It’s cheap because the energy rating is F. Probably not much better than the plywood shack. Improving that sufficiently will be expensive.
Indeed. Plus it’s in the middle of nowhere. I see it’s near Bellac, which I know as we have family who live there… and Bellac is too small and way too rural for me.
Edit: just read that back and it sounds a bit arsey of me… Appreciate some people are looking for that kind of thing. Was meant more as a comment about needing to jump in your car for everything (shopping, commuting for work, doctors appointment, etc…)
It’s got this
and this
That’s thousands of euros-worth, for starters. I wish!
Enooormously better than The Plywood Shack. If it’s an F then The Plywood Shack should be a Z. My sitting room was 7C the other day. Most days its 10C-11C a.t.mo. Uninhabitable.
I read on SF of homes made comfortable by the heat from wood burners wafting about, going upstairs, in particular.
As for location, that’s your preference @Gareth. We are comparing it with the property described by MaryW. [quote=“MaryW, post:1, topic:56226”]
it’s in the quiet countryside
[/quote]
It’s 20 mins from Montmorillon which has a Lidl [my default ‘what’s nearby’ feature. If there’s a Lidl, there’s everything else] big s/mkts and a hospital, amongst other things.
Despite living on the edge of Vire I have to ‘jump in the car for everything’. The s/mkts are +/- 10 mins and my M.T. is 35 mins away. I asked a nurse whether I should change to a doc in town. "Nooo! don’t move! All the docs’ lists are full in Vire!"
As @Gareth mentions, some people are looking for that sort of location. I can only think that wood burners like the two in this house don’t rate much on the energy audit. But stoked up, they are going to make that place pretty comfortable.
Despite living on the edge of a town, I have to drive everywhere. Plan A is more and more inclined to a house in a ‘proper town’.
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I am about 15 minutes from this and while pleasant I’ve always found Brigueil to be a very nothing place. I can’t really explain it, but aside from being near to les herolles for the monthly market I can’t think of a single thing to do for miles and miles. It’s a very British area round there, but other than being near other Brits I don’t know what it has going for it. Perhaps for a second home where you come over, stay a fortnight not leaving the property just chilling, then leaving until next time it’s fine, but otherwise I wouldn’t want to live there. One of the Escape to the Chateau places is on the edge of the village in a hamlet and they do the odd event, but otherwise there’s not a lot happening.
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Ah OK that would rule it out then.
Good local info!
My reaction was based purely on first impressions, of course I would research before buying… 
That may be so but people are getting sidetracked by location - and their preferences for same - as against the price for what you get compared to the present asking price of the house that MaryW describes.
And a @Gareth points out, it may be just what someone is looking for.
I recall a comment by the composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, when an interviewer said, “You’re a long way from things, living on Orkney”
“What things?”
All the things people need.
Clearly he had what he needed. People’s needs …
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[/quote]
Yes, good point. I’d forgotten that. 
Thinking about this though… Wouldn’t the fact it’s so bad a DPE mean that much of the cost to bring it up to standard would be covered by government grants and other such initiatives? Might be better off than a property that’s, say, a DPE score of ‘D’.
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OK, you know best.
Chris, I think that going strictly by the official energy rating may not be the whole story. Maybe wood burners are low on the ratings but in fact do a good practical job. Others on SF, who have wood burners like those, may have useful comments to make.
My own experience, staying in a couple of houses with one of these stoves, I was very impressed with how they performed.
Indeed. I applied for the Renov-France scheme. The Plywood Shack was deemed 'un passoir thermique’ and I qualified for the Full Monty - a total of €80k! There was even a deal to be done on the 10% contribution by me, including an interest-free loan, repayable on sale of the property!
Unfortunately the requirement that one live in the place for 3 years after completion of works - up with that I cannot put. I want out asap. Judging by the delays and glacial progress experienced by @MikeyPotts, if the ‘GO’ button was pressed on Monday it would be +/- mid '31 before I could move.
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I used to live in central London - 25 years - 10 mins walk R.A.H., a spell 20 mins walk from Lord’s, worked in studios off Leicester Sq/Long Acre, Cov Gdn/Soho [studio now the offices of Magnum] , membership of the R.A. - the whole 9 yards of world class culture and ‘things to do’.
Now , you know those postcards - Greece/Spain/Italy/France - of three old geezers sitting on bench in the shade, watching the world go by …
Well, there’s also the photography which won’t let go. Have tried to give it up but no …
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One problem is that the current rating system wasn’t designed to include stone built vernacular / period properties. They often get poor ratings that are undeserved and due to a lot of complaints and resulting problems, particularly in letting such properties, it seems likely that the present system will be modified some time in the future
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Greenacres for example https://www.green-acres.fr/houses-for-sale?searchQuery=cn-fr-lg-en-city_id-city_40620-mx_p-170000-radius-50-dpe-B%2CC&p_n=2 lets you search for property by energy rating. Certainly a quicker way of weeding out what you don’t want.
Or possibly of finding the kind of house described like this. FWIW we find log burners effective for heating.
You could absolutely make the house comfortable to live in, that’s almost certainly not a problem. Just how much you would have to spend to have that comfort is the issue, as you’ve discovered with the shack. The rating is supposed to be a measure of how much you would have to spend to make it comfortable and is measured in units of kWh/m2/year. At 167m2 and a dpe of 360 that’s 60,120 kWh per year. On the standard EDF Base rate that’s over € 11,900 per year if you heated just with electricity. Not sure what it would be heating with just the wood burning stoves but it won’t be cheap.
Before anyone says it, yes I know nobody would heat just with electricity, and that the figures won’t necessarily be realistic, but I’ve lived in a French stone house with two wood burning stoves and an ‘E’ rating and it was difficult to heat properly even with both stoves going. And it used a lot of wood which fortunately I got free in exchange for letting the woodman store his wood in my large barn and even larger hanger. I hate to think how much ot would have cost.
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Similarly, our current (rental) place has a DPE of ‘E’, too. We don’t have wood burning stoves though. We’ve got the “grille pain” electric heaters.
Our normal electricity usage in summer was approx 100 € p/month. In winter, it’s about 300 € p/month. The family who lived here before us spent even more than us as they had a couple of kids whose bedrooms needed heating (they’re just guests’ bedrooms for us, so not used in winter).
Our previous house was worse though. We paid roughly the same but the house was nonetheless constantly cold.
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The contrast with our current ‘A’ rated house is huge. We’re all electric and currently pay €50 per month. And we usually get around €80 - €100 back every year. We do have 4.1 kWh of solar self consumption though which helps a lot. With that we get around €230 per year back from selling surplus to the grid. So when it’s all taken into account we’re paying less than €300 per year.
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