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Well as it happens we do have an old Rayburn, left by the previous owners of the house and running on oil (converted badly from solid fuel). We've tried to get someone to convert it back but they say it's too difficult/expensive. It's certainly too expensive to leave it running on oil! The model is ...

It sounds like we have a similar setup -- ours is a 2 bed bungalow too. Previously we had a small cottage which we were able to heat with a standalone woodburner and we wondered about trying to do the same thing here or whether to go further and heat water/radiators too. Then we got into looking at ...

Thanks Rachel, that's interesting. I've also read some of your posts on thermal stores, which we're thinking about as well, but I'm struggling to see how a small tank (300l) would store enough heat to indirectly heat water for a bath as well as rads. And I worry that we'd be piling logs into our woo...

Hi there We're currently going through the process of choosing a woodburner to heat the room plus our water. Obviously we like the Esse Lionheart as it looks great and seems to give a load of heat to the room, has a big log box and we can cook on it. But 2.6kW to the hot water seems low. Has anyone ...

Thanks! As you predicted, fermentation was a bit rubbish. What I don't understand is how that recipe got into Hugh F-W's book, as he describes it as the best of all the home-made wines he tasted. There is an article in the Guardian about birch sap wine which says it's just not worth doing.

Hi — has anyone tried making birch sap wine? I've been wanting to do it ever since I saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's programme A Cook on the Wild Side years ago. So I've managed to tap a birch but I'm curious about his recipe. You just add 3 tbsp honey (per gallon) to the sap (+ yeast, lemon). Els...