Five Home Heating Alternatives

The main source of heat in our home is a wet-back log burner in the living room. It's fantastic at its job when loaded with tea tree logs and a load of dried pine cones. The fact that it is wet-back, means we save on our electrical water heating costs as well.

Recently, however, the log burner was out of service for several days while we waited for a chimney sweep to visit. This occurred during a really cold spell in Auckland and I am forced to admit we plugged the small, pretty hopeless electric heater in. Its inefficiency meant we wanted to keep its use to an absolute minimum (rightly so, as, even after the minimal use we gave it, it still added $40 to our electricity bill!), so I came up with the following five home heating alternatives:

1. Do the vacuuming By far the best, this one. You're going to do it anyway, so it might as well be when you're cold. Have you ever noticed how much heat those things pump out? Plus, almost as a bonus, you get your carpets all nice and dust-free!

2. Bake a cake In my experience, ovens are pretty good at making heat. I'm not saying try to preheat it with the door open, but you won't be disappointed with the heat that huge chunk of metal sat in your kitchen gives off with a pan of cake mixture inside. You can even boil the kettle and enjoy the cake once the work is all done!

3. Have a bath Treat yourself to a nice, hot (warning: not too hot!) bath. When you're done, leave the water in it until cold. It will help!

4. Exercise! Now is the time to follow the government's advice and do some exercise. 1000 press ups or sit ups ought to do it, but beginners can start at ten and see how these warm them. Hopefully you'll be eager for more by the end!

5. Insulate things Although home insulation is a great idea, I'm talking about other things here. Like yourself. Try investing in a fleece or some possum-wool socks and wearing those around the house. Put an extra blanket on your bed. Or maybe an extra duvet...

So there you go. Next time you are stuck for some heat in the home, give these a try and you'll be sure to survive the winter. And become stronger for it too. And a better person.