Pellet burners have the same issue as traditional wood burners - some poor sod needs to move the fuel from where it’s stored to the burner.
I helped my neighbour get his yearly order of two pallets worth of pellets moved into his wood shed earlier in the year and those 15kg bags aren’t exactly light.
We miss ours (well we would if it weren’t 29 degrees here at mo). The U/F was set to about 16-17 degrees which was enough to take chill off in autumn and winter. And then when colder we used wood stove. For us a great combination.
Living off midnight takeaways and lots of drugs…?
Not much if the boiler is modulated down to the correct flow temperature. You can run a condensing boiler in the same way as a heat pump and in the UK with gas being a 1/4 of the cost of electricity its a no brainer. However with the cost of electricity in france being half that of the UK a heat pump is a no brainer compared to other sources if you can get around the mind block of bias
I too lived in a big old Breton house built in the 1600’s with metre thick granite walls and another building the same size behind. It was wonderful when OH was alive and the kids had not moved on with their education and then family lives but….I was left all alone suddenly and it just became too much what with not an immense garden but lawns that took four hours every week all year round to keep down, maintenance and gardening it got too much and left me fed up. I had electric heating and a main large woodturning stove which meant I was solely alone when it came to chainsawing and stacking every autumn, carting it indoors, cleaning the stove, getting the flue swept and so on. Then I made the momentous decision to move 1200kms south to where my son and his family live sold my Breton house in 3 days and had a brand new villa built on the edge of an estate and it has been the best thing I could have done and in preparation for real old age and finally inheritance for the children. No more gardening except for a bit of a pottering and no grass cutting, no dirty woodturning stove to feed and clean, everything modern and electric and the house is so well insulated I never use the heat in winter which is reversible climatisation. I would say to anyone who is getting to find a large old property more and more difficult to maintain, don’t dismiss living in a new modern house, you maybe pleasantly surprised just as I have found
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. 
Still not understanding this?
Sorry for the huge delay, I could not for the life of me find how to reply to you.
When I went to a French air to heating webpage, the VERY honest one, they explained the down sides of their heating ( which I thought was very noble of them! ). They said that the heat that goes through the radiators is between 40 and 60% , compared to the heat from wood fired heating at between 60and 75%.
That’s what they said and I am repeating it.
They also said that it needs regular maintenance for dust, and also, at around the 10 year mark, parts need replacing because they wear out.
I do remember some work clients that my husband was working for telling us that along with his air to heat central heating, that because they wanted traditional tiled floors that they had to have underfloor heating too, for their comfort.
So I don’t think that that type of heating is for us.
You may have to do some investigating yourself for more information.
No investigation necessary, I have a full understanding but was not sure of your
However now I get you, 40-60 degrees C vs 60-75 deg C with a boiler is correct. Its the flowing temperature of the water in the system and the reason in most cases additional radiators maybe needed. Half the temperature of the water and you need twice the area of the radiator, not necessarily underfloor. Yes pollen builds up on the cooling/heating elements so occasional vacuuming is a great idea. Yes parts can wear out at 10 years just as boilers can especially if it is an aluminum and not stainless steel heat exchanger in the boiler.
Rather than changing your heating system, might it be more convenient (and cheaper) to reconsider how to manage your logs with a little bit of paid help?
i) Buy a prefabricated log store of 10-12 stère capacity to stand next to the house.
ii) Order logs cut to size,
iii) Pay someone to move logs from the drop off point to the arbri, stack and cover left over logs until needed.
I agree with you about pellets burners.
We did look at them 13 years ago as alternative to the woodburner central heating but they cost twice the price back then and just looked like large metal pedal bin.
I just didn’t have something like that in my lounge, I wanted a fireplace that I could decorate at Christmas, so I said to my husband, if we’re getting one of those I want to put it into the small stone building joined to the side of the lounge. So like someone here said, those pallets are massive and heavy and we went and bought 2 of them before we actually bought the pellet burner, collected ourselves in my husband tipper truck. Then we found out that the burner had to be inside of the house! yuk!
So I sold, and we delivered said pellets, to a friend of a friend, and bought another Wood stove!
And it’s true, they are very heavy! And it was a tremendous effort!
I try not to remember the failed efforts.
PS IT WAS NOT YOU WHO I AM REFERRING TO, SO PLEASE IGNORE THIS POST UNTIL I HAVE LEARNED TO US THIS WEBPAGE, I AM A TECHNOPHOBE AND TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY IGNORANCE. SORRY .
Yes it was you who I mentioned a moment ago about how many, and how heavy pellets are when you buy a couple of pallets then change your mind about the burner!
Back then the bags were 3,95€ each, seemed like a bargain. Very glad we didn’t go down that route now.
Yes, wood is much cheaper. I have been comparing the price of
Ok, much smaller but to use in my 16kW stove I need twice as many I need 6 stores at 360€ a stores which is 1,800€, currently, we’re paying around 1,200€, ( depending what kind of day he’s had! ), from our local farmer who delivers for an extra 30€
I think that so far in this post, we might have to employ a man with a van, (ours probably, it tips it all out, lol! ) once a month to bring it down to our little stone building that holds a months worth of wood at a time. The rest being in the big wood shed on the parking area next to hubby’s workshop.
At least he won’t have to carry it far, about 6 metres to the fire from there!
My radiators are cast iron 2 metres wide and a metre tall, I think they would do the job if I were to go down that line, especially with their large pipework.
YES, MY LAST POST, IT WAS FOR YOU!
I COULDN’T SEE IN THE TINY CIRCLES WHO IS WHO, I AM HALF BLIND WITH DOUBLE DIPLOPIA ANS STRABISMUS. SO PLEASE EXCUSE MY MISTAKES. I NEED A LIE DOWN NOW BECAUSE MY EYES ARE COMPLETELY BLURRED AFTER SEVERAL HOURS ON A SMALL SCREEN. I CURRENTLY HAVE ONE EYE SHUT AND THE OTHER SQUINTING THROUGH MY EYELASHES,! ha ha ha!
I have written about this topic on Quora multiple times ..having had one installed in Ireland in 2007. Our house had been extensively refurbished and oil fire burner was installed against my desire … . So while there was a mixture of underfloor plastic tube in new build and conventional steel radiators elsewhere. . We then installed a HP in series with the oil burner ..with the oil burner just turning in when the HP cannot maintain the internal 21 C …That is I think about 200 hours total in nearly 20 ears ..
.The very first thing a user must understand is that a heat pump ..espically air to water is not at all like a conventional oil power water heating system .. So all thermostatic valves , zoning and time switches should be scrapped .or at least left fully open .they are counterproductive. The Heat Pump should running 24/7 for the entire heating system and the only control should be the thermometer in the heat pump control electronic control. If left to its own devices the controller will adjust the exit temperature of the HP to the minimum necessary to hold the target room temperature .
Putting it in context .. An oil burner heats the water up 70+C and switches on and off multiple times per hour ..so the radiator heats up and perhaps outputs 2000 watts of heat at 70 into a room at 20 . If the HP is circulating water in the radiator at 30 C ..it outputs much less energy with only a temperature difference of 10 C .. but if it’s on all the time , the average can be the same. And the HP is much more efficient with a low temperature rise.. A wood burner is more similar to the oil burner in that the water temperature is the same ..but the temperature at the radiator is controlled by a thermostatic valve.
Only addition should be a weather compensation sensor so if its a bit warmer then the system doesn’t power up so fiercely and likewise if its cooler it works harder
Having lived in Grenoble myself, not too far from your old house, I’d say it was a good candidate for being constantly cold over the winter and perfect for UF heating
Yes, we have reversible splits here which we installed in 2004. They service every room apart from the bathrooms which have electric UF. In 2019 replaced one, due to one f its compressors clapping out, which served the salon and kitchen, and it took us a long time to realise that unlike the originals, which functioned like rads, big blast on and off, the new set up needed to be left ticking over all the time.
As I have indicated in my fuller answer ..an air to water heat pump with the entire unit outside and plumbed into where you had the oil burner is likely the best solution ..Zero or minimal.maintance .. Mine requires about 50 minutes per year opening a water filter and removing the rust which has built-up in the year . A massive stone house with insulation preferably on the outside is the ideal candidate as the heat soaks into the building and releases slowly.
I know that they seem difficult to come by in France but electric blankets from a quality brand in the UK eg Dimplex will solve the bedroom freezing problem . They are extremely cheap to operate and are exactly what poor circulation espically in the legs need… My house in Brittany has no heating system and we use it mainly in summer . However I was once there in January and theair temperature was minus 4 Inside the house on arrival . So low that the butane room heaters only had a flicker and the butane gas cooker could not fry an egg. ..and only a 6 KW EDF supply .. .. But my bed was cosy.
A gas tank with propane will drive your heating requirements ..but has been one of the most expensive options ..