This is the point where I ask why your Rayburn is burning oil. One of the houses I lived in as a youth had a Rayburn. It worked on logs and coal. (We also had a completely inadequate oil fired central heating system, but it only really got used to ‘keep the chill off’ the house in the winter.)

As far as I remember, we had coal deliveries at various times throughout the year these were dumped in the coal shed by the coalmen. I think it was four times a year we had a trailer load of logs. One each season. It was a lord of the manor/Estate type thing, so I don’t think we paid for them, or not that much. Obviously we used less logs in the Summer, so the quarterly deliveries worked out throughout the year.

After the tipper trailer on the back of the tractor had dumped them in the yard, my brother and myself were sent out to move the load into the woodshed. At some point after the delivery of the logs I was sent to the woodshed and spent a couple of hours splitting some of them with an axe. I think this was because I was the oldest, so I was meant to be sensible with the axe. Plus I was willing to do it, as it was cool to mess with the axe.

It was then a case of chopping some every so often, or just chopping some, when you went out to the shed and there were none already chopped.

Even though the the rest of the house was generally cold in winter. The kitchen was always warm, even first thing in the morning, because you’d got half a tonne of cast iron you’d spent the last few days/weeks/months heating up.

The point of this comment? Er. Nostalgia and… Get a solid fuel/wood burning Rayburn and a good source of logs

Do make sure the men pumping oil are official men – oil theft is quite common and not necessarily insurable. I worry about ours.