Heating Without Gas in the Carpathians: Wood, Pellets or a Heat Pump

Most mountain villages in the Kosiv district have no mains gas, and are not going to get it. That makes heating a decision you take before you buy, not after you move in. The trouble is that buyers usually take it from the wrong end: they compare the price of a cubic metre of firewood with the price of a tonne of pellets and the price of a kilowatt-hour of electricity. Those three numbers are not comparable at all. Only one number is — what a kilowatt-hour of heat actually costs by the time it reaches the room.

The building envelope decides the bill, not the fuel

The fuel you choose does not set your heating bill. The heat the house loses over a winter sets it, and the fuel only prices each lost kilowatt-hour. That is not a theoretical point: the gap between an insulated and an uninsulated house of the same floor area is wider than the gap between the most and least expensive fuel. So the order of decisions is always the same — envelope first, heating system second.

The minimum insulation requirements come from ДБН В.2.6-31:2021 on thermal insulation and energy performance of buildings. Ivano-Frankivsk oblast sits in temperature zone I, the coldest one, where the minimum thermal resistance is 4.0 m²·K/W for walls and 6.0 for roofs and top floors. That is a floor for new construction, not an aspiration. A house built by copying the neighbour, with no calculation behind it, starts below that line and pays the difference every winter afterwards. How the wall material feeds into the same arithmetic is set out in what to build with in the Carpathians.

One formula that compares any fuel

To compare things that are not comparable, reduce all of them to one figure: the cost of a kilowatt-hour of heat inside the house. For any solid fuel the formula is short.

Cost per kWh of heat = price of one unit of fuel ÷ (usable energy in that unit × efficiency of the boiler or stove)

For a heat pump it is shorter still: the electricity tariff divided by SCOP, the seasonal coefficient of performance — how many kilowatt-hours of heat the machine delivers across a year for each kilowatt-hour of electricity it draws. Do not substitute the COP from a brochure. COP is usually quoted under mild conditions, and you pay your bills in January.

The inputs cannot be taken from an internet average. They come from the fuel supplier you will actually buy from and from the data sheet of the equipment you will actually install. This is what to ask for:

Once all four rows are expressed as the same cost per kilowatt-hour, the picture usually differs from the one you started with — and the gap between options turns out smaller than the gap between doing any one of them well and doing it badly.

What electricity costs, and who gets the cheaper rate

Household electricity prices in Ukraine are fixed by government through the public service obligation mechanism, set out in Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 483 of 5 June 2019. As of August 2026 the universal supplier for Ivano-Frankivsk oblast applies fixed prices for the period from 1 May to 31 October 2026, and they read as follows.

• Ordinary household consumption — 4.32 UAH per kWh including VAT (3.6 without). This is the rate to use when costing an electric boiler or a heat pump in a house with no registered electric heating.
• The electric heating rate — 2.64 UAH per kWh including VAT (2.2 without) on the first 2,000 kWh in a month, and only between 1 October and 30 April.
• Above 2,000 kWh in a month during the heating period — 4.32 UAH per kWh on the excess.
• From 1 May to 30 September — 4.32 UAH per kWh, whether or not electric heating is registered.

The distance between 4.32 and 2.64 is close to a factor of two, and it is what decides whether a heat pump makes economic sense at all. So the real question is not what a kilowatt-hour costs. It is whether you will be charged the lower one.

One detail is easy to miss: the 2,000 kWh allowance is monthly. In the coldest months a house can exceed it, and the excess is billed at the full rate — so cost January separately from October.

Firewood: the cheapest fuel with the most expensive mistake

In the Carpathians firewood remains the baseline, and not only on price: it does not depend on the electricity supply, on the road being clear in February, or on a service engineer being available. It is also where the gap between what people pay for and what they receive is widest.

• Moisture decides everything. Freshly felled timber is roughly half water by mass. That water does not merely fail to heat the house — it consumes heat as it evaporates, lowers the firebox temperature and deposits in the flue. Seasoning under a ventilated shelter takes seasons, not weeks: about a year for softwoods, around two for hardwoods.
• A stacked cubic metre is not a solid one. Firewood is usually sold by loose or stacked volume, much of which is air between the logs. Ask which measure is being quoted before you pay, otherwise you are comparing the prices of two different products.
• The store is floor area on the plot. A two-year seasoning cycle means this winter's supply and next winter's are on site at the same time. The woodshed belongs in the site plan, not propped against a wall where the stack gets wet.
• Your own time is part of the cost. Loading, cleaning, taking out ash, ordering and receiving deliveries — that is daily work through the winter. In a permanent home it is simply domestic life. In a house you visit at weekends it is a problem to solve in advance.
• The flue and the plant room follow standards, not taste. Requirements for heating systems in buildings are set by ДБН В.2.5-67:2013 on heating, ventilation and air conditioning, in force since 1 January 2014. Saving on the chimney and on combustion air is not a saving.

The practical conclusion is unwelcome but reliable: cheap wet wood bought in November costs more than expensive dry wood bought in spring. The difference shows up not in the price list but in how many cubic metres you burn.

Pellets: convenience that depends on logistics

A pellet boiler is the compromise between firewood and automation. It feeds itself from a hopper and holds a set temperature, so daily loading becomes a refill every few days — a real difference in a mountain house. The price of that convenience is dependence on two things the mountains do not always supply: consistent fuel and a usable road.

• Pellets are sold by the tonne or in bags, and a price per tonne means nothing without two figures from the batch data sheet: net calorific value and moisture. Ask for them as routinely as you ask the price.
• Ash content determines how often you clean the boiler. Pellets containing bark are cheaper, produce more ash, foul the heat exchanger faster and cut efficiency exactly when you need it.
• Pellets are destroyed by damp. A pellet that takes up water collapses into sawdust and jams the auger. You need a genuinely dry store for a season's supply, not a pallet under a lean-to.
• Delivery is a line item of its own. A narrow road, a steep entrance and winter snow can mean the large lorry does not reach you, or reaches you at a price. Settle that before buying the boiler, not in December.
• The automation runs on electricity. Without power the auger and the fan stop — more on that below.

Heat pumps: what you are buying and where they disappoint

A heat pump does not generate heat, it moves it, which is why it delivers more kilowatt-hours of heat than the kilowatt-hours of electricity it consumes. That is also why it is judged on SCOP rather than on rated output, and why it behaves differently in the mountains than in the brochure.

• An air source unit loses efficiency as the air gets colder. It keeps heating in frost, but the coefficient of performance falls, so the most expensive kilowatt-hours arrive on the days you need the most of them.
• The bivalent point sets the budget. That is the outside temperature below which a backup source cuts in, usually an electric element. How many hours a year your house spends below it depends on the location, and those hours are the difference between the expectation and the bill.
• A low-temperature emission system is not optional. The pump is efficient when it delivers heat at a low flow temperature: underfloor heating or oversized radiators. Fitting one to an existing high-temperature system and expecting the quoted SCOP does not work.
• You need adequate connected capacity, and usually three phases. That is checked with the distribution system operator, not in a showroom, and it is checked before you commit to the plot or the house. What to ask about electricity on site is covered in utilities for a plot in the Carpathians.
• A ground source loop costs more to install and needs space and excavation, but it is steadier through winter. On a slope that is a conversation with a designer rather than a catalogue choice.

The honest summary: a heat pump earns its place in a well-insulated house, with a low-temperature system, adequate connected capacity and the electric heating tariff actually registered. Remove any one of those and the economics come apart, while the equipment still has to be paid for.

What happens when the power goes off

In the mountains this decides more than the price difference does. Outages in mountain villages tend to run longer than in a city, because of weather and the length of the line reaching the last house on it. Judge each option on how it behaves in the dark, not only on its running cost.

• A stove or a gravity-fed wood boiler works with no electricity at all. It is the only option with that property.
• A solid-fuel boiler with a circulation pump needs very little power, and can realistically be held up by a modest battery backup.
• A pellet boiler stops without power: the auger and the fan are electric. It needs backup supply sized for a day, not for an hour.
• A heat pump does not run at all without electricity, and its load is too large for a domestic battery backup. Here the fallback is a generator or a genuinely independent second heat source.
• A house left empty in winter carries an additional risk: an unheated system with water still in it will freeze. For a weekend house that is solved by the design of the system, not by the size of the boiler.

This is why mountain houses rarely settle on one source alone. The common pattern is a main source plus something simple in reserve. But if the reserve is a stove, go back to the tariff condition above and establish with the operator how it affects your price per kilowatt-hour, while the decision is still reversible.

How to cost your own case in an evening

1. 1Start from annual heat demand, not floor areaFor an existing house that means last winter's actual fuel use converted into kilowatt-hours. For a new one it means a heat loss calculation from the designer. Square metres are not an input: two houses of 120 m² can differ twofold in consumption.
2. 2Reduce every option to a cost per kWh of heatUnit price divided by usable energy and by appliance efficiency, or for a heat pump the tariff divided by SCOP. Take the numbers from the supplier you will buy from and from the equipment data sheet, not from a forum thread.
3. 3Add everything that is not fuelServicing and cleaning, ash removal, delivery, storage space, backup power and your own time. If the house will not be permanently occupied, work out explicitly who loads the boiler while you are away.
4. 4Check the electricity supply before choosing equipmentConnected capacity, number of phases and the condition of the line to your house all come from the distribution system operator. A heat pump with no capacity behind it stops being an option at the calculation stage rather than after payment.
5. 5Cost the coldest month and a three-day outageJanuary separately from October, because that is where you exceed the monthly allowance on the cheaper tariff. And separately, three days with no electricity: what heats the house, what it costs, and what freezes if nothing does.

The expensive mistakes are consistent: the system gets sized around a preferred fuel instead of around heat loss; a heat pump goes into a house with high-temperature radiators; the cheaper tariff is assumed without anyone checking the conditions for confirming it; backup power is considered only after the first long outage. Each is cheap to correct on paper and expensive once installed.

If you are still choosing a house, press for last winter's fuel consumption as firmly as you press for the documents — and if you are buying from abroad, settle who loads a boiler in your absence before you settle on the fuel. If you are building, put the heating system into the design alongside the insulation, not after it. What our side covers is on the construction page.