steam heat

My husband has been telling me for weeks that he is posting pictures that need explanations on our blog.  He said he is doing this to serve me since becoming pregnant my blog time became nap time.  He also told me I should really explain some pictures, otherwise they will not make sense to most people.  Fortunately today my tutor canceled and my kids are outside playing like they do on all non-polluted days - which occurs about once every 2-3 weeks.  I thought I would take the opportunity to do a little explaining.

 

 

We live in a cold part of the world.  Therefore we hand over a large chunk of money every October to our city in order to get steam heat pumped into our apartment.  The heat is very effective.  We have gone without heat before, and it is not something we are willing to do again.  Anyways, every year the steam heat starts around the first of November, and usually there are some bumps along the way, namely clogs in the pipes.  

 

Although our heat is awesome, for some reason it does not reach our bedroom.  Of all the rooms in our apartment, our bedroom probably needs the heat the least since my husband is his own heater and we can snuggle under our flannel sheets and down comforter.  However, it is still cold and whenever I an not taking a nap, I would really like for it be above 50 degrees in there.  Thus the heat guy made his annual trip to our apartment to try to "fix" it.  After 3-4 separate attempts they finally said the system was too weak to reach all the way to our bedroom.  Along the way they attempted to clean out our system a couple of times resulting in this nasty black water mess (in the pictures below) he emptied from our radiator in the bathroom floor.

 

Thankfully most people in this country shower without a stall or care as to where they get water in the bathroom so they build the bathrooms to get completely soaked from ceiling to every inch of the floor - there are 3 drains the water can choose from, and the bathrooms are built slightly sunken in from the rest of the apartment.  Therefore, he was able to try to clear the clog to his heart's content.  They never found a clog.  At least he tried.