Well the hardest winter known in Bulgaria for quite some time is all but gone :Snow window:

Now that spring is here it may be time to share just how cold/ warm we were during the last winter period.

We use a wood burner for our Central heating supplying radiators all over the house and we have used well over 26 Cu Meters of logs at a cost of 1352 lev. Our house has never been below 20 degrees and at best was about 26. In fact our Bulgarian friends called the house a sauna.

In order to give people some idea of what to expect by way of bills can you inform the forum of what heating you use and what bills you have had to pay

Even though we have not seen March out yet, we are now starting use Hot water supplied from the solar panel. Not piping hot in the mornings but very very hot by mid afternoon.

We have only been here in BG 3 weeks and this post will be very interesting for us because we would want to know what most people use in the way of wood or coal for an ordinary Winter as well. Glad to say we missed the coldest parts of this Winter just gone.

We've used about 10 CU metres of wood this year!
However, we only have the petchka in the kitchen which we also cook on and in,
and a wood burner upstairs. The cost of the wood is approx 500 lev. We have electric radiators
which we don't use, but use the boiler for hot water.
I can't say the house is as hot as Tony's obviously, but we're both Scottish and made
of sterner stuff!
This was our first winter here, and we've survived!

so far ..out of the 10cu bought (650 lv ) we have used about 8 1/2cu. , 1 open fire .....but have used up the 1000 ltrs of oil for the C/H which was bought for 2100lv back last summer....

i have not used wood for over four years now. i use gas heaters and oil radiators and have warm air heaters ( not used in winter as yet). the gas has cost around 1,200.
i use the oil heaters at night ( cheap tariff ), my electric bills for dec, jan and feb have averaged 130 ( including cooking, lights, freezers, tv, ect and the oil radiators.
we like the heat to be constant at 20/22.
i dont think that is too bad at all, we have been warm and cosy through this cold winter.
i do have a wood fire in case my electric goes for a long time, but in 4 years i have not yet had to resort to this.
good insulation makes a big difference too.

We heat using woodburner with radiators and oven. Just coming to the end of 6 cubic meters and is the first year we have got to the end of it. This is supplemented only with kindling collected from renovation work. Our electricity bill for this January was 51.48levs which is only slightly higher than normal due to occasionally using a halogen heater on the coldest nights.
This amount of heat is for a big kitchen/diner, standard Bulgarian size bedroom, similar size office and bathroom towel rail. The cost of heating depends so much on personal preferance and size of property.

This year we seem to have used quite a bit compared to other years, 300 leva on briquettes and wood has come to about 1,000lv which seems to be high but we do live in a 9 room house so I guess I should complain.

I think we have bought about 20 cubic metres of wood - but we also had about 4 cubic metres of old roof girders and we have used around 5/6 cubic metres of old floor boards, door/window frames etc. I would say we get though about 30 cubics a year. Electric bill for December was 120 Leva, Jan and Feb were 170 Leva (I did have the oil filled rad on all night when it was really cold).

We do have a centrally heated, 4 bed, double glazed, well insulated house. I dread to think what it would now cost to heat my old house back in the UK where oil was the only option.

Esta wrote:

I. I dread to think what it would now cost to heat my old house back in the UK where oil was the only option.

it was our only option there as well ....and it cost me half of what it costs me here , now !!

I used maybe 4cu for an 80 sq/mtr house (new build (3yrs) from ytong and well insulated external and loft) which surprisingly is less than i used in previous less harsh winters!!! So from Oct 14th till now my cost has roughly been 240lv, with an average internal temp of around 25C, just right for a t-shirt and shorts all winter.

Our wood for the winter was 400levs and electric/water bills, averaging around 50levs pm as I already posted. This topic has thrown up the difference in the type of properties we all live in and the size, plus how good the insulation is. I certainly like heat and these costs are quite sufficient. Obviously if you have a large property with little insulation, costs will be much higher. Also the type of build is important. I would think that a very old house, such as we have always lived in using wattle and daub, is probably quite energy efficient in winter and cool in summer particularly if there is an arch of vines just outside for heat protection.
I doubt the new-builds using more modern techniques are necessarily better for heating although I suspect I will get loads of replies disputing this. It all depends on how good the builder is and if you take his Bulgarian advice! The Bulgarians are a hardy lot but they certainly do not like the cold and would prefer to live in one room with a huge fire or petchka than go upstairs to a cold bedroom. My advice to newcomers to Bulgaria would be to live in the property for a winter (unless its a ruin of course!) before making any drastic renovations. Then you will see how, where and what type of heating to have taking into account various problems. I still maintain that a woodburner with radiators off is the cheapest and warmest type of heating but it is very labour intensive! I know nothing about other types of heating now available but I know that electric is very expensive to get the amount of heat we have.

Oldun, google Ytong and you'll see the insulative properties of the material. 4cu for 80sq/mtrs, no rads no eleccy heating sources. just 1 12kw prity woodburner for the whole house, granted it's easy for me as everything is on 1 floor, so merely leaving doors open was enough to heat the entire house.

You are probably right Spantrout but I have been here too long and am too old to change. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

All I can say Oldun is that "
No Bulgarians were used in the process of building this house!"
I built it from scratch myself. Bg's were used in the making of the wooden roof/fitting the doors and windows, all construction work was done by me. Not a drop of stone, mud or concrete anywhere except the floor slab/foundations. 4cm insulation outside, ytong internal walls, double glazing with argon inside makes for a snug warm winter hideaway.

quote "
"
"
My advice to newcomers to Bulgaria would be to live in the property for a winter (unless its a ruin of course!) before making any drastic renovations. Then you will see how, where and what type of heating to have taking into account various problems. "
"
end quote


that above is excellent advice...i only wish someone had said it to me 10yrs ago...or my common sense would have kicked in quicker instead of trying to get ready for that first winter ....