I got a welcome reminder of what a beast our stove is when I came home from a trade fair yesterday afternoon.\u00a0 I opened the front door and was almost flattened by a wall of heat.<\/p>\n
The stove had been lit since 7am, to help make sure our B&B guests were warm as well as well-fed before they hit the trail for a hard day’s walking.\u00a0 But by now it was 2pm, the house was empty and I was starting to sweat.<\/p>\n
Our installer was reluctant to install this particular model, an Extraflame Lucrezia Idro, when the specifications for our new heating system were first drawn up.\u00a0 On paper, it’s far too powerful for the space that needs heating.\u00a0 It generates 22.5KW of heat, with 17.5KW of that available for central heating.<\/p>\n
But once you factor in the thin, leaky wooden walls of our timber-built forester’s cottage, it starts to make more sense.\u00a0 In the dead of winter, with a 25\u02daC difference between internal and external temperature, the heat loss is, sadly, vast.\u00a0 It doesn’t take long for the house to cool down once the stove is off.\u00a0 Set against that, the Lucrezia was a sensible option after all.<\/p>\n
The one remaining problem is that in spring and autumn, when it’s not so cold outside, the Lucrezia can get the house very warm, very fast.\u00a0 If you don’t remember to switch it off before you go out, you will quickly cook when you come home.\u00a0 It does have a central heating timer, but at a time of year when you’re only switching the stove on ad hoc<\/em>, the timer tends to be deactivated.<\/p>\n Thus it was, when I came into the snug, there was Lucy, merrily auguring pellets into her burn pot and doing a fine job of drying the guest towels that were hanging nearby.\u00a0 I reached for the off button; the stove hasn’t been on since.<\/p>\n The UK is having its last gasp of summer this week and even in Scotland it’s pleasantly mild outside.\u00a0 That is all set to change by the weekend.\u00a0 A polar air flow is forecast, bringing autumn for real, with winter not far behind.\u00a0 It may soon be time to activate that central heating timer and get my first pellet order in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I got a welcome reminder of what a beast our [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n