Winter in a Holiday Home: Fireplace and Pellet Guide for Kuşadası, Didim, Çeşme and Bodrum

Every year more people spend the winter in their holiday homes in Kuşadası, Didim, Çeşme, Alaçatı and Bodrum, or come down every weekend. In houses designed for summer, winter is a different experience: stone walls and tiled floors hold the cold, and the sea air's damp reaches indoors. This article covers getting a holiday home ready for winter, choosing between a fireplace and a pellet stove, and how much fuel to order for weekend use.

Getting the House Ready for Winter

• Chimney check: a chimney unused for months may hold a bird's nest, leaves or soot. Have it checked before the first fire; details in our article on chimney cleaning and stove maintenance.
• Carbon monoxide detector: every home with a fireplace or stove should have one. We explain why in preventing stove poisoning.
• A dry fuel corner: decide where the fuel will go before it arrives; somewhere off the ground, covered on top and airy.

Fireplace or Pellet Stove?

Most holiday homes already have a fireplace, and it is the pleasure of a weekend evening. But you have to feed the fire yourself, you need room to store wood, and you must wait for the fire to go out completely before leaving the house. In an open fireplace choose dry oak or low-spark beech; we explain which wood suits and why in our article on fireplace wood in Muğla.

A pellet stove feeds pellets automatically from its hopper and holds the temperature you set, which is comfortable for longer stays. On the other hand it needs electricity, stops working in a power cut and needs regular cleaning. Pellets come in bags and take up less room than wood, but they must be kept dry. Our detailed comparison pellet stove or coal stove also helps with the decision.

In short: if you are only at the house at weekends, a fireplace is usually enough; if you spend most of the winter there, a pellet stove's automatic heating makes for a more comfortable winter.

How Much to Order for Weekends?

Use in a holiday home is very different from a house lived in all the time, so do not apply square-metre seasonal tables as they are. A better method is to measure your own use:

• Note how many bags you burn on your first weekend.
• Multiply by the number of weekends you will come during the winter.
• Add some reserve for cold spells and weekends with guests.

For example, if you burn two bags of wood a weekend and come for ten weekends over the winter, you need twenty bags plus a little reserve. If storage is tight, split that into two deliveries. We explain how to store pellets and work out a season's needs in how to store pellets.

Keeping Fuel Dry in an Empty House

In a seaside house closed for weeks, moisture is the main enemy. Keep pellet bags indoors in a dry, enclosed place, on a pallet and a little away from the wall; close opened bags tightly. Stack firewood outdoors, off the ground and covered only on top; covering the sides as well traps the moisture inside. Bring a day or two's wood indoors before burning.

Delivery to the Area

We deliver to the door with our own vehicles across İzmir and the surrounding provinces, including Aydın and Muğla; beyond that area we ship by cargo, paid by the buyer. For local details see our pellet delivery in Kuşadası, pellet delivery in Didim, firewood delivery in Çeşme and Bodrum pages. Details of the pellets we sell are on our pine pellets page; the range and delivery areas are on our wood pellets page.

If you will not be at the house on delivery day, tell us when ordering where the fuel should be left and who will receive it (a neighbour or the site caretaker).

Source: US EPA Burn Wise, "Best Wood-Burning Practices" (store wood off the ground with only the top covered).