attempt to help alleviate this problem by getting the smoke up above neighboring houses.

“This is a work in progress,” Supervisor Robert Coppolo said. “We’re all going to learn from it down the road. Maybe we’re going to learn 20 feet in some instances or in the majority of instances isn’t really all that necessary.”

He added that 20 feet was not a random number that the Supervisors happened to decide upon but instead was a requirement that was already in place in other outdoor furnace ordinances that the Supervisors reviewed as they drafted their own.

Another section of the ordinance will mandate that “all existing outdoor furnaces must be registered with the Board of Supervisors of Jay Township within 60 days of adoption of this ordinance to be considered an ‘Existing Outdoor Furnace.’”

The Supervisors noted that even if they are currently aware that a particular resident has an outdoor furnace all residents must register their furnaces in order to save themselves problems down the road so that when the current members of the Board of Supervisors are no longer serving there will still be a record that these outdoor furnaces have been in existence and were approved by the Township.

Additionally, any resident that decides to install an outdoor furnace will be required to provide the Supervisors with the owner’s manual or installation instructions for review prior to installation. The Supervisors will then have 45 days to review the material and raise any objections or questions regarding the outdoor furnace.

The full draft of the Jay Township Outdoor Furnace Ordinance is available for public viewing at the Jay Township Municipal Building during normal office hours and Township residents are encouraged to review the draft and discuss any questions or concerns with the Township Supervisors at their regular monthly meetings.