It's called a kolunka.
This is how Ukrainians heat their water.
Now that I have my own apartment, I've been trying to figure out how one of these works. I'd like to know, because I'd like to take a shower that doesn't involve limbs breaking off, falling to the bottom of the tub and then shattering into a million pieces. Because this is what it feels like to take a cold shower during a Ukrainian winter.
I didn't even take a shower the first four days after moving in to my new apartment for fear of the kolunka. I decided to make the attempt because my body odor was affecting my plants.
The problem is that the kolunka is rusted metal box with rusty pipes and some of those pipes are water pipes and some of those pipes are gas pipes and it's not just the tetanus I worry about, but the blowing myself up. People have died from kolunka explosions before. Seriously.
So I've only done what my landlord showed me: light the pilot with a match and turn the knob. I turn on the water, and this is like spinning the wheel of fortune. Sometimes, a whole radiator thingy of fiery hell-flames of death will ignite (visible through the hole in the front that I assume was put their for viewing. I hope). Sometimes, if I wait ten minutes, hot water will start to slowly leak out of the faucet. I mix in cold water from the other tap and then I have a shower, albeit without water pressure. I'm okay with this. The goal is hot water. Everything else is secondary.
Sometimes, most times, the hot water will stop while I'm taking a shower. Sometimes, most times, this is when I have a head full of shampoo. If I go look at the kolunka, buck naked with shampoo in my eyes and exposed through the kitchen window that has no blinds, the pilot light will be on, and nothing else. No radiator thingy of fiery hell-flames of death, and therefore no hot water. Being a tough, Peace Corps kind of guy, I go back and finish my cold shower with a minimum or yelping. Sometimes, most times, the hot water will kick back on, usually when I'm done showering and just getting out.
And after I turn off the water, the kolunka will groan and make banging noises, and then I stay away from it.
That, believe it or not, is not so bad. The problem is when the radiator thingy of fiery hell-flames of death refuses to come on at all, and the pilot just burns and burns, and I simply have no hot water for an indeterminate amount of time.
The problem, of course, is expectation. Those volunteers living down in Africa in grass huts, with nightmares from malaria medicine, eating mashed yams, hot water being only a distant memory--some myth from the mother land--they'd probably like to hurt me right now. But if I didn't have the possibility of hot water, I'd be fine without hot water. A kolunka is like a woman. If I don't get play, I'm fine. If I do get play, I'm fine. It's being given play one day and denied it the next that's frustrating, especially when there's no apparent reason.
Today, I set out how to find out how the damn thing works, and for once Cosmo wasn't going to help.
This started because I was trying to do dishes. I lit the pilot. I let the water run. And run, and run. No hot water. I did the dishes in cold water, my hands almost numb, occasionally glancing at the kolunka, with its pilot light on, maniacally winking at me in its little jest, for it didn't feel like igniting the radiator thingy of fiery hell-flames of death for me.
Now, why wouldn't it turn on? I thought I smelled gas. Maybe there was a gas leak? I lit a match and waved it around the rusty bits where pipes met. I wasn't being stupid; this is how the gas guy legitimately looks for leaks. I've seen one do it, seen him find a leak at Carrie's apartment when all of a sudden a tiny blue flame sprung from an invisible hole on the rusted pipes leading into her kolunka. He then started banging away at the pipes, and we went into the living room in case he exploded.
It's no wonder the kolunkas never work. Between being beaten by grumpy gas men that reek of alcohol and being abused by conscripted husbands fiddling away at them with butter knives and meat tenderizers, I'm surprised they don't periodically shoot out eyebrow-singing flames in revenge.
After ten minutes of moving match after match over the pipes, there was no apparent leak, and I still had my eyebrows. Why wasn't the damn thing working?
One of the pipes had a knob. Maybe it was a water pipe. Maybe it was a gas pipe. This was a Sherlock Holmes situation. I turned the knob clockwise (righty tighty; lefty loosey). Nothing happened. I turned it the other way, slowly, in case I was about to explode and die and loose my eyebrows.
Nothing happened. Apparently it wasn't a gas pipe. I turned on the water and fiddled with the knob some more. I turned it all the way out, and the radiator thingy of fiery hell-flames of death ignited.
I leapt into the shower, leaving the rest of the dishes. I've learned that if there's ever a convergence of working-water and working-kolunka, it's best to just get into the shower and leave the questions for later. Sort of like getting play: just let it happen and don't ask why. Thoroughly bathed, and wrapped in my little yellow towel, I stared at the kolunka some more. It was time for the post-coital questions.
I was really frustrated by the thing. I at least know why they shut off water to my apartment two or three times a day, even if there was no rhyme or reason as to when. But there was no why to the kolunka. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it just needs a little bit of time to kick on, sometimes it wouldn't work for hours on end. Sometimes a soft caress would make it work, but usually it didn't.
Then I remembered that there had been a little how-to on kolunkas in the Peace Corps Health Manual (the tabs should have read "first-aid", "health", "how to neither die of hypothermia nor spontaneous combustion in your own apartment"), and so decided to read it. This how-to explained how a kolunka worked, how to fix it, and even how to seal the pipe threads if there was a leak (string and candle wax; I'm not joking). Oh, and apparently all that knocking and moaning is steam building up inside, and if you don't turn on the water to release the heat, it can explode.
Good to know now.
Have I mentioned that this thing is right by my head when I do dishes? My head!
I then went back to the kolunka, following the pipes to where they went into walls and to the stove and to the sink, and then looked up the open bottom to identify all the parts I had just read about. And there was the diaphragm, that bit that water had too be forced through to engage the radiator thingy of fiery hell-flames of death. According to the missive, the diaphragm likes to stick a lot, which is why, you know, the radiator thingy of fiery hell-flames of death won't come on, or why it'll shut off from sudden lack of water pressure, and then not come back on again (thus making me, in the shower, feel like I just jumped off a sinking ship into the frozen North Atlantic).
The how-to suggests taking the diaphragm apart and lubricating the shaft (okay, let's be serious for a second) but I don't even know how to turn the gas off, let alone start taking the kolunka apart.
Instead, I looked over at that pipe with the knob, the water pipe leading into the kolunka. With a little grin, I twisted the knob all the way open, water pressure rushing in into the diaphragm. Then I banged on the diaphragm with my palm, and the radiator thingy of fiery hell-flames of death ignited. See, she just needed a little spanking from big daddy.
And then I had hot water.
And I still had my eyebrows.