I know this isn't for everyone but I thought I'd share what we've been trying this winter.
We have a woodburner and decided to get logs (we got hardwood - they are more expensive to buy but burn a lot longer).
So you know our set up and can compare with your own, we are two pensioners, over 70. We are in the house more or less 24/7 and both of us are disabled.
We turned the heating right down, so it wouldn't go on - about at 10 degrees, and had a fire in the woodburner everyday from before breakfast till going to bed.
Over night, as we are pensioners and need to avoid breathing cold air over night, we turn the thermostat up to 15 degrees. That just keeps the cold air off and it's warm under a duvet.
We got a fan for the top of the woodburner, the type that isn't electric, it works because the heat rises and turns the blades, and we found that having the woodburner going in one downstairs room managed to spread heat through the whole house. (we kept all room doors open). But the other rooms aren't toasty warm, just sort of OK (fine unless you are sitting still in one room for ages).
The sitting room, where we spend most of the time, especially from tea time onwards, is toasty warm :-)
It is quite a lot of work for one pensioner (not me, I couldn't do any of it), as there is the carrying in of the logs and setting the fire. Then the fire has to be kept an eye on as it works best if it's kept at a reasonable temperature and doesn't burn too low before the next logs are put on. Then there's sweeping up bits of logs and ash, and every morning the cool ash needs taking out of the woodburner before the fire is set and lit.
So, is it worth the work and does it save money?
Well, on the work side, it is entirely up to whether the person doing it has the ability and energy to keep doing it. Plus you do need to have a woodburner installed already - which is very expensive if you don't already have one.
On the saving money side, I would say, yes it does save money on your heating bills. But looking at how much we have left of the logs stacked outside, I'd say we won't have saved as much as we thought. It will have saved about £200 on this quarter's bill though. We were hoping to have saved more.
Would we do it again? Well we have decided to keep a store of logs handy but only have a fire from tea time onwards and keep the extra logs in case of power cuts or extra cold snaps.
Why? Because the person doing the fire here isn't well and at over 70 is finding it a bit much doing it all day every day. You might feel differently.
