Tuesday 8 March 2016

Ardnamurchan wood ........ a renewable heat initiative ( without any help from the taxpayer).

Daily I'm inundated with spam asking if I want to pre-plan my funeral, re-mortgage my house, buy medication for dysfunctional body parts... hearing aids.... cruises ... vote to leave the EU. No I don't, and by the way, on Sunday I cut three or four tonnes of logs while my not quite so old friends loaded the saw bench and did some splitting ( by hand!).

Not quite so elderly but good preparation for retirement
The fruit garden, it never produced much fruit, has been converted into a hard standing area for firewood storage, cutting, splitting, stacking and loading. It will also look a lot better when I've finished the hedge planting and landscaping.

It has taken me seven or eight years to get to this point where I do not buy or burn coal, only firewood for central heating, ninety five per cent of the hot water (I have an electric shower and immersion heater for the summer months) and cooking. The cooking has been the most difficult bit, the Rayburn stove is a capricious beast, the oven temperature is often difficult to gauge and maintain and of course you have to be in attendance to do the stoking.

The last firing with logs is around 8.00 pm, this keeps the house warm until bed time and it's still warm in the morning when it takes only a couple of minutes to light and get going again.

OK sometimes this place looks like an activity centre for the elderly but wood heating keeps me active, warm while processing wood and  burning it, reduces my carbon footprint, keeps me out of trouble ( too tired) and I don't have time to pre-plan my funeral.


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