A nation of pyromaniacs

Comment: Few activities give a red-blooded male more pleasure than lighting a fire. But when your fingers are blue from cold you begin to wonder if there isn't a better way of keeping warm.

THERE was a time in the distant past when trees still graced the grass verges of the A308 between Windsor and Maidenhead, and school was about peeing the highest up the wall and fishing out snails from crevices in brick walls.

It was also a time of cooking sausages on open fires and then singing "In the stores..." at the top of my voice as the glowing embers cast an orange glow across the faces of the collected cub scouts.

Such is the memory of building fires, that any grown-up boy jumps on the opportunity to light up a few sticks in the way a starving cat might fall on a slow mouse.

But let me tell you, the novelty soon wears off when it's a necessity to keep warm because the house might as well be open to the sky and the landlord lives happily in Europe far from the warped window frames and whistling drafts of his over-priced New Zealand shed.

Our heating bill is an order of magnitude greater than it would have been in the UK

And I don't count myself as particularly unlucky to have signed a 12-month rental agreement in high summer only to find Kiwi insulation amounts to a fews sheets of 1950s newspaper spread between the attic rafters, and half an inch of timber cladding.

It's perfectly normal. Every corner shop (known as dairies here) and service station will sell you $10 bags of firewood and kindling, and the local businesses even provide lighting paper in the form of freesheets stuffed in the mail box.

So each night my $10 goes up in smoke and we gather round the cheerless fireplace without sausages (our butcher has never heard of a cumberland) and without a song.

This might strike you as quite expensive, and it is.

Radiator schmadiator
But that's not the end of it. The fire only warms one room. If we want the bedrooms to reach a temperature nearing double figures we have to turn on the oil-filled radiators.

These are called radiators for reasons known only to the salesmen, the heat actually comes from friction caused by the whirring electricity meter.

So it's no surprise that our heating bill is an order of magnitude greater than it would have been in the UK, and that's only for three rooms not the, admittedly wasteful, whole-house heating most of use are used to in Europe.

So I wonder what my son's childhood memories of fire will be. Nothing like the sentimental orange-tinged recollections I have, but rather a freezing-blue, itchy-wool kind of memory that haunts the mind instead of warming it.

Comments

[Domestic Executive]

There is a positive side to the cold side - no, there is!

The less heating you have the more your body is forced to generate it's own heat and uses up all that surplus energy we carry around our bodys in the form of fat!

So the good news is lower temperatures are good for losing weight. I can be the testament to this. I've lost over 2 stones since I arrived in New Zealand but since we got our heating working properly recently I've started to add a few ounces back. Coincidence. I think not!

The downside of course this is all very miserable and not much fun. I recommend katmandu sales for their thermals, the layering technique and last but not least move around to keep warm.

Oh and take out shares in the energy companies.

[Ali]

Is this why New Zealand is sometimes compared to Britain in the 1950's?

[Juli Ryan]

I wonder if the popularity of "open plan" living spaces and the ability to heat just one room are related.

A 12-month rental agreement in NZ does seem a bit unusual.

[Sarah]

We used to have a log burner and I actually used to quite enjoy snuggling round it on cushions and blankets to read books to the girls (I'm such a forever romantic!). We were fortunate that our home at the time had double glazing (a rare treat in NZ homes) and was well insulated.

Now we have underfloor heating, which keeps the main house beautifully warm, but we do have plug in electric heaters in the bedrooms upstairs, just for night time.

Hope you find a better insulated home for next winter! :) In the meantime, I hear driftwood gives off a beautiful blue smoke... there's plenty of it around on the south coast!

[Alan]

My issue with the whole use of log fires in NZ, is that they're all boxes with doors. No big roaring open fires you can toast marshmellows in front of.
Ho hum - I'll just stick with the cozy heat pump

[Myk]

I remember that first cold winter in NZ. Shivering away I was astounded to find that the solution was to "just put a jumper on". Amazing. And it works too. Sometimes I would wear two jumpers indoors like two logs on the fire but cheaper.
NZ winters are cold ... short, but cold. But they seem so much longer muffled in your woolies.
Of course the solution is to put a heatpump in insulate the house and sit back in front of the warm fire. Older wiser and warmer and still able to toast the marshmallows.

[William Knight]

Thanks for the comment... er... Myk.

These cold nights can certainly be Grimly Dark, Dark, Grimly, can't they? and a wooly jumper is certain to stave off the antarctic temperatutes.