Our heating system is  a coal/wood  unit with a back boiler that runs the hot water tank, and a selection of radiators throughout the house.

 as a rough guide we run the sytem for about six hours a day, roughly from october to march. As for wood, we havent sourced this years supply yet. The usual scheme for that is to get several houses of people together and get cleanup rights to a chunk of forestry comission land. When the forestry has cleaned out a sectionthen there tends to be aquite a large selection of substandard wood left.when the area gets replanted it gets ploughed in or burnt. For a modest fee you can get the rights to clear out that section before replanting. frequently that adds up to several tons of pine logs.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.