Heating our home (Turkish gas adventures)

(Justin) Being a cold winter here, natural gas is an important commodity. The apartment buildings here are heated by a gas radiator system, either centrally controlled by the building or individually controlled by the residents. In our building, everything is individually controlled and our hot water heater handles the radiator as well as the running water.There is no tank, it heats running water as it goes (similar to what we had in Moldova). The dial on the left is radiator temperature, the dial on the bottom right is faucet water temperature (the magnets are the local delivery services-- McDonalds, local grocers, water, etc.).

One nice aspect of the natural gas system is that it is prepaid, the meter outside our door tells us how many cubic litres we have left (and is a daily reminder of how much we're using). We refill by taking a prepaid card to a local office and paying cash.  If you run out, no more gas until you reload your card.

When we moved in, the apartment had sat empty for months and the heat was turned on only the day before, so the apartment was quite chilly (it was -22C the night before our arrival). There wasn't much credit left on the meter and the payment office would be closed for the next two days--the weekend.  I was rather concerned about the chill so we turned the heaters up to maximum hoping the apartment would eventually get warm (it did). The gas meter was steadily decreasing and I was concerned that we might not have enough gas at this rate to make it through the weekend. I made sure to get to the office when it opened early Monday morning to be first in line to put money on the card, or else we'd have run out that day. This was officially our first bill paid in Turkey.  

Last Saturday, we had another adventure with the gas as suddenly the faucet hot water quit working while the radiators worked fine.  I called our landlord, Mustafa bey (who speaks perfect English), and he walked me through some possible steps, including adding more water to the system. Apparently the valves are really sensitive and before I knew it I had overloaded the system and water came gushing out of pipes in our kitchen, all over the floor. Mustafa sent some of his employees over to look at it, and they tried a few more things (including putting water all over our bathroom floor) to no avail and they called a repairman for later in the day. 

We've been very pleased with Turkish service and I was eager to talk to the repairman, who knew no English (I haven't found a conversation partner yet, so I take what I can get). He discovered that the valve that allowed hot water to flow into the pipes wasn't lifting properly ("yukarı gitmez"). After taking the heater apart and blowing dust out of the connections, he got it to work again (this took about an hour). He decided that the motor pushing the valve might be going bad and if it happened again it'd have to be replaced ("değişmesi gerekir"). This procedure cost us 50 TL (about $28) and some awkwardness as I offered him tea and he used phrases to decline the offers that I didn't know and I probably didn't respond appropriately.  But I learned how the heater worked.

Gas, water, electricity, and internet are things we tend to take for granted.  Joni and I have lived places where these didn't exist or weren't an everyday thing, so we're reminded to be thankful. 

Here's the view from our living room today as we picked up another inch or two of snow. If you look at the bottom of the picture you can see that the neighboring buildings have solar powered water heaters.  

Our apartment is on a corner of a top floor, so the exterior rooms are exposed to too much, so we keep them mostly shut in order to save gas. Judging from our neighbors' meters, they use gas as sparingly as possible and probably live in fewer rooms during the winter.  The expensiveness of gas is something we had inadequately budgeted for, honestly, and we're quite ready for spring to come.