As I wrote in my previous post, we had no heating. Though finally, on Friday, around midday, the hot water from the city finally started flowing into our cold radiators. Everyone in the building had been getting really cold by now.
Friday morning the temperatures were down to 18°C / 64°F after the outside temperatures got close to freezing for a while. Otherwise we were lucky enough that the temperature in the apartment stayed at 20°C / 68°F for the last week without heat. I just didn’t open the windows or the balcony door.
After the heat came on, the temperature quickly rose to 23°C / 73°F.
20°C / 68°F in a home feels nothing like 20°C / 68°F on a lovely day outside. The air feels chilly and everything you touch is cold. Despite the incredibly thick walls in our building, I felt the cold radiating off the walls. The cats fur always felt cold to the touch as well. They all cuddled up with each other on my bed over night.
It’s amazing that it gets this uncomfortable already, even though the outside temperatures were still hovering between 10°C / 50°F on a cloudy day, and 15°C / 59°F at the most during a sunny afternoon. During the night the outside temperatures decreased to around 3°C / 37°F this week, with close to freezing on Friday morning.
It makes me shudder to think how bad it would be if we end up without heat in Europe this winter, we truly would be in serious trouble. And it’s all due to globalist politicians, who would of course never sit in the cold. They’d have their own heating system, either with good old fire wood, coal, natural gas or oil that was stored away just for them, or any other means of heating.
Not long ago something came out of Switzerland, where they considered jailing anyone who would heat their homes above 21°C if the natural gas runs out. The politicians saying things like that would most likely never have to sit in a cold home and so they could not care less what this means for people.
Why we had no heating
On Wednesday afternoon, we finally learned why there was no heat, after the workmen came and turned on the pump in the basement again. No hot water was coming in from the city’s heating system. The pipe coming into the building was completely empty and cold. So they had a couple of phone calls and found out that there was some extensive damage to the city’s heating pipes, not far from our neighbourhood. (This visit by the workmen would have other bad consequences, which I will share farther down in this post)
After hearing that they are working on heating pipes in our street somewhere, I went out to see if I can find the site. It wasn’t far from us, just another block away.
Today I heard from a shop owner I always pop in to, that the outage of heating affected not just our area, but stretched much farther from us way into the outskirts of the city towards the east from us. So it was 100s and 100s of apartment buildings without heating. Again, I am really glad this did not happen in the middle of winter, where the temperature barely climbs above freezing during the day typically, or much much colder than that with temperatures as low as -15° / 5°F or -20°C / -4°F when a severe arctic storm reaches us. Still even though it’s cold, the temperatures in the north of the US and Canada has these temperatures regularly during winter, with far more severe winter storms than we have here. The situation with heating is dangerous for everyone living in the areas with cold winters. I can only hope these corrupt globalists aren’t going to mess with us all this winter, especially in Europe. All a completely unnecessary manmade problem. There would be enough energy for every country on earth if it weren’t for these agendas being pushed and the corruption everywhere.
Another block farther up south from us, I visited the site where they were fixing the heating pipes.
This site in the foreground is just a small part of what they are working on. They had just lifted some old pipes out with that crane arm, across the street.
The pipes from the city heating system. The pipe on the right brings the hot water into the buildings, the one on the left is for the cooler water that comes back out from the buildings and goes back to the power plants for reheating. Normally these pipes have thick insulation around them.
I really wish I knew what these blue connecting things are. Because all the other pipes I have seen are connected through welding.
To the right of the street is the smaller part of the site from the previous picture, with the construction site fence around it. It’s also the end of our street. To the left is the beginning of the long stretch of the site, with the tractor looking vehicle that has a crane arm.
This is from the larger site. Later in the evening I checked out the site again to see how far they have come. This is were I saw them lifting out the old pipes. Now they had already put new ones in and almost completely insulated them.
Another part of the larger site, farther back from the previous picture.
To top it all off: Leaky pipes in the basement…
I was relieved to have a warm home again and enjoyed the warmth we had. At 6pm the doorbell rang, a neighbour told me that there is a leaky pipe in the room with the heating system and it’s soaking everything down there. She rang my doorbell asking if I had the phone number of the company that came this week, which I did. But it being Friday 6pm, nobody was there. Thankfully her brother was able to help because he organized for a technician to come by right away.
While we were waiting for the technician, I was just watching the water leaking out of the pipe heavily and thinking we’d definitely be without heat again for a couple of days. I thought that the screws were messed up and that’s why it’s not tightened up properly.
But once the technician came, it turned out that the screws and the pipe are fine, but the screws weren’t tightened properly. So turns out, the workmen that opened up the pipe that brings the hot water into our building on Wednesday, didn’t tighten the screws again properly… But that also meant is was easily fixable. No more leaking. The more I think about it, the stranger I find that they even opened up that pipe in the first place. The meter showed anyway that there was nothing coming in from the city, and you can feel that the pipes are cold when nothing is coming in. Of course, I have no idea and maybe it’s normal to open pipes up. I certainly have a bad feeling about that company by now, after the first man that came didn’t even turn on the pump properly. Even though it didn’t matter in the end, since there would have been no heat anyway.
The running pump was important because it meant that we would get heat as soon as it would come in from the city.
This is after the leak was fixed. The water was leaking out of that dark blue connection.
The water was almost 1cm along the walls. It had started drying (and probably seeping into the ground), after we started catching the water with a bucket. It had to be emptied every few minutes though. This pic was taken after the leak was stopped anyway. It’s very warm in that basement room, so hopefully it’s not going to cause mold.
All is good though, everything is working fine and everyone has warm homes. Hope you all have it warm and you’re well! Have a lovely Sunday!
Thank you for reading!
Have a lovely Aunday too @catlady-natascha. I hope you get a proper heating system this winter and I didn't know Switzerland would have such rules, interesting but strange to me(I am from a tropical country). By the way if you want to just talk about things like this, there's actually a community for that too called "Rant, Complain, Talk" :https://peakd.com/c/hive-196233/created. I also see that you're often posting about your cats, I really look forward to your cat stories over Hive pets too!
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