Keeping warm.

We have inherited an old (local plumber's Grandfather installed it) oil central heating boiler, which uses 200+ litres of oil every month.

Needless to say, it has to go, and pronto, or we'll be bankrupt by summer and will have emptied Saudi Arabia.

We wanted a wood fired alternative, but have found that the TFTS (Technology for Technology's Sake) people have been getting their hands dirty. In France the central heating is un-vented and is at mains pressure. This means that if it gets too hot and has nowhere to go, it explodes. With oil that's not a problem because oil is controllable and you can turn it down instantly. With wood, it burns hot then cools down a bit later unless you put another log on. In the UK you have a water tank in the loft which absorbs the heat and so you don't get ruptured pipes. In France they don't so to get around this problem, if the system is about to go bang, a valve opens and shoots red hot water vapour into the air and an injection system then pumps cold water into the system at the same rate the hot water's irrigating the lawn. Costs E600 for the pump alone, which doesn't work in a power cut in winter when you need it to work.

Older wood heating systems had a pipe sticking out the top of the boiler that water bubbled out of if it got too hot. Our plumber knows people who've got them and they've worked fine for decades: stoke it up, radiators and water get hot, it cools down 8 hours later and then you throw some more logs on. Job done. They're not made any more because they don't work on the newer systems.

Wood-chip and pellet systems are hugely expensive and you need a barn for them to fit in, and they all need electicity for the feed hoppers and pumps, and you need something rat and damp -proof to keep the fuel in. Also more suited to swimming pools and warehouses.

Bit like veggie bacon, are these systems. Someone won't eat bacon for whatever reason but actually really likes bacon to be honest and so gets something that looks, smells and tastes like a crap version of real bacon for twice the price in a sterile soul-less wee placcy carton. Just eat something else for God's sake and accept that you can't have bacon without killing a pig, you feverish shivering wisp!

You like central heating that you can turn down and up when you feel like it? Oil does that, wood doesn't. Either live with oil or get used to cold mornings and a huge overdraft and have wood.

We're getting a bog-standard 93% efficient oil boiler, separate electric heating (atomic, I know, but the hills here are covered in turbines, the reactor at Brest is now shut down, and we might get a turbine ourselves if we win the lottery), and then when we do the kitchen up we'll get a wee wood stove with a hob top and a matching small one in the lounge, and insulate as much as we can. In summer we'll not have the oil on heating the water and a gas cooker, and in winter we'll have two stoves on for heating and cooking and the oil will be only as a backup.

Wood power = 8 grand just for the parts (Perge boiler and 1500L accumulator tank).

Oil power = 3 grand all in (boiler and new fittings, water heater and fittings, and a chatty wee man to fit it all).