Type of Houses

[Tarrel]

John, you might be able to have a wood burning (or multi fuel) stove installed even without a chimney. A flue can be run through the wall and then up, bracketed to the wall. It might even be possible to run it up through the inside of the building. This would be more expensive but more effective, as you'd get the benefit of the warmth from the flue.

Go for a stove with a flat top so you can do some basic cooking on it. One with a back boiler will give you hot water, but will be more expensive to install, and will use a lot more fuel.

The nice thing about wood, coal or smokeless fuel is that you can stockpile it. Coal in particular doesn't take up much room and can be stored in even a small yard.

Regarding the boiler, sounds like you have a "combi". This could be changed to a more conventional one with a hot water tank, but this seems like an expensive option just to provide water storage. A few black 20 litre jerry cans stored in the shade and changed from time to time will give you an emergency supply of drinking water, and a water butt will give you more, but it will need purifying.

We put a solid fuel Rayburn in last year, which runs on wood and coal. It runs 24/7 in the winter and gives us cooking, space heating, hot water and central heating. It's great! Best thing is it needs no electricity to run.

HTH.