bigglesworth

grannybunz

You are absolutely right MillieF

Yes is can get extremely cold here in the Luberon, especially when the Mistral blows but the thing that makes living here so much better for us than it was in NE England is the light and knowing that if there are a couple of grey days the sun will soon be out and there are never endless days/weeks of what my mother used to call "non-weather"

dennerlymum

indeed.. though last winter had a long stretch of thos e never ending grey days!

Usually though I find it much brighter and more cheerful

loy loy

The problem for us is large house with completely inadequate heating and insulation.

We have overhead electric heating that we found out from last year costs a bomb!

We move into the backroom with the log burner, but bedrooms and bathroom are cold. And my office in the attic it's 3 pairs of socks, runnning trousers, trousers, vest, t shirt, jumper and fingerless gloves with a oil burner that costs about 25e a week to run!

Currently looking to sell and move to a smaller house.

We are paying 65e a steer at the moment

bigglesworth

LL That is a perfect description of conditions in the house we rented in the Dordogne three years ago. We were foolish enough to believe that photographs of radiators in rooms meant those radiators might be connected to something that produced heat! The boiler had stopped working years before.

Even with the log burner going, the temperature in the back hall stayed resolutely 6 below for two months. We had thick ice not just on the windows, but on the ceiling in our bedroom! We too were paying 65 a stere, and we used nearly thirty steres in one log burner!

I promised er indoors she would never be that cold again, but it was a close run thing the first winter here, as we still had the old doors, only partly insulated, and most of the internal walls down, with just the one log burner again. But I spent a fortune on insulation, put in a good central heating boiler, and last year we were quite comfortable.

You have my complete sympathy. I have just warmed myself up stacking my first ten steres of logs. Another ten arriving next week. Oil boiler being topped up soon too. And the last room is being floored and insulated as we speak.
It will get better for you, but my advice is buy something you can insulate and keep the heat in. Last year I used 25 steres, and about 600 litres of oil - and this is a big house. This year it should be a bit less, as the whole house is now insulated.

grannybunz

Grief Biggles

How big is your house??

Our advantage is that it in the centre of an hameau so lots of shared walls. It is three stories high. Single room thickness on the south side and two room thickness on the north. The rooms on the west side are the oldest, 17 something or other, early 18th to the west but both with metre thick stone walls.

When we bought it we installed double glazing, roof insulation and, a few years ago, a woodburning insert in in the dining room trad fireplace with ducts to the salon above and our (enormous) bedroom above that. We fitted storage radiators elswhere that work during heures creuses and normal but efficient electric radiators in the three rooms "served" by the woodburner. We don't heat the spare bedrooms unless they are occupied.

So, with three bedrooms, a large kitchen, dining room, salon, 3 bathrooms a library and a dressing room we used 5-6 steres of wood at €60 per stere (plus all the pallets etc we collect from the supermarket and the woods during the summer!). Our electricity (including ovens and 2 water heaters ) comes to about €103 a month. This is far less than we were paying in NE England for gas and electricity and we are much much warmer, even during the Mistral. The house is also deliciously cool in the summer.

We wanted to install solar panels but live in both a regional park and un de les plus beaux villages etc and they are not permitted.

bigglesworth

GB
Well yes it sounds as though it is a bit bigger house -but by no means a mansion. The lounge alone however is 200 cubic metres, as is our bedroom.

But also it is detached and two stories, neither of which help. Mainly 17th and 18th century. Insulated and double glazed now everywhere possible.

But two outside doors and three sets of French windows. Kitchen sits over an old cellar (now filled in, but considerable cold seepage). Still gaps through to roof here and there. The trick as we all know is not to let the house get cold, and it is not helped by my leaving the doors open all the time so the dogs can run in and out!

But the main thing is I promised she would never be cold again. So I may have gone over the top. My electric bill is quite a bit lower - only cooking and lighting of course, and we have been running loads of machinery over the last two years. I am hoping I will need much less wood this year, but we will see.

Chris'nJulie

Novocastrian, there always seems to be at least one cleverdick who thinks he knows better than everyone else.

Have a look at this for starters, and then, no doubt you'll poo-poo Joe Bastardi (a man who is consistently right):

http://www.weatherbell.com/saturday-...tember-28-2013

Novocastrian

Jesus wept.

"CO2 cannot cause global warming. I'll tell you why. It doesn't mix well with the atmosphere, for one. For two, its specific gravity is 1 1/2 times that of the rest of the atmosphere. It heats and cools much quicker. Its radiative processes are much different. So it cannot -- it literally cannot cause global warming. --- Joe Bastardi, Fox Business, March 9, 2012."

Enough said.

Chris'nJulie

Here's something else for you to weep over, Novocastrian.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10...mean_ice_ages/

Novocastrian

Rather than posting another dubious link from your no doubt vast repertoire of non-refereed internet commentary, why don't you try defending the drivel I quoted from Joe Bastardi, "the man who's never wrong"?

loy loy

I think we used 11 stere last year, just in the back room. Plus 3 oil cans at 40e each every 2 weeks.

While we didn't know how much the overhead heating cost, we ran that, a towel heater and an electric radiator and ran up an 800e bill for nov & dec!

Had the house valued by 3 people this week, I don't understand how they can be so different - nearly 70 grand across the three. Although the most expensive quote said they only target the English

Chatter Static

If your getting through that much oil then central heating is really going to be more cost effective. Our last house had a wood boiler "chaudiere bois" with a rad in each room two in the larger spaces and on average we got through 9 stère's a winter. Prior to the central heating we had two wood fires and about three or four of those oil heaters we had collected over time it gets expensive and boring managing that many flammable devices

loy loy

I think our plan is to look to sell. We are going to get double glazing in our bedroom as the doors to the juliet have holes in them. Not a great selling point, and then put the house on the market. Although we do think it will take about 2 years to sell.

We're going to put some insulation down in the attic too. But I think then just muddle through.

scot47

I refer you to the fable by La Fontaine "La Cigale et la Fourmi"

http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue209/cigale.html