Wonderful wood

Autumn is here and it is time to light the stove.

We had the stove installed 12 years ago, and it has been one of the best buys for the house. The chimney sweep kept telling us that the lining of the chimney was failing. We found a company, Ivett and Reed, 01223 241547 , who did the reling and supplied and fitted a small stove. The most expensive bit was the lining!
The stove is a Brunell from Stovax.

Our not quite so spartan heating strategy is to have the gas heating on for an hour in the morning, so it heats the bedroom and the hot water, and then turn it on manually when we think we need it. Most evenings we can heat the living room with the wood stove. It takes a couple of minutes to split enough wood for a couple of days.
We bought the logs from Mr.Richardson, 01223 368968, who also does tree work. He will provide logs for £45 a half load, which must be about 500Kg of logs. He will also supply the logs cut to 200mm, so I only have to split them to get them to fit our little stove. We also have the number for Pete, 01223 845549, who others have recommended, but we have not tried.

In 2006/7 we kept a record of the wood we burnt from December to April, which came to 325 kg. I recon that is about 3,000 megaJoules, saving about 100 kg of CO2 from burning gas. It may have saved £30 too. But we don't do it for the savings.

• It is easy to heat just the living room, so we don't have to heat the rest of the house
• It is good in the spring and autumn, as we dont have to have the heating on
• It looks good.