I thank all 3 of you for your responses.
My yearly cost for oak wood is 1,200€. But you still need electricity for the pump expansion system.
We have a generator for power outages, because you can’t just have the lounge fire going without the pump, or the heat in the wraparound water tank will explode!
We said, when we moved here, that we would never move again, because it was so stressful- now I know why the French don’t move house as often as us brits do!- not only that, but where we live, is so beautiful, and totally secluded, peaceful, we have a large 1 and a half acres parkland garden, full of wildlife, and a swimming pool sized pond filled with Koi and a Smaller one for fancy goldfish for the wildlife, and it has a small town with everything you need, 4 kms away, and a main Rd access to just about anywhere you want to go in any direction within 3-4 kms.
We’re not quite ready to return to the UK, we don’t have family there anyway and the last short visit back in 2018 was … horrible, too many people, too many cars, too much noise, everything is full of technology, that’s not our bag at all. We don’t have children, or grandchildren. No pull there then.
So, we are trying to make life easier on ourselves here.
I’ve looked into air to heat exchange, on a VERY honest website, that supplies them. They say they need maintenance because of dust ( which is getting worse and worse each summer, we’re heading into our fourth heatwave in August! ). They say the heat ratio is, 60/40%, compared to 60/75% for wood heat.
Our house is 325 years old, it has 17 windows and doors, all double glazed. Double insulation in all the rooves/ roofs for the younger generations, lol! And the temperatures just wouldn’t be good enough here, particularly on really cold days in winter.We have mostly stone floors downstairs and wood venirs over insulated concrete in the lounge, diner, kitchen, partially open plan, with vaulted ceilings.
We can’t afford to put in underfloor heating.
( At the moment the only air to heat pump is our tumble dryer that takes twice as long as a conventional dryer but at the 3rd of the cost. Its 10 years old now and still going strong, but you do have to de-lint every time you use it for best results ).
And I suppose for active people, that would be enough. but I’m not active. I have extra fleecy blanket everywhere, even for my 3 cats! And it’s still very cold waking up in a 15º bedroom because the fire went out overnight.
So, air pumps are off our list. And Gas by the sound of it, due to the USA’S illegal war, making prices rise sharply now.
When we moved her 13 years ago, we had an oil central heating system for the last half of that winter. Which cost, back in 2013, 3,000€! which we changed within 5 months to our 16 kW wraparound woodburning stove. We’d had a 12 kW woodburning wraparound stove at our last house here in France, and it was so lovely just having one wood stove, and 22º heat in every room in our L shaped house. So we had plans to put a bigger one in here anyway.
Our hot water for the upstairs bathroom is from an eco water tank in the Attic. It is brilliant. but too far away to service the kitchen or downstairs shower room and laundry room because one has a different roof, the other doesn’t because it valted and is nowhere near as high as the bathroom Attic. Over 325 years, this house has been added onto 4 times and has 5 rooves/ roofs. The kitchen hot water comes from a small instant hot water tank under the sink. The worst investment we made. 200€ for water that is only hot if you trickle it out of the tap, it’s no word of a lie to take 5 minutes to fill the large sink bowl and it’s a 5 kW heater! So recently, we stopped using it and my husband uses a bucket of hot water from the upstairs bath tap. Not only is this quicker and much more convenient but our electric bills dropped considerably. So we tried it on other high kW items. We stopped using the microwave, the toaster, the electric kettle by that I mean we would boil it once for a cuppa in the morning, put the rest into a flask and tacos it, 
so I could still have cups of tea in the day, my husband drinks mainly water or iced tea, and our electricity bills dropped from 500€ for a winter bill, then cut by a 240€ deduction by the French gouvernment, leaving 260€ to pay, but in the last year, our 2 winter bills to pay in May, 2025 and 2026 were, 139€ and 141€ respectively.
So, I haven’t heard about buches ( I’m not sure about the spelling )
How much are they? Where would they be bought from? apart from a DIY shop which are expensive where I live in North Deux-Sevres.
And are they the same as the ones you buy at the beginning of the year if you haven’t had a chimney sweep, which my husband does everything September. ( It’s very handy having a builder for a husband 
).
So, I’m looking at bushes now, so who ever knows about them, please, could you give me all of your experiences with them? 
Thank you all for your responses, and in advance for any others, on the buche logs. 
