Pro - Does anyone else's nest boxes get soaked in rain?

[Bramble]

Saw these at Gardeners World Live yesterday and was quite interested. Apparently they don't require a flue or chimney (which is good, 'cos I don't have either ) but just wondered if that means I'll end up with blackened walls over time? Does anyone have any experience,please? Thanks!

[Shirl]

They sound interesting and just had a gooogle. The fuel seems quite expensive a bottle is £6 rrp and lasts about 6 hours according to a site I found. I'm sure you could buy it in bulk but storing something so flamable must be a concern and then you'd have to decant it into another bottle to enable you to fill the fire. Shame because it would save me the headache of getting building work done to reinstate our chimney so I can have a wood burner.

[Bramble]

Thank you!!!!

Well, the company i spoke to on Sunday said that their Bio Ethanol is £3 something a bottle (they did tell me how much exactly, I've forgotten) and would burn for about 7hours on relatively low setting, which is all they said you would want for an average size room.

Like you, my ideal would be to have a wood burner, but with no chimney it would mean having one of those hideous metal chimney pipe things (a la chip shop) built on to the side of the house which would cost a BOMB.

They also said there are different grades of ethanol, some is "watered down", but the stuff they sold was apparently 100% pure which burns longer. Will look out their details and post a link to their website - not that I can recommend them, they are just the only people I've spoken to.

Keep me posted if you find out anything else, I'm quite fired up (pardon the pun) by this prospect, but it seems a tad too good to be true!?!?!

[Shirl]

£3 for 7 hours still seems a lot to me but I have no idea how much a gas fire would be for the same time so maybe I'm wrong. The site I looked at (couldn't find it again you know what it's like when you use google) said it was 6 hours on low which is probably realistic because I find there's normally some exaggeration when they are trying to persuade you to buy.