Once Roger moved out, we were shocked to discover that we were burning £6 worth of gas every day just to stay warm. This doesn’t fit our rather modest household budget, nor our green aspirations. So how do we stay warm in this unseasonably wintry weather?

Although this is a big house, and we know it’s not very well insulated. It doesn’t help that the thermostat for the central heating is in the upstairs bedroom, one of the warmest rooms in the house. You have to put the temperature up quite high to get the large living room downstairs acceptably warm.

Even knowing all that, we were quite taken aback by our first gas bill, and resolved to reduce our consumption. We decided to turn the heating off between 11am and 6pm. As we were still working away at moving all our possessions to their permanent places in the house, that worked quite well. And then the snow came…

Westacre’s wood burner

It got really cold. So we had to turn to our alternative source of heating: the wood burner. So far, it had only ever been used to boost the temperature with the central heating on. Relying on it to keep us warm while the outside temperature barely rose above 2 degrees C is another matter.

We watched in dismay as it snowed outside and the temperature in our living room refused to climb above 14. You may be made out of hardier stuff that I am, but 14 degrees is cold to sit around in.

Then Alex came up with an ingenious idea. He got the electric fan out and started blowing it gently at the wood burner. Blowing the warm air around the room made all the difference. It is now not much warmer outside, but the room is a comfortable 18 degrees. Warm enough with a woolly jumper on, even for me.

We are now looking for one of those wood burner fans that work on the rising heat from the burner itself. It will do the same job as the electric fan, but for free. Does anyone have one of those to spare?