philat98

Lets hope those beautiful lemon trees dont suffer too much. In Umbria they just wheel them into the garage or cover them with a fleece. Not so easy in Amalfi.

arjacey

We are a few weeks ahead of you on a similar journey. We moved here permanently in early October and competed our purchase in early November. We are a little further south, a few miles from Fermo.

It took about six weeks to organise a new gas contract even though there was one in place for the previous owner. We went into the Christmas break with 0% on the meter but it lasted so we were not denied the sprouts on Christmas Day! Our contract is with Liquigas. We sent emails to start the process off, then a second email to nudge. We then had a phone call from Liquigas, English speaking, who started to draw up the new contract. The way of working seems to be to do nothing until the client calls or emails asking where the process has got to and then to respond very quickly. We got a delivery in the week after Christmas. If you are doing this, have a look at the prices you are offered. We are paying €1.1 but neighbours are paying around €0.8. We have heard of rates above ours and less than our neighbours. There is some discount if you are in the sticks (which we are, I would think) apparently.

It wouldn't have been disastrous if the gas had expired as we have a stufa as an alternative for heating, gas being used for hot water and hobs.

At the moment we are running ours most of the day and have the living areas up to about 21C-22C at its warmest, the top floor averages about 15-16C. The stufa is rated at a maximum of 16.5Kwh. We are not running all of the radiators all of the day, just those needed. We have a three story house with 16 radiators. The radiators on the ground floor (7) and some on the first floor (5) are on most of the day, two in guest bedrooms are off. Radiators on the top floor, where we sleep, is on in the morning (the stufa start up at 5) and the evening.

Our stufa doesn't have a thermostat itself but the radiators on/off can be controlled by room thermostats. We had a stufa with a thermostat at a previous rental and thought it might be good to have one here but in the present weather conditions I don't think it is that important.

We are using around 2 bags of pellets each day at about €4.50 a bag. And this is said to be one of the cheaper options. So, as we were expecting, heating costs are not cheap!

We also have a small wood burner in the 'snug' so if it gets really bad we can hunker down in there.

Our main problems so far has been anything where a telephone call is involved! Everything else is getting done, albeit a little slowly and 'quirkily'.

I hope our experiences help. We have a forecast of more snow here this morning with another day of the heavy stuff and then a couple of days of light snow before the temperature improves at the beginning of next week. So, we hope you are warm enough!

Geordieborn

We had a bombola when we bought, but it was only used for the gas hob. Before buying we had read many a post about the cost of gas, if not town gas, being very expensive in Italy. We had the big gas tank for about a year before the 30% on the needle really dropped into the red and we had to consider our options. Decided a new gas contract was daft for just the hob, so had a look at the cost of a gas combi as the sansa stuffa was being put on in the warmer months for domestic hot water and it could do that job. But working out the cost, or even the cost for solar, we came to the conclusion it was not worth the outlay for either as the stuffa cost about 30c/day for the hot water. Regards the hob, we replaced the big gas tank with 2 small gas bottles and use less than 2 of these per year… One swaps over if the first runs out and we replace it.