Australia just had its warmest August on record, page-290

''Problem with stone houses is that unless you have some form of heating - it really does gets cold inside in winter''

All houses need heating in winter - if the winters are 'winter'

the most impressive houses for thermal control I've been in were in Finland - incredible things built for cold ----------- massively insulated - timber. Logs. Seams sealed with bear hair.

But, they had heating - massive stone or similar fireplaces - floor to ceiling and wide and thick

from memory - when they fired them up for the winter - they took a week to get into gear. They had (I think) reasonable sized fires going 24/7 for the week - then, when all that stone or brick mass was heated through - the fires were then tiny - and kept going all the winter until they just stopped feeding the fire.

the houses were 20 degrees inside - all year round. Windows - triple glazed - beautiful wooden things, works of art.