Toasty outdoors, toasty indoors

The end of last week marked the beginning of what will hopefully be a cosy warm winter with the first lighting of our brand new wood burner:

But of course, like anything around here, getting to that point wasn't straightforward.

We had been expecting delivery of our Ecco Stove (all the way from England!) no later than Tuesday afternoon. We knew it had already arrived in Italy and was in the hands of an Italian courier for the final step of its journey.

It was therefore not a surprise to receive a telephone call on Tuesday morning to arrange delivery. What was a surprise was the fact that the lady on the other end of the line sounded like a little old lady babysitting her grandchildren... but perhaps that was just a reflection of the fact that so many businesses here are family-run - and indeed how charming. Anyway, having thought he'd been told that the stove would be delivered that morning (not least because we had been told to expect it no later than that afternoon), Stuart put the phone down with a look of mild confusion on his face. He thought he'd heard the nonna say the word domani (tomorrow) as she put the phone down. Hmm. So was the delivery to be Tuesday morning or Wednesday morning??

It was a reminder for us of the many subtleties we so easily fail to pick up on in Italian language. Had the nonna said the delivery would be stamattina (this morning) or la mattina (in the morning)? (As it turned out, the delivery wasn't any morning - it finally turned up at 4pm on Wednesday afternoon.)

Thankfully we didn't have any plans to go out anywhere on either day, so waiting in for a potential delivery was no problem. We did start to worry a little when Wednesday morning came and went with no delivery, but a phone call came just as Stuart was gearing himself up to make the call to chase it up, and before we knew it, the stove had been delivered at our gates. All 250kg of it.

Looks tiny, doesn't it?

We had been warned on several occasions that the courier wouldn't help us get the delivery to the house, but we were well prepared for that, knowing that our tractor would come into its own once again.

So, with the stove delivered. Stuart excitedly got on the tractor, turned the key. And nothing happened.

What is it with us and Italian vehicles?!

Suspecting something was up with the battery, he tried jump starting it from the car, but there clearly wasn't quite enough power to do it - at least this time the engine coughed when he turned the key, but nothing more. So the next part of getting the new stove installed was to drive to the local garage to buy a new battery for the tractor...

New battery installed, the tractor started up first time - what a relief! Stuart chugged to the end of the drive in the tractor, with me following on foot, where we carefully unwrapped the packaging and loaded the stove, piece by heavy (heavy!) piece, into the trailer on the back of the tractor until all 250kg of it was loaded. Then it was time to make the slow, careful journey back down the drive. Stuart got on the tractor, pulled the lever to lift the trailer off the ground... and with a painful wheezing sound the tractor strained to lift the trailer about half an inch on one side, the other side remaining steadfast on the ground. Clearly, the whole stove in one go was too heavy even for the tractor!

Too much!

There was nothing else for it but to unload half of the pieces and do the journey in two stages. Thank goodness it came in kit form!

With half of the pieces offloaded, we made the journey back down the drive with the first load at a slower-than-snail's pace, mindful of the fragility of the precious cargo. While I heaved the first set of pieces from where we'd unloaded them in the car park into the house, Stuart headed back up the drive in the tractor to bring the rest of them down, and before long we had all the pieces in the house. By this time it was getting on for 6pm, so we decided we would have one last evening with the old fire in situ rather than attempting to start construction at such a late hour and with darkness just around the corner.

Thursday, therefore, was stove construction day.

Originally we had planned to contact a fumista - a stove/wood burner/chimney specialist - to come and fit the new stove for us, but with uncertainty as to when exactly it would be delivered, we hadn't got around to calling anyone, and Stuart was feeling tempted to have a go at installing it himself. After a quick read-through of the instructions, we were both relieved we hadn't asked an Italian fumista to come and fit it, as the instructions were long and complex, and of course entirely in English.

Over the course of Thursday morning, the stove slowly took shape:

Farewell old stove.

The next step was to connect the stove up to the flue, for which Stuart required various connector and reducer pieces. Four (yes, four) trips to Frateschi later... he had all the pieces he needed.

Before connecting everything up, Stuart decided it would be a good idea to sweep the chimney. Having bought a brush and poles from Frateschi, and tied a bag to the open end of the flue to collect all the soot and dirt, he duly gave the chimney it's first sweeping in (at least) two years... and soon discovered that the liner at the top of the chimney had not been fixed in, and as the brush went up, off popped the liner at the top. (Should this have come as a surprise given the catalogue of shortcuts and shoddy workmanship we have discovered in this property? Probably not.)

The next step, therefore, was to knock a hole in the bedroom wall to access the chimney and reposition the liner. By some amazing fluke of fate, Stuart managed to hit the jackpot and made a hole in exactly the right place the first time - thus minimising the amount of mess and disruption in the bedroom to a hole the size of a single brick - and was able to put the liner back where it belonged.

So finally, with chimney liner safely back in place. chimney swept clean, stove assembled and all connectors securely positioned, it was time to light our first fire in our new stove.

Made of silicon carbide, the stove effectively acts as a thermal mass heater - somewhat like a storage heater, the silicon carbide absorbs and stores the heat of the fire, then slowly releases it over a period of hours. There are also contraflow channels built into the stove, which channel the waste gases from the fire through the stove (thus allowing the material to absorb the heat) to reduce wasted heat loss to the atmosphere. It all seems a bit like black magic to me, but the theory is that this stove will stay hot for longer, will burn more efficiently, and will distribute the heat more evenly throughout the house than a traditional cast iron stove. If our first few evenings of using it are anything to go by, we will certainly be in for a cosier winter! We've managed to get the living room temperature up to 22C without any problem at all, and while we are not exactly in the depths of winter just yet, things look promising.

Indeed daytime temperatures outdoors have been toasty this week, with glorious autumnal sunshine tempered by a soft breeze, and we've spent a fair amount of time working outdoors - chipping wood, bringing wood up from the lower terraces, raking leaves from the drive, and clearing more sections of the upper terraces.

  

Autumn sunshine.

The perfect antidote to all our hard work came on Saturday evening when our friends Paul & Kathy had invited us, along with David & Sarah and Donatella, to their house in Castelvecchio for a curry night. Not only that, but they had invited Reggie to come along to the party and for us all to stay the night. It was a wonderful evening with the most delicious spread of curry dishes, plenty of wine, and really great company. We stayed up until the small hours, safe in the knowledge that we had an extra hour to play with, thanks to the clocks changing that night. Reggie took a little while to settle down, but couldn't believe his luck when we finally retired to bed and he realised that not only was he coming in the same room as us, but that he was allowed on the bed with us too!

Paul & Kathy have a beautiful house in a lovely location, and when we blearily came to the next morning, blinking in the bright sunlight (turns out that having a large dog sleeping on your bed isn't the best recipe for a good night's sleep), it was lovely simply to wander around their pretty garden while Reggie charged around the garden, rolled on the dewy grass, chased balls and barked at fences.

Early morning Castelvecchio.

After a leisurely paced morning and a hearty spread of scrambled eggs with ham, toast and, a real treat, salted butter (most butter in these parts is unsalted and, frankly, very disappointing), it was finally time to say our goodbyes and wend our way home. After his manic morning of charging around Paul & Kathy's garden, as well as a very late night the night before, Reggie flaked out and spent the afternoon snoozing on the sofa. Frankly, we both felt like doing the same, but instead we headed up the terraces and did a couple more hours of clearing work, although I think we were both working at a significantly slower pace than normal and counting down the time until the sun would go down and we could justify going inside to light the fire and collapse on the sofa!

All in all, a productive, enjoyable and satisfying week.