We have both wood and oil but oil is back up and hopefully will not get used much but this is our first winter so will be a learning curve. We have bought plenty of wood so hopefully enough there. Currently only using oil for hot water. We also have a small wood burner if the electric goes out

Just to let you all know just filled up with 900 litres at £0.5235 pence per litres.
Still in Belfast N/Ireland waiting my turn!


Regards

Sean
AOR Feb 2007

Updating this - I had two quotes today - one from a large company 88.9 and one from a small company 78.9...can you guess which one I went with?

We moved into a house with only baseboard heaters, in a very rural area - so very similar to L i s a we had a very super efficient woodstove installed.

Our main concern was plan B - what would happen if there was a major hydro outage - most furnaces need electricity to run a fan of some description and it is not always possible to hook them up to a generator.

We could cook on the woodstove - I have cooked several casseroles etc very successfully along the lines of a slow-cooker, and are now assured that we would not freeze - and most importantly the house would not freeze (the thought of all those burst pipes!) if there was a major hydro disaster, or even a short power cut at -30!!

The back-up plans have taken much more thought (and money!!) than we had ever considered when back in the UK!

Wood is not cheap if you have to buy it as logs (we are fortunate to have my dad living close by with acres of trees to cut and a log splitter!) but makes an excellent plan B and for us is a wonderful toasty warm and economical plan A!!

We had some bad news last week which results in having to go out and buy a new decent wood furnacse that would be able to heat the house because which ever bright spark put the big furnace in the house a couple of years ago didn't bother to increase the size of the flue resulting in it being badly blocked and would cost several thousands of $$$ to sort it out:curse:. Was cheaper to buy new wood stoves

Trying to save themselves some cash eh? At least you found it out before there was a fire or something. We have an open fire in our lounge and I think we will probably install a woodstove next year.

I'm doing a wood stove next year too, in the meantime...

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/1088604.html

I think so. Hopefully the wood stoves will do the job and cut down on dust as we noticed earlier in the year when we had the wood furnace going that there was a lot of dust which won't help my Asthma. Will see how it goes and hopefully on the 20th they will be coming to put them in. Should take them all day for 2 stoves but thankfully one is replaces the stove we already have so chimney already in place just a case of couple adjustments. Glad we found out now before we use it but didn't help that I was supposed to organise sweep a couple of months ago during the summer. Guess I learnt the hard way although shop reckons after first sweep next year we should manage every couple of years getting it swept

When I built my house in NS I made sure that the installer of the fireplace was fully qualified to do the job. If the installers aren't qualified, and there are some around, the insurance folks don't like it. I also took lots of pictures of the installation work which I keep in my home insurance file. Just in case there is ever a problem.

Why do the larger companies charge more than the smaller ones then?

When I lived in a rural community in the UK, a dozen of us in the village negotiated as a group over oil price, it gave us some leverage with suppliers and saved a few pence on the litre price we we otherwise offered.