The heating pump in the basement of our apartment building wasn't turned on properly. As I mentioned in a recent post, we have been connected to the city wide heating system. The city heating system is available all year, but buildings have a pump station in the basement with a device that decreases the pressure of the incoming hot water, after which it goes to the pump, which sends in up into all the radiators in the building.
Last week the building management sent a technician, to turn it on and get it all ready for the winter. At that point, it was still very warm with up to 27°C during the day. The technician said the hot water will come in automatically when the temperatures drop to a certain point.
Then the weekend came, with endless rain on Friday and snow in the surrounding mountains and the temperatures dropped to as low as 5° over night. But there was no heat. The pump in the basement is not doing anything. Great.
So all we could do was not open the windows the whole weekend, so we would not lose the existing warmth we had in our home.
Lily and her brothers Leo (tabby) and little Sonic having fun
It's a good thing that Lily has to wear her little recovery suit, at least it’s an added layer to keep her warm (Lily was spayed on last Thursday). But the kitties are good at keeping themselves warm, especially when they sleep. They cuddle up to me and to each other. I also put blankets on them if they sleep by themselves.
Hero and little Sonic (right)
Leo and Lily (right)
Leo and Lisa (right)
We had 24°C in our apartment before it cooled down a bit over the weekend. Right now it’s at 20°C.
For the most part, the temperatures during the daytime were around 10°C, with 14°C at the highest on Sunday, thanks to the sun breaking through the clouds for a while.
Of course I called the building management right in the morning at 8am, to tell them that we have no heat. They said they will call the company again to have a look at it and turn the heat on and tell them to come by our building right away.
Unfortunately, nobody came. I guess the company had nobody available. Which is something very common nowadays. Every company is understaffed all of a sudden. I have a pretty good idea why.
This means we will have at least another night without heat. Tomorrow I’ll call building management again and the company itself. I’ll also get my neighbour to call them.
And this happens as we are going to have our first winter with this heating system after getting connected to it mid August. When we moved into this apartment nearly 5 years ago, it already had a gas boiler that provided the hot water for the radiators. It was the only apartment using natural gas for heating. All the other units are connected to the city heating system, with no issues apparently.
The gas boiler was removed because it was getting to old and would not have passed another inspection. I was pretty glad to be connected to the heating system, since the price for natural gas has gone up so bad. The bill we would have had to pay starting with September would have been over twice as much on top of the increase we had in January already. It’s not just the natural gas itself that had increased in price, but the gas company also increased the general service fee to more than double of what it had been before. I’m sure the price for natural gas will go up even higher. It would have been impossible to afford.
Thankfully the temperature is only supposed to go down to 9°C over night. Of course the low temperatures we had now are nothing really. It would have been a lot worse if it would have been proper winter already with temperatures below freezing even during the daytime. I just hope that the technicians are going to come soon and actually sort it out properly this time.
I’ve lived in apartments with this heating system for a long time. I never really noticed when it was turned on or off, the heat was just always available when needed, without losing heat even once in over a decade.
We’ll see what happens tomorrow 😅
Thank you for reading!
Oh it sucks when there's no heat! Especially when you go from hot to cold because you have no tolerance for it then. I have had no heat a few times over the years, and am very glad I have a little space heater, even though it costs a lot in electricity to run it. I hope they fix your system soon!
Aww thank you for your nice comment @phoenixwren ! Yes, it was quite a sudden and big drop in temperatures, from nice late summer heat to late fall. We had a lot of bad weather going through and the mountains got snow. It was about a month earlier than normal.
We still have no heat though... But we know why, and I'll share a post about it in a bit. There is severe damage to the main heating pipes, farther up from us, on the other site of a busy main street.
I saw them working on that stretch in early September already, and assumed it was just part of the building construction that had been going on right next to it since spring.
I had a look at the site today. There are a whole lot of workmen, a lot more than I normally saw when they were digging up the road somewhere. I saw them lifting old pipes out, and new pipes lying around nearby. It's quite a long stretch that is being worked on by the looks of it.
No idea how long it will be. I hope that they are close to finishing their work, since they have been at it for weeks. I think the majority of the time must have been spent, clearing out the damaged mess, since there must have been a lot of leaking hot water in the ground.
Ohhhh no! I hope they are able to get it fixed soon. We used to have flooding here on a regular basis until they fixed the storm drains and pipes down the block. I was so glad when they got that fixed!
All good @phoenixwren ! We are finally warm again and the kitties enjoy hanging out by the radiators (and on them, with the radiator cat basket). Thankfully the heat came in on Friday around midday.
Oh no! Flooding is terrible. So glad you don't have to worry about this anymore!
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