How to slash your gas bills to just £5 a month

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How to slash your gas bills to just £5 a month - get an energy efficient 14th century stove

By Andrew Levy
Last updated at 5:45 PM on 05th August 2008

When asked how to tackle the problem of soaring gas and electricity bills, most experts claim the answer lies in better insulation or modern technology such as wind farms and nuclear power stations.

But Peter Breuer has gone back in time to slash the cost of heating his home.

The 80-year-old grandfather-of-one has installed a 6ft tall Hungarian tile stove - a 14th century invention which requires only a small bundle of wood to warm his entire house for a day.

It is so efficient he has been able to switch off his central heating and cut his gas bill from more than £20 each month to around £5 - a 75 per cent saving.

And the wood is free because he scrounges it from local skips or neighbours and local tradesmen give it to him having heard about his brainwave.

'I live in a sizeable house and that's one of the reasons I had to fit the stove,' said Mr Breuer, a retired Customs and Excise(CORR) lawyer who lives in Westcliff-on-Sea, near Southend in Essex.

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'With most stoves you put some wood in and you get a nice little fire but as soon as the flame's gone down, the heat disappears.

'But a tile stove works as a storage heater because there is a great mass of masonry inside which heats up and radiates heat through the tiles. It keeps you warm for around 12 hours.

'It also has a little stove so you can bake potatoes and other things in one of the hatches. The only gas I use now is for cooking on my hob.'

Mr Breuer had the heater fitted at a cost of £3,000 last Autumn - a time when annual cost of a dual-fuel deals had reached around £900.

That has now risen to more than £1,200 - and the cost is expected to increase further before the end of the year.

The price hikes mean millions of people, particularly the elderly, are living in fuel poverty, when more than ten per cent of their disposable income is needed for cooking and to heat their homes.

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He was unable to find anyone in the UK with the skills to build one so a team of friends drove a van filled with materials from the country last year.

They took a week to finish the job at his three-bedroom detached house - although five days were spent sightseeing.

Mr Breuer added: 'I also have a solar panel which was fitted three years ago but it makes so little difference I wouldn't notice and there's no way to recover the outlay.

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They are virtually unheard of in Britain but have been popular in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, northern Italy and Scandinavia since the 14th century.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1041812/How-slash-gas-bills-just-5-month--energy-efficient-14th-century-stove.html