Trying to keep Warm

Even at sea level Crete can be cold and wet for weeks in December, January and February. From November to April there can be cold wet days and most evenings are chilly.

Houses are usually insulated to keep the heat out, which can mean that in the mornings it is much warmer outside than in. It can be disconcerting to open all the windows and doors to warm up your home!

Either end of the cold season an electric heater is enough to keep the chill off, but there are times when more is needed. There isn't any mains gas on the island and as I have never seen coal in Crete that leaves bottled gas, paraffin and wood. Prices are very approximate.

Electric fan and radiant heaters are easily available however most houses are not wired to take the load that several heaters would put the system, my lights dim with just two kilowatts. Also the supply can be cut off for extended periods, especially in bad weather. I have seen in Chania (unpriced) reversible air conditioning units, that is, they can pump heat out, or in.

Gas bottled gas is readily available in the smaller bottle size, just enough to carry and costs about €12-13. My gas fire, which cost about €50, will run for nearly 3 days continuously on this. The deposit on the bottles has to be added to on your initial outlay. We used this as background heat.

Paraffin there are some very good, but expensive paraffin heaters available. These throw out a great deal of light as well as heat . We have not used one, but our neighbor did, it seemed to keep their house warmer than ours and I could not smell the fire. There are also cheap wick fires available, but they do smell and throw out smuts.

Wood is the mainstay of heating in the island and costs about €60-70 for a pickup truck full. Olive is the best but the Greeks like to keep that for themselves, although after the damage the snow did at present there is a glut. We started with an open fire (above left). This gave out little heat unless lots of wood was used and when we tried this as our sole source of heat we got through a pickup truck full in a fortnight.

In newer houses these fires are often prefabricated , as are the chimneys, ours cracked on a corner allowing smoke and flame into the boxing around the fire and chimney.

We have since removed the fire and a length of chimney and fitted a stove and about 3 metres of stove pipe straight up into the remains of the chimney (our house has an atrium).

.The Greeks will run quite long horizontal length of stovepipe to increase the heat output and it is amazing how much heat is given off by our comparatively, short length of pipe.

We tested our system at easter, it used a quarter of the wood that the fire did and kept the house toasty- A win!

The stove is Greek, bought from the Cooperative in Kelives and cost €180, it is not very airtight which means it does not damp down very well but all the smoke and fumes do go up the chimney. There were problem finding black stovepipe, we finally found some dark graphite pipes at a plumbers in Kelive for €3 a metre.