My parents-in-law gave me an excellent energy saving tip. It is a fan you can place on an iron stove or fire place. See, the heat rises up. When you place the fan right above the fire place, the fan prevents the heat to rise up to the ceiling of the room. Instead of rising up the heat stays on the height you live in the room. The fan also circulates the heat better. This makes you to need less firewood. That saves the energy, your money and trouble, not to mention the nature resources. This small fan cost 39€ and seems to be worth of every penny.
My chimney sweeper gave me another excellent energy saving tip. I don't know what it exactly is called in English but you can see it on the video and I try to explain anyway. He told us to place "fire tiles" inside our fire burning stove's oven. They are special tiles that bear a strong heat. They are not expensive. I bought 10 and they cost all together 35€ here in Finland. I assume them to be lot cheaper elsewhere. Now the temperature rises up slower in the oven but the heat stays longer in the whole fire place after the fire has burnt. Of course I can't use the oven for big pot cooking anymore but here's just two of us humans left anymore so that's ok. We didn't full fill the oven. We left some space there to cook something small.
We have had these two things in use now for couple of days and I already can notice the difference. We burn the fire wood on the evenings and mornings. It usually is chilly on the mornings -after the long polar night- but not similar anymore.
Notice the fire safety. Use only the items designed for the iron stove and fire place use! Notice that annual visits of the chimney sweeper are an important part of the fire safety!
PS. Here you can find more energy saving tips.
PS. Here you can read how I experience IronStoveFan and Tiles after using them over a winter.
