If you have been keeping up with our blog since before April, you probably know that it gets cold here and stays cold all winter and most of spring. In fact the first winter we spent here the temperature did not come above freezing for about 2 months. To make matters worse, the people here seem to hate heaters. I am not sure if it is to save money or if it is because they think the heat from heater is evil (as one person told me), either way I have sat in my friend's home wearing 3 layers of clothing (silk long underwear, long sleeve shirt, and wool sweater), down coat, and hat and I was still shivering. They love to drink hot water though!
Anyways, I am not sure of the exact reason but the cities in the northern part of this country provide steam heat for our apartments. I think it is because it uses less energy than everyone running their heaters, but we pay for it in the form of a permeant coal dust cloud over our city for the duration of the steam heat. In the older apartments the steam heat is not very efficient since the windows are not sealed and the radiators sit under them. However our apartment is only a few years old, and our steam heat is in the floor. It is awesome! In fact it is so warm that we have shut off the heat to our apartment and just receive the residual heat from the units surrounding us. All we have to wear is pants and a long sleeve shirt - no sweaters or parkas needed!
There is a catch though. The steam heat is expensive, even by Western standards - especially for us mild wintered Texans. The cost of the heat has entirely to do with the amount of square meters of your apartment. Our total is almost $500 USD for heat mid November - mid March. I know it has got to be tough for the locals to cough up that much money. Nevertheless, the city will not turn on our steam heat until our entire apartment complex has paid for the heat. Every year there are a few holdouts, and they always cause trouble. This year our apartment manager said the fee was due on Oct. 30th, then Nov. 3rd, and then Nov. 6th. I do not think they realize that everyone knows they are going to move the due dates, but whatever. Finally yesterday they published a list of all the tenets who have not paid and posted it outside for everyone to see. By that evening someone had ripped the sign down. Maybe they were embarrassed for causing us all problems and afraid of retribution, they should be.
Last year paying for the steam heat became nasty. Fifty tenets who already paid for their heat posted a list with all of their signatures saying if the holdouts did not pay by the next day they would personally go and cut off the holdout's water everyday until they paid. KB and I were really glad we had paid, we did not want to meet a neighbor in a dark alleyway with a wrench ready to cut off our water. I heard that if the water bit did not work, they were planning on cutting the wires that power their apartment. Mercenary apartment tenets are serious about their steam heat.
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