I’m Steaming!

and using very bad puns. You see, about 3 weeks ago, there appeared some signs in the elevators instructing us lowly inhabitants that on the 24th of June there would be no hot water for several hours and that in the beginning of July they would be doing work that involved replacing 2 water heaters. No biggie. I thought it was smart to put these signs in the elevator.

June 24 came and hadn’t realized it so I tried to run the hot water to no avail. It coughed at me, perhaps released a spray of water, I recalled the date and was content to wait it out. No biggie.

But after the water was supposed to be back, to the point of 12 hours later, we were having issues. Initially, turning on the water did nothing. Then it released grossly yellow water in a fit of coughing. Out of the bathroom sink came something that appeared to be some sort of seal for the faucet. It came out in several smaller pieces and then finally one big chunk. I do not think this is “normal.”

Eventually, after running the water from all sinks (the kitchen faucet seemed like it was about to fly off but it has a history of doing that), which at first meant coughing fits that made the surrounding areas quite wet with yellow water, the coughing and discolouration stopped and we appeared to have normal water.

Almost.

The issue we continue to have is that our hot water is not working very well. You cannot wash your hands in hot water in the bathroom unless you turn the water on 5 minutes before you even realize you need to use the facilities which is just silly and wasteful.

The shower/tub is another thing altogether. Our solution so far is to turn the water to the hottest setting, letting it get hot and gradually turn it back down to comfortable. Turning it to comfortable from the beginning means it doesn’t get hot at all. Sometimes this doesn’t work, though, and it just stays scalding hot. I’ve found that, occasionally if I turn the cold water-that-should-be-hot off and then back on, it works. It’s all guesswork.

The kitchen tap takes a bit longer to become hot but doesn’t seem to have any of the more serious issues of the other 2.

To add insult to injury, they expect us to give them 2 more days – for a total of 8 hours – where we cannot use hot water because they’re swapping out steam something or anothers. Hell, I’m not even sure what they did the first day!

I guess I can’t complain. I can’t even use hot water now so maybe I won’t even notice the difference.