Hello there!

I have read alot about the costs associate with heating an apartment in Italy, and was wondering if anyone knew how expensive firewood is? Is it easily attainable?

The apartment I intend to rent, has a fireplace; so Im hoping to make use of it.

I tried that. I suffered. The fireplace was unfortunately not in the bathroom-- an oversight perhaps. The toilet seat might reach 34°F or it might not. Once the hot shower ran for a while the bathroom warmed up, but I couldn't do that every time I needed the toilet. At times it was bitterly cold anything more than a foot from the fireplace, so I sat inside it. The "hot side" developed purple marks from being overdone.

If the fireplace has an insert, you may be more successful.

You can use a gas heater in the bathroom that you turn on five minutes before. I used to do it all the times, I woke up, turned the gas stufa on and went to make a coffee in the kitchen, by the time I was back to the bathroom to take a shower the room was an oven. The problem is that you might have one very hot room and all the others freezing cold.
Anyway, if you are planning to live in southern Italy don't underestimate winter, it might be pretty cold, snow is very rare, and it rarely goes below zero (32 F) but it's cold.

Dora

My home is in S.Italy...but in the hills...and it really does get cold! (it was well below 32 when I was over in Jan.-Feb!)We don't have central heat. The fireplace heated the living areas and I have an electric heater in my bedroom and another little electric heater in the bathroom....I know, I know...the Italians think I am CRAZY with electric American style :-) heaters and not gas...but I just CANNOT get used to the whole bombolla/gas tanks in the house thing...sorry :-) Honestly, my electric bill was really not bad at all (knock on wood!) I only turned them on when I was in the room....anyway...we light big fires...and kept them going pretty much all the time becasue I don't like to freeze...and it cost us about 75 euros for the four weeks we were there in the winter....that was with the wood nice and dry and split and delivered to our door...probably could have used a less...but, like I said, I don't like to be cold :-)

I did it for 8 years - the good thing is that it keeps you in shape. hauling wood in and around, continually sweeping up all the little wood bits in your path from outside to inside, and all the calories you burn off from shaking ,freezing your booty off cold when you get home from work or from an evening out and the house is freezing. Early in the morning can be scary cold..... (unless you have oak to burn and throw in a big log before heading off to bed)
The electric heaters in the bathroom work - sorta. Never enough to really heat up the bathroom just enough to feel like it is warm.

If you have to do this for a few weeks or months a year than go for it - if you have to do it 8 months out of the year you may want to consider a pellet stove or another heat source.

quote:

Originally posted by r0bert0:
Hello there!

I have read alot about the costs associate with heating an apartment in Italy, and was wondering if anyone knew how expensive firewood is? Is it easily attainable?

The apartment I intend to rent, has a fireplace; so Im hoping to make use of it.

Expensive in monetary terms or in carbon credits?

Here is an artistic pursuit for those who use electric heaters. Open the contatore and paint little colors along the edge of the wheel that turns when you use electricity. Close it back up. Turn on the electric heater and go look at the contatore.
Psychedelic!

Our contatore is electronic. You still have a mechanical one?

Firewood (legna) costs about 11 euros/quintale, cut and delivered but not stacked, around the provincial city of Teramo. This should last at least a couple weeks in the winter.

How much/ what is a quintale?

Here it costs 80 - 100e for an APE (or is it API) load full. They're those little trucks built over a vespa scooter or whatever.

I guess it depends on where in Italy you will be living and how much firewood is nearby. The wood we get here is mainly olive or almond tree.

1 quintale = 100kgs. Around here, firewood is around €12 a quintale, delivered. We had an open fire in the house we rented. It's an incredibly inefficient method of heating with most of the heat going up the chimney.

I think it depends on the size of the room your are heating and the build of the fireplace...I have an old, large fireplace here in the US ad I can, honestly, heat my entire downstairs of my large colonial with the fireeplace...we do it all the time now in the winter since we have plenty of our own wood and do not want to be using oil all the time :-)That said...my fireplace in Italy is MUCH less efficient (newer build and smaller)if you get it hot though and keep it going, it is not a problem to heat the home...mostly though becasue it is SUCH a small space! same with the bathroom...it is tiny...and it warms up very nicely with the electric heater. (bedroom too...toasty in about 20min. get a heater with a remote and then you can turn it on from your bed before you get up :-) That said...i was only there for a month...and that's all I plan on in winter...so...I would probably eventually put in central heating if I were there all winter...FYI though, NONE of my neighbors have heat in my old part of town...they ALL heat using the wood burning fireplaces. (and I agree, wood stoves DO heat MUCH better!! they are just so ugly though sometimes! you can also buy stove inserts for fireplaces that will help throw off a lot more heat)
I wouldn't be afraid to try it out for a winter and see what YOU think...maybe some people are used to keeping a wrmer inside temp. :-)

oh...the price per kilo is about the same (less I think if you buy ini largeer quantities)in my town...but that wouldn't do us much more than a DAY or TWO?! we must burn a LOT more wood! :-)

Wood-burning stoves are vastly more efficient than the average open fireplace. You can get some quite decent looking ones these days. In our winter in our rented house, we got through over 30 quintales, and that wasn't having the fire going all day. We'd light it at about 5pm.

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Wood-burning stoves are vastly more efficient than the average open fireplace. You can get some quite decent looking ones these days. In our winter in our rented house, we got through over 30 quintales, and that wasn't having the fire going all day. We'd light it at about 5pm.

Absolutely! I had my wood burning stove on for three or four hours and the room was roasting. My house was shaped like an L and it was hard for the heat to move to the other rooms so while the bedroom (with the stove) was hot like an oven the kitchen was freezing cold and needed a bombola heater to avoid turning myself into an icicle.

Dora, You needed a fan to get the heat back there. Sorry for mentioning an unmentionable!

Well, too late now, I don't live there anymore!
I thought about the fan but for some reason I always hated the idea to use a fan in winter time.

Yes, Isn't just the idea of having a fan in your house anti Italian.

hahahaha I think though that perhaps it could be counter-acted by wrapping a scarf around your neck while sitting in the breze.

I heat a 300 sm farm house with wood in PV lombardia. Apart from this winter it can be bitter.

I pay 11 euros/quintale for robinia (not sure how you spell it, cut but I have to stack it myself.

The outlay for chimney liners was steep, as was the glass door for the firplace that runs the central heating (the gas boiler takes over if I need a quick heat up or the temp drop below my designated minimum, but i rarely use that option, Mario does though when I go home on holiday, he still can't light a fire) and the insert in the living room. I don't do chimneys with no liner. Not after on day three in this house when I had two fire engines pouring water on my roof, down the chimney and drowning my kitchen, hacking holes in the walls to check my beams for smouldering.

I am very please with the results, heating with gpl was costing us over 800 euros a month to be shivering and miserable, now I just use a quintale a day and we are warm and toasty.

The first year lugging wood and managing two fires was hard work, now it is second nature.

My biggest issue is my husband wandering around in his underwear squarking about being in the tropics and the tussle that occurs as he sees me reach for another log to chuck on when I think he is too involved in the footie to notice.

I am dead happy with wood.

We bit the bullet and invested in a pellet stove last year and it has been quite nice. It burns about a bag and a half of pellets a day during the dead and coldest of winter and when the bags are actually in stock (last fall there was a shortage) they average about 4.50 Euro a bag.

Our only other option is gasolio which starting running us 600 Euro a month - which just wasn't sustainable or even heating the house to a comfortable level.

I'd still love the option for a fireplace - nothing like the ambiance!