A Burning Issue

This morning we hear that the UK is once again under cloud, but 'mild' for the time of year. It's amusing how this sort of weather 'anomaly' still makes news back there in Blighty. Here, at the same moment, we are recipients of the opposite; a light frost under a pale blue sky. A harbinger of winter.

We're experiencing one of those not infrequent weather patterns which occur from autumn to spring, when a finger of high pressure pokes across the northern half of France delivering its slow, clockwise circulation of warm, damp, 'claggy' air from the Atlantic to Britain while at the same time dragging down crisp, dry, cold continental air across us here in the 'bottom half' of this country.

We Brits get 'caught out' by these European mainland weather phenomena quite often in our first few years as French immigrants, especially those who think that 'south of the river Loire' means 'southern Europe', ergo a Mediterranean climate.  In fact our winters can be much harsher than those of southern Britain, 800 kilometres to the north.

Almost all residents of France, with the exception perhaps of the well-heeled who can afford to inhabit the Côte d'Azur, have to accept the fact that they need heat in their houses for at least 7 months of the year. This means that the natives here are well-versed in the use of wood-burning stoves.

Wood-burning for heating has been around for a very long time - obviously. The stoves nowadays are very efficient - more than 70% of the heat generated is going to come into the room. What's more, 27% of France is still covered by forest and woodland so the 'industry' of growing and harvesting wood for fuel is still strong and actually increasing in activity. The French state now gives tax credits equal to 50% of the cost of installing in a home any device which uses renewable sources and this includes wood-burning stoves. We get a special low VAT rate for this also.

If the wood is dried for at least 18 months before it is sold as fuel, as any decent wood-farmer would do, the best (oak, beech, ash and particularly hornbeam, the hardest of all and better even than oak as fuel) can cost as little as around 2 euro centimes for kilowatt-hour of heat. Natural gas costs around 4.5 centimes for a kilowatt-hour, domestic fuel costs nearly 7 and propane gas, over 10!

Here, the wood is sold by volume.  This doesn't seem fair at fist because, in fact, weight  for weight, all woods are closely matched for calorific value. However, water content would make it heavier so the French prefer to sell it by this way. (Nevertheless, the Italians sell it by weight - ok, as long as it's dry).

The standard measure for us is the 'Steyre' which is, sort of, one cubic metre.  In fact, it is a pile of one-metre-long logs stacked, one metre high, on a one metre base. This means, the amount varies slightly, depending on how straight they are! It also means that if the logs are already cut into two or three (we use the latter for our stove) before delivery, they will stack closer so a cut 'steyre' will give you more wood than an uncut one.

All this is a bit academic as the supplier-farmers always deliver, cut and jumbled on a trailer behind a tractor and simply tip it somewhere near where you want it. It's all based on trust really. We pay a little extra for the cutting.

It's interesting to note that new Brit immigrants here have no idea how to manage a wood-burner as their main source of heating. We all had to learn, despite the fact that the wood burner has been a fashionable addition to the 'ideal UK home' for many years now. It's still more likely to be an aesthetic assembly in the fireplace, rarely lit and fuelled by a few sacks of logs, purchased at the local garage or from a dodgy itinerant local trader with a pickup piled with some scruffy bits of trees which were probably still growing, a few days earlier.

Here, we gradually realise that, as the main source of heating a house, the wood must be properly harvested and dried, the stove must be kept going, pretty well continuously throughout the colder months. The walls of the house will take 24 to 48 hours to reach a steady, warm state and must not be left too long without a heat source in the rooms.

It's alien to a Brit at first to stoke up the stove just before retiring for the night. Coaxing it into life again before breakfast is also a lost memory, passed over with the death of our grandparents. It was more dangerous then; now we have modern, efficient burners, often with warm air circulatory additions which make a real difference, capable of heating a house, most likely more economically than other systems.

Finally, but actually firstly, - make sure you insulate otherwise the draughts will suck away all this eco-heat and leave you with cold feet....

Mapmaker