::A Geek in Korea::

We found out yesterday that the public water project we saw gradually progressing down our street and into our apartment block has officially come to put us on the city grid. Since the entire apartment needs to be fitted with new pipes and new control mechanisms to switch over to this new system, there has been a lot of work outside the apartment. The municipal water system will allow us to finally control the temperature of our apartment individually, as each apartment will be fitted with a boiler and thermostat. Right now we have heated rooms when the apartment turns on the heat, and cold floors the rest of the time. Once we get control, we’ll be able to set up a heating solution that works for us, and we’ll be charged for usage instead of a flat rate per apartment. Now we know that they have the groundwork for the block installed, and the individual apartments need to be hooked up.

Yesterday there was an announcement stating that the new heating system would start to be installed this coming week. Excellent! The downside was that it would take nearly four months to complete, and the entire time we would have no hot water available at all. We’ve had periods of time at the last apartment complex we lived at where the hot water would be eliminated for a few days while they scrubbed or cleaned pipes, or replaced something. By the end of the week we were cranky and murderous because we didn’t have our hot showers. How could we possibly survive four months without hot water? With the baby on the way, how could we keep up the necessary amount of sanitation required to keep healthy for that long? Boil water? Shower elsewhere? What would we do?

It turns out that there was an answer in the same announcement. For the duration of the work, a company was offering a chance to rent a temporary water heating system that ran on electricity. You install this above your faucet, it runs the water through a heated coil, then depending on the pressure of the water being forced through the coil you either get hot or warm water. It’s a delicate balance of watching how fast the water flows out and using that to judge how hot the shower will be. Lower pressure pushes the wather through more slowly, allowing it longer contact with the coil, allowing it to heat up more. Faster flows produce warm water. Either of those beat no hot water at all.

We signed up for the installation, which was promised to be installed before they cut off our hot water. We waited a few hours today for the guy to come and install the heater. It was just like waiting for cable television to be installed in the United States! Take off all day and I’ll probably arrive sometime between 2 and 7 PM, but maybe not!

When the man finally arrived, we found out we were his twentieth install today! The company he works for must be making a small fortune in our block. He demanded cash up front too for the device. He had to cut our electric breaker and install a new fuse as part of the install. I guess it draws a lot more power than a hair dryer. He didn’t install a new plug or add some sort of safety access to our bathroom to allow us to shower with an electric operated device. He simply strung the cord up from the machine, screwed the power cord on the ceiling, then snaked it down the opposite wall. There is literally an electrical cord snaking out of my shower at the moment!

The power cord runs long enough that we can plug in into the nearest available power strip in the bedroom. When we want a hot shower, we plug it in. Then we run the shower faucet, which pushes the water through. Hopefully we don’t get electricuted in the process for a warm shower. In four months, if we aren’t dead from the very haphazard looking contraption, he’ll come back and remove it when they finish the work outside.

I knew hot showers were important to me the first time I had to go for months without them in Korea my first year. Now I know how far I am willing to go for on. I’m willing to risk electricution as long as it means I can wake up with a hot shower. I didn’t know if I would have accepted that if I wasn’t put in a situation where that was my only realistic chance of having a hot shower for four months.