Have you got a woodburner or just electric?
Fireplace insert, doesn’t really heat the whole house, but gets the lounge cosy.
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Good for quick heat when you arrive then!!
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As long as the chimney has been swept 
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I’ve always occasionally used the wood burner to cook but this year making a real effort. Even if I get something going on the gas I move it over. Actually quite like it, a gentler heat!
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I’ve just realized… my landline telephone will still work without electricity… I shall just have to plug the “old fashioned” one back into the telephone socket, replacing the handsfree modern-thingy one (which needs electricty as well as the telephone line).
so I shall be able to phone for Emergency services… hurrah.
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Why don’t buy the rods and brush and sweep the chimney, you can get a pro sweep later on if needed for insurance and peace of mind.
Another thing, I’m looking at one of these for my future workshop VEVOR VEVOR Diesel Air Heater,12V 8KW Parking Heater, All in One Truck Heater, Single Air Outlet, Vehicle Heater, Fast Heating Diesel Heater, for Car, Vans, Truck, RV, Boats, Trailer, Motorhome, Caravan | VEVOR EU maybe a good idea for heating up your house when you first arrive. Plenty of other models and YouTube vids on them.
Tory a cast iron casserole with lid will work better than stainless steel. You could just about cook a stew with only a candle under one of those.
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Absolutely! That was just the peas for our small person! We had curry so separate meals tonight! I reheated the frozen curry on there with our very heavy stainless steel pan. I have a huge cast iron pot which is amazing!
Have you considered buying a mobile calor gas heater ?
They are excellent, heat just where you want it, but you have to be wary of fumes. I used to deliver Super Surs, made in Spain, back in the '70s and they were little changed in the '90s when we came here. Our original entrance opened on to the only main room, the kitchen, and later we had a wooden, glazed construction built there. The roof was not joined to the house wall deliberately, but under the eaves so no water ingress, and we would leave the doors open with a Super Sur in what looked like a large inglenook. All the fumes escaped via the deliberate gap. 
Years later, with the house extended and other forms of heating installed, that veranda became a proper one with sealed double glazing and no outside door. Sometimes miss the cozy glow though in pre telly days, but not often. 
I’ve just bought a gilet with heated panels for neck and back in particular. It’s to help with arthritis but useful for keeping cosy. Although you do need a battery pack or a usb socket to power it. It’s really comfortable.
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A good idea, and in keeping with my Scrooge-like reply in the Christmas thread, I might manage to electrocute myself. 
Seriously though, that is a good idea, instead of a heater heating the whole room continuously, it could be turned right down and keep myself warm in this little corner where I sit at the computer. What’s it called in French and where did you get it? 
Lidl does them, and electric footwarmers, but at least the French and UK versions don’t last long.
Lakeland had a good range of heated things as they have had for years. But unfortunately they got some publicity this year with the fuel cost panic, all the schicki-mickis piled in and their whole stock has disappeared. They price things so high the numbers don’t really add up but they are excellent on guarantees and customer service when things do fail.
hot water bottle… prepared in advance… will keep one nice and cosy…
I tested mine out a couple of nights ago and was very pleased with it after thinking it would not be enough but it was and the main living area and kiitchen went up in degrees quite quickly. I made sure all the shutters were closed and rooms not being used had their doors shut.
This is one of the reasons I am anti electric shutters and electric gates; because of where my house is we have historically had many many power cuts and having to rely on electricity for things I consider unnecessary just isn’t worth it. It is also why I didn’t put in a heat pump for ages, now the cables have been buried we get fewer cuts. The old cuts often lasted anything up to a week.
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Sorry, long post
The thought has crossed my mind, I believe you can “self certify” for insurance purposes - but there is some comfort in knowing that I have an official certificate. It barely needs doing anyway - I think we last had it done in 2020 and have only lit a fire about twice since then, so it’s mostly for the insurance.
The house is now warm anyway - well, as warm as it gets as the previous owner updated to a heat pump but kept the 1950’s cast iron radiators, at least they seem to be quite a high surface area design. More “shirt+jumper” conditions indoors compared to yesterday’s “brushed cotton shirt+jumper+fleece+blanket” conditions
When we arrive in the colder months and actually need the heating it can take 12-24 hours to really kick in, which is why it’s nice to light a fire the first evening.
The problem du jour anyway is damp which has risen its head significantly post Covid, including all the kitchen handles corroding and mould growing on surfaces in the house. We were just not able to visit enough to keep the place aired. There are ventilation fans but in the winter months they just pull even damper air in from outside (85% RH yesterday according to Google compared with ~70% in the house)
This visit we arrived to discover the back of the cellar door looking like someone had pointed a hose at it, and the edge of the stairs clearly had water seeping into the wood.
I think I know what has caused this - the cellar is sopping. Now in itself that doesn’t bother me - it’s a Breton stone house sitting on a 2/3rds semi-submerged cellar, it isn’t going to be dry down there (as evidenced by the gutter running round the edge to funnel any water seeping through the cellar walls round to a sump, from which it is evacuated by pump). This time however the water has come *up* through the floor, as it occasionally does, sufficient to be pooling a few mm on the surface in some spots. As this misses the gutters the only way “out” is for it to evaporate.
At this time of year the air in the cellar is going to be warmer than the house - even if it’s only 8-10° down there chances are the house will be ~ 4° The body of relatively warm saturated air meeting a colder surface is going to cause condensation - that interface is the back of the cellar door and the underside of the main stairs. Looks like I’m going to have to leave the heating on at the end of the week to keep the house warm enough to prevent that happening - I’ve never had to do that - normally I’ve just had the heating running in Jan/Feb to prevent freezing as it would be way too much of a pain to drain the whole system, not even sure it would be advisable as the the exchanger is outside and fully exposed to any cold weather.
The house itself wasn’t too bad - I’d left a dehumidifier running with a 65% target - enough to fix most problems without drying things out excessively; it’s too small a unit to do that anyway. Not that it worked as well as I’d hoped. Despite having the free drainage hose connected it filled the reservoir and shut itself off but I don’t know if that was a few days after we left (probably), or a few days before we arrived or somewhere in between.
I need to figure out how water trickled down into the resevoir despite “officially” having been blocked off.
We are at the end of a power line and used to get very many cuts. We got a generator and made sure we had diverse energy sources. We took off the roller shutter to one chambre d’hotes bedroom in case a power cut made the upstairs window the only exit for our guests! But one day EDF came along and put in a new earth just outside our boundary and cuts rarely happen now.