The installation of the poêle à bois

The SUPRA 7.5Kw wood burning stove

When Penny and I bought this house, we knew there would be shed-loads of work to do and whilst we were a little apprehensive - having never taken on a project like this before, we looked forward to it.

We bought the house in March 2011 and from that point forth, visited whenever we could to work on the house and get to know what was 'soon-to-be' our village.

Of course, the kind of work we were doing at the time didn't amount to much - mainly cosmetic and the first few visits were during the summer months, so we didn't have a clue what it was going to be like during the winter months. However, with foresight, we bought a wood burning stove, which we were assured would be plenty for our needs.

People will tell you anything when they want to sell you something - especially if they're leaving the country won't they?

This 'poêle à bois' as it's actually known, had been installed in its previous owner's house by the simple expedient of attaching a five foot length of flexitube out the back of the poêle and shoving it a short way up his chimney. How they didn't die of CO poisoning I don't know, but that kind of slipshod engineering wasn't an option for us, as we didn't have a fireplace on the ground floor.

Anyway, until we visited in March one year, had never needed heating. However, on that visit, we were given a baptism of ice. It was so cold that even with the bottled gas fire on full and no more than a couple of feet from us, it was still cold enough to worry a brass monkey.

We made enquiries about getting our poêle fitted - properly - and were told that 7.5Kw wasn't nearly enough for a room the size of our kitchen, we should look into buying something more 'manly' and up to the task.

For this we found a bargain Invicta 12Kw, which was nearly eight times the price of our Supra and when we move over permanently in May of 2013, we were very excited to get it installed and ready fo the coming winter.

Well, after four months of waiting, work began on our house just yesterday and lo and behold, the first job on the agenda was the poêle.

With some roofing jobs to look into as part of the preliminaries - fixing some flashing, checking slates and so on, the flex tube was then poked down our chimney and is ready to accept its nice hat.

With its razor-sharp edges and spiky bits, I'm not sure leaving the curly tube like it is in the picture won't do a better job of deterring the bloody crows, pigeons and other flying wildlife from nesting in our nice clean and warm pipe, but I have been assured that a hat is best ...

On the inside, as you can see, it's definitely a work in progress.

Both our builders and us, were hoping that the vertical tube that connects this curly tube to the poêle, could simply be pushed through a nice, neat, round hole from the kitchen.

Sadly, today we discovered that this isn't going to be the case.

It would appear that the previous owners had a fireplace on the ground floor, but didn't want it, so they took it out. The fireplace in the master bedroom - which was their kitchen or dining room or somesuch was then decommissioned, but as it looked nice with its black marble hearthstone and surround, was left.

Underneath unfortunately, all the supporting structure had been removed and they had cured the issue with the simple expedient of screwing in a lump of softwood and filling in the remaining hole with plaster - not cement or concrete to make it fireproof - so the whole damned thing had to come out.

It's no longer a nice, neat, little hole, but something big enough to fall through. I'd jokingly said to one of my on-line friends that we'd found ourselves in our very own version of 'The Money Pit' and whilst neither Pen nor I look anything like Tom Hanks or Shelley Long (either way round), we certainly have got our share of headaches and nightmares - and we're only on day two!

Still, our two trusty workers are forging on regardless and this afternoon we will be putting the tiles down on the pad for the poêle, so that it doesn't sit directly on the ground.

We're just going to have to be careful not to sleepwalk tonight or we might end up downstairs a hell of a lot sooner than we'd expected ...