Flindt on Friday: Climate highs and lows in an old farmhouse

You can’t beat an old English farmhouse during a heatwave. Throw all the windows open (once you’ve put mesh over them to combat the mysterious flood of bugs) and let the hilltop location keep the air flowing.

Open the cellar door, too, and allow cool convected air to flood up the ancient stairs.

The dogs very quickly realised that this was the place to be, and stepping over a carpet of flatcoats becomes a summer skill.

(The Malinois usually vanishes down the cellar, convinced there are baddies – or lost tennis balls – in the well.)

All good things must come to an end, though, and when Cane the cat arrived on the sofa in search of a harvest Hobnob-enhanced tummy to settle down on for the evening, Hazel and I said as one: “Autumn’s here!” It’s true.

See also: How a dairy farmer cut electricity costs by £2,000 a year

The orchard is heaving with apples, the blackberries are ready, and the acorns are shotblasting the tractor as we drive under the oaks.

(Come climate Armageddon we’ll live on blackberry and apple pie with a side order of oak soup.)

Cold comfort

But then comes winter, and, bearing in mind that Nature always pays her debts, this house might present a bit more of a challenge.

Some of those sash windows change the airflow very little when they’re closed, and the heating system in this house is a complete shambles.

There’s the monster oil-fired Aga, of course, but that just does the kitchen. The Agamatic once provided limitless hot water through 2in pipes, but it died decades ago.

The house’s hot water now comes from a modern immersion heater.

By “modern”, I mean “useless”; the water is never properly hot, and filling the extra-long bath (installed for a 6ft 5in farmer in 1959) hasn’t been attempted for years. I doubt the taps work.

And when everyone’s home, showers have to be staggered while the leccy meter spins off its axis.

Central heating comes from an oil-fired boiler, also in the cellar, and that has almost done its time. It has a nasty habit of blowing the mains trip switch on its first fire-up of the season.

We should be making the most of the multiple fireplaces, but the majority of them were concreted in after one chimney blew over in January 1990.

I did think blocking them was tad shortsighted; the original design had done 250 years, after all. I can remember trying to point out that we’d all be looking to burn wood again one day – but in vain.

And, of course, the act of burning wood is under threat, too, on spurious environment grounds.

Power play

We’re trying to replace a hideous 1960s infill fireplace with a wood burner set back into the original Georgian hearth, but the battle to get all the relevant authorities to agree on what we can and can’t do makes building HS2 look like flipping a coin.  

A major rationalisation is in order. Electrifying the Aga was on the cards until recently, and once smart meters are compulsory, it won’t be up to us if we can have power. We should get on and replace the central heating boiler and plumb it into the immersion tank.

We could ditch the Aga, and get something that heats (water and rooms) and cooks – but Granny Flindt’s ghost would never forgive us for scrapping her pride and joy.

We could abandon any sense of architectural responsibility and go for solar panels.

No – I suspect we’ll muddle though as usual on a chaotic mix of systems. It’s a small price to pay for the privilege of having a well full of baddies (and tennis balls) in the cellar.