February 06, 2005
Faucet Roulette
We've been living in this house for over a year and a half now. And for all that time, I've been scalding myself at least twice per week. I'll go to a faucet, turn it on, and YOW hot hot!
Understand that I'm not complaining. There are a lot of people in Romania without hot water. In fact, there are still plenty of people in Romania without functional indoor plumbing. We like our apartment just fine.
But: am I stupid?
So today I finally checked. There are six faucets in our apartment: kitchen, shower, tub, and three hand-sinks. Of those six, three have the hot water on the left... and three have it on the right.
Mind you, there are worse things:
Our first apartment in Serbia had odd wiring and plumbing issues. Very odd. When one flushed the toilet -- I am not making this up -- the lights in the kitchen went dim. Subsequent investigation showed that the electricians had adopted a novel technique for grounding the apartment's electrical system: they had simply run the ground wire over to the plumbing. Hey, pipes are made of nice conductive metal, and they run right down into the ground. Makes sense, right?
The Serbian electrician who made this discovery got very thoughtful. "He says this was probably done by Montenegrins," said the translator. "He says he has heard of these Montenegrins."
"Oh... and?"
"He says he will come back in three days and fix it. He says, until then, you should not use the shower."
I had been using the shower for a couple of months at this point. I looked at it thoughtfully. "Why not?"
The electrician spoke at some length. Eventually the translator (the neighbor's daughter) turned and said, "He says that might not be safe, especially if someone flushes the toilet while the stove or some other heavy appliance is turned on."
Me: "Might not be safe?"
Electrician: "Ne! Ne ne! Smrtni!"
Traslator: "Not so safe, no."
At this point I understood a little Serbian. And I was getting the idea that the neighbor girl -- a nice girl, but shy -- might be translating a bit liberally So I mentally made a note to check just what the word smrtni meant; the electrician had used it at least half a dozen times, and with a certain emphasis that had caught my attention.
Twenty minutes later, on a mobile phone: "Hey, Mira, what does smrtni mean?"
"Smrtni? It means lethal, deadly. Like a mafia hit man, or a poison snake. It's from smrt, death. Why?"
"Oh, no reason. Just curious."
So, there are worse things than being occasionally surprised by hot water.
Still, a question for our Romanian readers: is this just a peculiarity of our apartment? Or is all Romanian plumbing sort of random this way? I suppose I can check, in rest rooms and so forth, but it may take some time to collect the data. So, has anyone else noticed this?
Posted by douglas at February 6, 2005 09:46 PMI've never seen it anywhere else than on the left side, either in Romania or elsewhere. I don't know if you should consider yourself lucky or unlucky for discovering Romanian oddities. :)
I guess one case that may qualify as an exception though was an old house transformed in an upscale restaurant where I saw 2 different parralel taps on the same sink for each the hot and the cold. I have no idea how you're supposed to use it - either get burned or get your hands colder than it is outside. At the time I had discovered that I just thought it was an eccentricity; the house was built from the beginning of the century and this tap system definitely an exception imo.
As for the "There are a lot of people in Romania without hot water." - that's a rather broad statement which quite surprised me, would be curious to know where you got that from.
Posted by: Dragos at February 7, 2005 11:27 AMCould that be the first spam message that slipped through the anti-spam word ? :-)
Posted by: Bogdan at February 8, 2005 07:34 PMMy apartment shower here in central PA has its hot water and cold water knobs inverted, too. I think it's the sign of a plumbing installer who couldn't care less, moreso than any sort of regional twitch.
Posted by: Mitch H. at February 8, 2005 10:01 PMAs for the "There are a lot of people in Romania without hot water." - that's a rather broad statement which quite surprised me, would be curious to know where you got that from.
There's this World Bank study on poverty in Romania, published in 2002. (.pdf file)
"Lack of access to basic facilities such as bathrooms, flush toilets, and hot water characterizes almost all rural inhabitants [in Romania]..."
Since nearly half the country's population is still rural, this leads to some alarming statistics. According to Table 2, 48% of Romanian households don't have hot water.
That number seems high at first, but then I think of all those villages that I've driven through that, quite clearly, don't have indoor plumbing at all. So maybe it's not so high.
That figure is 11% for urban non-poor Romanians, BTW, but 95% for Romanians who are both rural and poor.
I'd add that our nanny goes without hot water for months at a time -- it gets mysteriously turned off to her block; they're told it's for repairs, but it keeps happening. Also that the office manager at our office has a little flat with no hot water.
So it's not unheard of, even here in Bucharest.
Bogdan: yes, it seems to be. Cursed spammers.
Doug M.
I lived for some months in a vila in the center of Bucharest, half of the time (literally, as in 50%) there was no water at all. Had to learn to take shower with 2liter coke bottles, quite cold and unconfortable in winter!
Posted by: Lieven at February 9, 2005 07:28 PMDoug, thanks for the details, I never said it was unheard of, I was just curious about some specifics, that's all. I didn't imagine that it's as high as 48% though, that's 1 out of 2.
The link is not working btw.
Posted by: Dragos at February 10, 2005 12:23 AM? Not sure what's up with the link. Maybe try googling that text?
The study was from 2002, so things may have improved a bit. Still -- roughly half of Romanian households are rural, and about half of rural households are poor. So that's ~25% right there.
Fresh data (from last year) show about 70,000 households still without electricity. Which is either horrible or not so bad, depending on how you look at it.
Doug M.
If I put it from the "stupid patriotic point of view" (which I've been accused for by my readers on the topic in case) I'd say that the situation has improved for the last 14 years so. :)
The truth is that in spite of the good things that had happened lately Romania is still A LOT behind even its peers from Central Eastern Europe - the signs of poverty can be seen all over the country, and Bucharest doesn't make an exception. Lack of electricity or (hot) water are of course included in this class.
Just wanted to make that clear, apologies if my comment appeared too agressive, that was certainly not my intention.
Posted by: Dragos at February 10, 2005 05:49 PMon a vaguely related note, an interesting article in today's guardian about eastern european economic development entitled "Behind New Europe's Facade: Neo-liberalism has delivered unemployment and lower living standards for the majority in eastern Europe. But opposition is growing". i think the author has got it a bit too black and white in his assessment, but it's rare to read a sceptical perspective on this in the UK and i'd be interested to hear people's thoughts.
"Reformers blame problems on the legacy of 40 years of communism. But could it be that the reform process itself is responsible? Far from being a panacea, as claimed by eastern Europe's political elite, following the IMF-EU economic prescription has caused hardship for millions."
Posted by: Raoul Djukanovic at February 10, 2005 06:53 PMThe hot water is somewhat sporadic in our Bucharest block. We also had it shut down for a month 'for repairs'. Repairing the dangerously low levels of various bank accounts, perhaps?
Posted by: Frank O'Connor at February 10, 2005 10:11 PM