A Cold Issue

Our house really is quite small, a mere 13sq all up, and the only heating source we have is our wood heater in the lounge room.

(This photo leads me to a totally random fact, but despite all the photos of our house I have, I don't think I have any photos of our lounge room with the curtains closed. This is the best I could find, and it was taken in 2008 when we renovated the lounge room!)

For 6 years we have been adequately warm, however I wouldn't describe our house as 'cosy' in winter. When the husband brought the heater (as we had no heating what so ever when we brought the house - luckily it was summer), he brought it from the Jindara factory down the road from us as a proto-type for a bargain price. Which was all well and good, but it was barely big enough to heat our tiny house, not to mention that it couldn't take overly large logs which meant it often burnt out overnight.

When we found out we were to be expecting a baby this winter, I started to fret about how I would cope in winter with a newborn, a cold house, and a husband who quite possibly could be away for work and unable to bring wood up to the house, yet alone have the time to go and collect it from the farm.

I made the suggestion to upgrade our cooling system to include heating, but was quickly shot down due to the $5,000 price tag. Fair enough, but if certain people had listened to me when we installed the cooling system, it wouldn't have been quite so expensive. But lets now dwell on that. I suggested putting in a gas heater, but was quickly shot down as it wasn't worth having gas connected for just a heater. I can't remember what his justification was against a reverse cycle cooler, but it wasn't positive.

I left the topic along for several months, knowing that if I nagged about it, I wouldn't get far at all. And then one day in March, the husband came up with a genius suggestion - we should have gas connected and put in a gas heater! Well, who would have thought!?!

So, we made the decision to look into getting a gas heater, and rang a plumber to get some advice about it, as neither of us knew anything about gas or what made a good heater. Our plumber gave us two options: a smaller version which would just heat our house, or the bigger (and therefore more expensive) option which would heat our house more than adequately. It wasn't even an option, the bigger heater was chosen and ordered.

Unfortunately there was a wait for the gas connection to be installed, and then the heater, so stay tuned for part 2 of the heating story.
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