Fuel for the Fire

 When we built our house over 10 years ago we aimed to have a range of options for heating it in winter. The main one was the sun which heats it for free so we built it with lots of windows to the north (we are in the Southern Hemisphere) and concrete walls and floors for passive solar gain. It works beautifully - sometimes too well as we will open windows on a midwinters day if it gets too warm!

Our main living area has a logburner which is fuel efficient and generally low emission. We don't have to light this every day in winter - if it has been sunny there is often no need to light it in the evening. The wood for this we provide ourselves as we planted a large woodlot on out property 17 yers ago so there is no shortage for this. 

Our second lounge has a gas fire which was a luxury item when we built and which we use on occasion but not often. We had no gas bottles for the first 5 years we were here and since they were put in we have never had to change them until now.

We have underfloor hot water pipes to keep the concrete floors warm on cold days - I run these via a timer and thermostat so they come off and on according to the temperature in the house. This is run of diesel - chosen as we wanted the option to switch to biofuel once the technology allowed this. Our consumption of diesel is low and overall the cost to heat our whole house is only slightly more than it used to cost heating our last one which was a wooden bungalow with little insulation and only the living areas heated.

Today was one of those days with no sun, raining and cold - and as we discovered , no fuel for the boiler and both of the gas bottles have chosen today to show they are empty! (The photos were taken a couple of weeks ago when we still had gas). 

Time to get organised and spend some money on gas and fuel. We could have had diesel delivered today but being a weekend there was an extra $100 surcharge so we were happy to hold out for a couple of days. In the meantime we are grateful for our log burner and a good supply of wood and we are looking forward to the sun shining again too!