Lee and Peter Sailing Trip was for Four not Two Years. Now an Italian adventure

We first moved in during the winter and it was very cold, we had no form of heating. Prior to our first arrival in October, we organized to have dirty work done and the house painted white. This involved removing the old open fireplace that was at an awkward angle and inefficient although very romantic. A wise move at the time but not so wise in the ice and snow of December.

We debated on heating types, pellet or wood stove with or without a water heater for the radiators. Gas. We eventually decided on a wood-burning insert-type fireplace with additional forced air distribution. We ordered the fireplace and in early December it arrived. Hope of warmth at last.

For those of you concerned that we nearly froze, while waiting for the fireplace we bought and used a propane stand-alone heater. It just about managed to warm one room and we could sit in front of it and enjoy the radiant heat.

Installing the fireplace was more work than we anticipated, modern fireplaces are complicated things. High-efficiency fireplaces are the latest thing, some have re-burners some catalytic converters. Ours is a simple unit but installation required modification to the chimney and ducting to distribute the warm air to other rooms.

The fireplace is like two boxes one inside the other. The inside box is the fire, a fan blows air between the boxes and out the front and up the distribution pipes. It is very efficient, we get warm air circulated and enjoy radiated heat from the front and sides of the fire.

We are pleased with the fireplace, it creates a nice warm feeling and uses logs that are the lowest cost of heating. The log management does require some work, not like turning the gas on and off. More on log management in the next post. Having a log fire gives a nice comfortable feeling going back to our basic instincts.

Peter always dreams of an English pub with an open log fire and a pint of beer. That is replaced with a high-tech insert, a cozy fire, red wine, and an Italian panini. Life is full of compromises😃.

Next up is log delivery and finishing the marble fireplace surround.