I was wondering if anyone has lit their fire or turned on their heating yet. I thought it might be interesting to plot the lighting of fires, to see if it goes from North to South or East to West???
Me too, a nice cold crisp sunny day.
You always feel colder whens it’s damp out.
Yeah I saw that too - some has fallen already apparently - all the usual media stories about how Aviemore is the next Trois Vallees…
Would rather cold than wet though…
Look like we were all shocked into lighting the fire last week. Certainly no need for any such thing this week. 24°C driving home from work last night.
They say it’s going to be another very cold winter though. Read on the BBC website that Scotalnd would see the same sort of problems with snow as last year.
We buy ours by the moule in the Saone et Loire, which is 2.33 stere. One moule from our supplier, delivered and stacked in 33cm lengths is 90€, so 38€ a stere. It’s well dried with majority oak and we were a bit cheesed of as he has put his prices up this year!!!
We’ve bought extra this year due to last year being so cold and the exhorbitant gas bill we received. We light the fire every evening but we haven’t put the heating on yet.
We are 20kms north of Pau (Mouhous) and a bit of snow appeared on the top of Pic du Midi last Tuesday but still mid twenties during the day here with a low of 10 on Saturday - so no need for heating yet but have used the heater on the car!
No, I’m still holding out (NIORT). It was freezing a couple of weeks ago and I was tempted but now the temperature & humidity have increased as we have a mixture of sunshine and drizzly rain - still it’s good for mushrooms !!
As for the business - luckily my regular B&B guy dislikes any heating, even in the winter but just got someone in the Gite and not sure yet whether they have switched on the electric radiators.
There’s talk about lots of power cuts this Winter, so I’ve bought myself a gas camping stove to at least heat up some soup and fry some sausages in the candle-light and will have to bring the logs in for the big fireplace in the sitting room. Hopefully all the branches I cut off various trees - fruit, mulberry, etc, will have dried out by now.
Oh, and don’t forget to get your chimneys swept and keep hold of the certificate for your house insurance everyone !!
We paid 60 last winter for oak. It was very good quality though. Burnt ten!
We hate being cold too Stuart, one of the reasons for us moving from the Midi - Pyrenees 2 years ago. Our first winter was very wet and as we all experienced last winter was the coldest it’s been for 18 years, so my French neighbour told me. So there must be hope for us all!
We pay 56 Euros and that’s for 50 cm length logs, so we don’t have to do any chopping or splitting, just straight into the fire.
Can I ask how much a stair your are both paying?
We’ve got a woodburner in the kitchen-living room which goes non stop from autumn to spring and an electric heat pump which replaced the old oil-fired boiler and runs the radiators in the morning and evening (all day when it’s v cold, most of the time we’re pretty snug but I did have to resort to a rug over my knees last winter when it was really cold, when I was at my desk, did even think about some fingerless Steptoe type gloves and a balaclava at one point!
We certainly will consider renting somewhere warmer for the coldest months.
We have two wood burners, one in the kitchen and one in the salon plus electric radiators and our electricity bill for last year was horrendous so we will have to think about updating our heating system if the same happens this year.
Every year I put a note in my diary for August “phone sweep” which prompts me to do the deed and usually we have enough wood to last until December but because last winter was so cold, we burnt every last log and had to buy some straight away. We burnt 16 stères last winter instead of the usual 12.
Bit of both - we had to do a lot of chopping as part of the ground clearance for various reasons so we’ve got wet stacks and dry stacks. Its our sole form of heating and the house is only partly insulated at the mo - last winter there was no insulation anywhere and we used a vast quantity. Should be better this year!
Good grief, how much do you use? Did you actually chop down trees or was it already felled? Might not be dry enough otherwise.
We’ve done our own wood this year and its really satisfying not to have to buy it in. Bloody hard work though.
I’m with Valerie, have you chosen somewhere yet ;). Seriously I was considering Spain at one point but my family weren’t in agreement. Also, it’s still a bit dodgy concerning property and land.
We too have had to light our fire late afternoon for the past week or so here in the Charente Maritime. I think I might have to migrate to Spain if it gets as cold as last winter!
Definitely wood burner weather in the evening now in the Périgord Blanc but as long as I can keep warm with a fleece and a pair of toasty socks I refuse to light it!