. . the end of August?
It’s been pretty grey these last few days and today, 31st August, the forecast is for rain all day. We had a fair bit of sunshine the day before yesterday and the thermal store temperatures got up to 70 at the top and not too bad below, so we have had hot water for yesterday and today – but will there be enough for a decent shower tomorrow morning? We’ve got our younger son staying and so there’s more hot water needed!
Which prompted me to extract the data from the diaries for the last six months of last year and the first six months of this. So here’s the graph showing the number of times we lit the log burner and the number of barrows of wood we brought into the house.
If you look back to “Another article – and wood usage update” (published in June 2014) which gives a rather different graph – the weather was clearly not the same, though, interestingly, both have a sort of gap in March – a spell of sunny weather which means that you don’t have to light the burner. Then April needs more heat. Ah yes – Flanders and Swann (for those of a certain age) April brings the sweet Spring showers/on and on for hours and hours. Which explains it all, of course!
In 2013-14 we used 35 barrow-loads of wood and lit the fire 96 times – vs. the figures above of 33 and 89. Of course if we go away for a few days . . .
But the point I’m hoping to make is that we only lit the fire 96 or 89 times. Out of the 365 days of the year. All the other days – three quarters of the year – we didn’t need to. All the heat came from the sun. Even if we were using gas – even oil(!) we would not be using much and not often. And that’s the point of building to Passivhaus standards.