This winter we made a ‘giant leap’ of our own. We pulled out the old central heating boiler which ran on gas from a tank buried in the garden, and installed a new boiler, that is ‘carbon neutral’ and runs on Gerbil food.

That’s right, amazing but true, you too can heat your home for less with Gerbil Power. Well I suppose I had better own up, they are wood pellets and not Gerbil food, but they look just like the pellets I used to give Bubble and Squeak, may they rest in peace.

The benefits are many:

• The cost of the fuel is more affordable.
• Because the fuel cost is cheaper we can heat the whole house and heat it to a comfortable temperature.
• No green house gases from heating the house and our hot water.

The affordability of the fuel, is certainly a big plus. When we were running the gas boiler we could only afford to heat parts of the house to 14° C in the winter and then supplement that with wood burning stoves in the principal rooms. Now we heat the house to 19° C , and use the wood burning stoves when convenient.

The biggest discernible effect is that the whole house is now warm, and we can enjoy all the rooms throughout the year. Less discernible is the reduced environmental impact that the new boiler has . I mean the polar ice caps have not stopped melting since we installed this, have they?

Wood Pellets Did you say?

The fuel is made from sawdust and wood waste from sawmills, which is compressed into  small pellets that looks like Gerbil food, (it does I tell you) this is then delivered by lorry and blown into our silo which is in the garage and can hold seven tonnes of the stuff, that’s a lot of Gerbil food. Even better later this year a local factory will start producing the wood pellets from local sawmills, making the solution even more sustainable and cheaper  . . . . hurray for Gerbils !