Ineffective Fires..

It's Friday again (I think, it has far less meaning than when I used to work 9-5). There are a couple of guys on a hydraulic platform thing, which is blocking the entrance to the driveway. Luckily I didn't need to go anywhere in the car.
I think they're cleaning leaves from the gutters; they're doing something connected with the roof anyway. One of the guys just went past the bathroom window on the platform.
The wood finally arrived yesterday, 44 bags of it which I had to shift into the cellar. It's valge lepp, apparently, which translates as 'white alder'. It burns ferociously once it gets going. I'm now thinking we're gonna run out far earlier than the end of winter and will need to get some more. The fire's everything I'd expected it to be, smells divine, but I don't know if we're not doing something wrong, they (the previous oweners) said the fire would need lighting twice a week and the heat from that would be enough to be retained for a few days. But we lit it yesteday and it's almost cold already. My flatmate's room is a converted extension above the back entrance and with a flat roof above. In other words he doesn't get the benefit of the warmth from the adjacent flats, but the heat from the fire didn't seem to radiate as much as hoped which should have kept his room warm.
It's only mid-October so this is nothing compared with what it can be in Estonia in the winter, but this clearly needs to be sorted so I don't find him frozen like a statue one morning, pencil stub in hand halfway through scrawling a final message to the public.
I'll ask the neighbours, they seem to know about all these things, unlike the idiot western Europeans in flat 3. It might be something relatively simple (like this post!).