woodburning

It feels like we're making progress! On thursday we took delivery of our shiny new woodburning stove, and more to the point it was fully installed and up and running by the end of the day. I baulked at a DIY installation so got Chipping Sodbury builders to install it, and they did a very good job.

The stove is a Riva Cube, a contemporay design and not one of the twee 'cottagey' designs that a lot of manufacturer's seem to be selling. At 5 kW capacity (presuambly that's subject to optimum wood, namely 18 month old hardwood?) it's ample for what we need to boost the heat from the inefficient central heating. Once it turns really cold it'll be interesting to see how it performs and how much of the rest of the house it can heat.

Meanwhile I'll sort out the log supply to ensure we're only burning the best dry wood as I don't want the stove filling with soot or tar as ol' smokey joe at Millsteads did thanks to all the pine Mum & Dad used to burn on it.

More little visitors...

If you were reading the blog back in March you'll recall the little visitors to the compost heap. Well, we've more this time, and they're definitely the ones I didn't want, namely rats, and this time they're in the woodshed. We've also seen mice near the house but they are less of a problem.

We've got hold of a mouse and rat trap to see if we can do DIY pest control, and since Monday (once we'd got some cheese) we've been pretty sucessful. So far the slightly gruesome tally is:

Mousetrap 4 (two mice caught, one mouse caught and the trap flipped into the adjacent pond which confused me for a while, and another mouse was sniffing around the trap when a sparrowhawk swooped down and despatched it 3 feet away from the living room window where we were sitting. Shame I didn't have the camera to hand).
Rattrap 1 (one rat caught but not much was left after his friends dined out at his expense, yuk!).

There are still signs of at least one rat left in the woodshed so may have to revert to plan B and get the professionals in.....