Winter heating?

If you use the traditional Spanish method, common in any hot climates, of keeping the sun ‘out’ by drawing blinds etc during the day then a/c isn’t really necessary; we very rarely use ours.

Yes, installation o wood burner a good idea, but would advise you not to choose the cheapest, if you can manage it, go for a high efficiency modern log burner, or pellet if you prefer, as they are much more sophisticated than what can effectively be a tin can with a chimney!!!

Our house, being out in the wilds, only has electrical everything - large heat exchanger for heating, although a/c units should be able to be reversed for heating as they are the same thing, and a heat pump for water. It’s not cheap, but to be honest, it’s not that bad as we do not have to buy any gas bottles or lug them about or change over fittings and so on, and you can switch it on and off at will.

Yes,it can get extremely cold for two or three months and most Spanish properties aren’t built to cope with it, insulation being a recent appearance and not usually installed, so some kind of heating essential.

Hello Jamie, have a look at Jim´s guide to wood burners a few pages down. You will need heating of some kind, that´s for sure, and you may find yourself looking for a few second hand portable gas fires after spending your first night here, just as an interim measure, but I would take along a carbon monoxide detector with you, just to make sure they are burning correctly and they will need plenty of ventilation and give off a lot of moisture. After that, it´s personal preference and budget that will count. If you have a smallish property, air conditioning may well be your answer as it will do a job all year round. I understand that storage heaters are much better than they ever used to be so that may be worth investigating, especially as the Spanish version of economy 7 tariffs are popular, they usually give cheaper electric from 10 pm to 12 mid-day in winter and from 11 pm to 1 pm in summer. Don´t forget to include bathrooms in your heating plan as they will be the coldest rooms in the house.
Winters here are much milder and shorter than the UK but the houses are not built with anywhere near the amount of insulation, often with single skin walls, none in the floors and little in the roof and as they are built to keep the sun out, without heating, on a sunny winter´s day, it may well be warmer outside! Rugs are also a good investment.
As many houses are built with solid floors, fitting gas central heating (bottled or mains, if available) will either mean digging up tiled floors or having everything surface mounted. Solar is prohibitively expensive to install.
I know Jim loves his fires but personally, I find them dirty, smelly and a pain in the proverbials and there is a reason that the UK is considering all kinds of limitations on them, especially in London. I can remember the awful stink in London on days of high pressure when my eyes would stream from the smoke.
We have a 140 m2 detached country property undergoing a complete refurbishment and my husband is a retired ( I don´t think so) plumber, so "we" have fitted full gas central heating off a combi boiler and all radiators have individual thermostats and it is run off two banks of the smaller gas bottles as I have no intention of repeating my first miserable winter in Spain. We have been through two exceptionally hot summers and have only needed to use the ceiling fans a few times. As we go through the house re-wiring, we are including switches by the beds so we don´t have to get out of bed to turn the fans on and off during the night. We also only heat the water we actually use.
Get your heating right, for you, and you will find this one of the most glorious places to live. We absolutely love it and find that with most other things being cheaper than the UK, we can afford more of life´s little luxuries.
In the meantime, make sure you pack all your winter clothing where it is easy to find.

That's an excellent post, Cheryl. As I'm sure you expected, I have to challenge your opinion of log fires. It's certainly valid for poor log fires, but there's absolutely no smell from ours and no smoke at all.

And as I have said earlier and elsewhere, we have a new high efficiency Austrian wood burner - Jim knows all the technical details of how they work - and would have to take issue with the particulates/emissions/smoke etc warnings, these are not at all like the tin can with a chimney type of older stove.

Also, Cheryl, the fan switches may be unnecessary if you buy fans with remote controls which we have in the bedroom; voila! No getting out of bed or wiring for switch controls!,

Thanks everyone for the input. I have bought a 2 bed bungalow and If I install a wood burner stove I would need to run the chimney pipe through the ceiling and roof. Would that require any special permissions? If so, Perhaps that is something I could look into for next winter. I have used the mobile Calor gas heaters in the past, but I really don't like them. I may have to make do with a couple of oil filled electric radiators immediately as we arrive on the 6th Dec. That would be a quick fix, although I've never used them and don't know how good they are?

Hello Jim, I kind of asked for that didn´t I?
Many people have bought fires which may not be as good as yours, hence concerns in UK, and I imagine cheaper models are still being sold here.
My main bugbear is the work involved, from clearing out and storing hot ashes, possible burn marks on rugs, bringing creepy crawlies into the house with the wood, needing somewhere under cover to store the wood, having to get the wood and risking having to buy unseasoned wood if you get your calculations wrong and have to top up late in the season. If I go out for the day or weekend, I don´t need to build a fire beforehand, return to a cold house then wait for the fire to warm the house up, I can set timers, lower the thermostat level at night whilst my quilt does the job of keeping me warm and so on. I´m a woman Jim, I don´t need fire! 

I will take this opportunity to say how much I appreciate all the time, knowledge and effort you put in to helping all of us with your posts. What would we all do without you?

We also have a Norwegian wall electric heater for the bedroom, they are more efficient than the standard oil filled ones, with timers and thermostatshttps://www.neaterheater.es. 

We have friends  also have them, they are very efficient and effective.

It would be as well to ask your local Ajuntamiento re the flue pipe, they can be difficult.

Hello Stephanie, all points totally accepted, however, we already have the manual fans which we rarely use and as we are gutting the place and adding bedside sockets with USB points we will be chasing out for wiring anyway but if we weren´t in the position we are, remote control would be the way I would go.

 With hubby being a plumber, thus saving us a lot of money, gas central heating was always going to be our choice but I realise it wouldn´t be cost effective for everyone.

Would it be possible to give some idea of the cost of the better wood burners please because heating is a big issue for a lot of us? Also, does everybody with a wood burner need alternative, extra forms of heating for bathrooms and/or bedrooms?

 My personal choice would still be not to have a wood burner due to all the other things I mentioned, but horses for courses with personal likes and dislikes.

We all agree we need heating of some kind and the more we all post about it, the more knowledge is out there.

Hello Cheryl, I understand your position entirely re heating etc.

The cost of the wood burner depends to a great extent on the capacity and output; ours is 6 kw output which was the size advised by the specialists for our house. It heats the living area and the stairs , landing and spare bedroom; however does not push the heat down to the kitchen or our upstairs main bedroom and bathroom, more due to the space distribution in the house rather than lack of power. The basic cost, inc Iva was some 3200 for the stove and related installation, which was quite complicated and took a couple of days. There was approx another 1000 for the specialised flue parts; to have a pellet burner would have cost another 1000. It has made a huge difference to the warmth in the house as the previous tin can heated a square metre in front of it and little more. We have just had 3.5 mt of logs delivered, we have a reliable local supplier, which cost 220 and should last us through. 

We do also have hydronic underfloor heating,throughout the ground floor, run by a heat exchanger the size of a wardrobe, which is wonderful when the weather gets really really cold, but we have t needed it yet this year as the stove has been quite sufficient. Due to the house layout though, our bedroom can be cold, so we have a Norwegian thermostatic timed wall panel heater in there, and underfloor heating in the bathroom and heated radiator, again not used yet. The stove does need to be supplemented by the other forms of heating when the weather is really bad for a couple of months, but our house is very tall with incredibly high ceilings and huge bedroom and kitchen, unlike most Spanish property, so may not be directly comparable.