Fewer and fewer households in our country are heated with wood because of cheap electricity and the labor-intensive preparation of wood.
This year wood remains preferred for firewood in mountainous and semi-mountainous areas, but supply is problematic there as well, as most people are elderly and cannot split and store their own wood.
88-year-old Asya Sarieva will be heated with wood again this year, because in the winter in the mountains the electricity sometimes goes out for days, and besides:
„It's different when you cook on wood, it's tastier,” says Asya Sarieva, quoted by bTV.
Contrary to the statistics, wood is more expensive for Asya Sarieva this year, because she pays extra to a private company to chop it and arrange it in sacks.
State forestry farms are selling firewood 17% cheaper this year, but demand is weak:
„Maybe thanks to the warm last winter, people are stocked up and there isn't that much demand. Otherwise, the selling price of one cubic meter of beech wood is BGN 58 including VAT from a warehouse in the forest, plus transport costs, which vary from BGN 300 to BGN 450 depending on the location of the town where the wood is transported. Softwood is BGN 48, including VAT, explained engineer Anatoli Elev, director of State Forestry in Smilyan.
„Until now, our enterprise has sold 168 thousand cubic meters. wood and we have supplied about 25,000 households with firewood. Compared to last year, for the same period, households were 35,000, and the amount of firewood was 258,000. That is, we have about 30% less sales this year compared to last year, said Eng. Asen Karabov, deputy director of South Central State Enterprise, Smolyan.
However, the cheapening of wood does not lead to cheap heating due to high transport prices. Few people split the timber themselves anymore. For a similar service, the company charges another 150 BGN per cubic meter.
The most preferred for heating are beech and oak.