It was freezing last night. It was so cold that even Ken, our natural space heater, was shivering from time to time.
Our original problem with our heating system was that there were in fact, two boilers – a new electric one and an old wood-burning one. Since we had two boilers, we were using double the kerosene (which cost $200/canister…and one canister would last about a month).
Our second problem came about when we started to heat our floors (through a network of water-filled pipes underneath them), which caused us to wait about forty-five minutes to an hour for the shower water to heat up in the morning. The cause of this problem was unknown, even by our landlord.
Our third problem came about when we unplugged the wood boiler (to get hot water faster for morning showers). However, our floors stopped heating, and we had no idea what we could do but plug in the old wood boiler again.
Our fourth problem came about when our lovely friends Corey and Ilana (the Andong English Teachers) visited Andeok. I told our landlord’s son that they were staying and that we needed to heat the floor of the second bedroom. I could’ve just opened up the valve to that room, but he quickly entered the boiler room, pressed buttons, tweaked knobs, and we couldn’t warm our floors for over four days! The temperature went below five degrees Celsius, and we had to use an electric blanket the Andeok teachers lent us one night.
We’ve had several people check out our boilers: my co-teacher (Young-hee), the Andeok Computer Technician, our landlord, our landlord’s son, a repairman from the town, and a repairman from the new boiler’s company.
We’re going to freeze in here…
- Jess
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