I’m kind of sad the cold snap is over. After a couple of years of warm winters I was enjoing the crisp blue skies and frosty mornings. That was until our hot water boiler broke early on Tuesday morning and we woke up to a decidedly cold house. Even with a foot of loft insulation and brand spanking new cavity wall insulation, when it’s minus five outside and you’ve no central heating you’re going to get cold.
It only took two days to get it sorted — a corroded flue that needed replacing — but they’re right when they say you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Especially on some of the coldest days in the last decade!
We had something like eight or nine kilowatts of electric heaters on the go at some points. Modern houses really aren’t designed to cope in these kinds of situations. A real fire place was what we wanted. Plans of moving to a country cottage with a fireplace in each room, stockpiles of food and fuel, a well, wind turbines and a fully self sufficient farm started to form in our heads.
Fan heaters, emersion heaters, hot water bottles, bed socks… it was like some strange time warp for two days in our household. I’m certainly going to be more appreciative of what we have as we move into 2009.