Chapter 21
Nothing Lasts Forever
In the upper flat of our house I installed a small piece of equipment ten years before that had a few innovative features. It was a water-heater working with gas and being of the storage type. It had a body of only fifty litre and it was made of aluminium. Such storage type heaters had always been used with electric heating elements and had been made of galvanized steel. The ten years I used it was an extraordinary long period for such a bad design. First, as it was for inner places, it didn’t have a smoke-pipe, flue gas was to be sucked out through the chimney of our gas boiler for heating. The aluminium cylinder was undivided, with only a zinc anode inside and a bolted opening at its side. It was an excellent galvanic battery, weekly it was necessary to clean the filters of taps from small green stones – I didn’t know it at that time that those were made of the eroding cylinder wall. A few times I had to replace the anode and, as there was no other way of emptying the cylinder, unscrew the fresh water connection.
Although a few times already I had to repair the threaded connections, change safety valve, etc., I thought it was in order. However, during that summer water was leaking from the heater and I couldn’t find the leak. At last I saw that it had become something like a sieve, everywhere it leaked. I became uneasy, as principally there is a considerable pressure in such a cylinder, so it could blow up any minute. I had to disconnect it and take off the wall. For a time we washed our dishes by heating water on the stove and, as was summer, took our showers cold. But it had to be solved anyway.
Fortunately Internet made purchasing much easier, I found a replacement device and purchased it. Its installation, however, by the user himself was not advisable, as both the gas supply company and guarantee rules required an authorized gas fitter to do it. Opposite the street my neighbour had a servicing company and he did it. It goes without saying, he didn’t return me my guarantee papers and hasn’t get the permit from the gas company yet. But it has been working well since.
It was only the first of the bigger repairs needed on that newer part of the house. Smaller I dealt with earlier – repeated replacement of slate plates hit and cracked by the so called ‘professionals’ when they had been covering the eaves from under, as well as replacement of slates removed by gale force winds –, but maintenance of important volume had not been needed that far. Then followed a light accident of my daughter-in-law on the stairs outside leading to the upper flat. She took on some kilos and her steps were always very sporty – she had been a good handball player as a teenage girl. One of the steps broke under her foot, but nothing serious happened. However, I took a closer look at the steps and decided to put a supporting layer of boards under each one.
A third fault appeared a little earlier, but I didn’t pay attention to it. The water block (kitchen, toilet and bathroom, as well as the sluice between them) for the upper flat had been laid on a thin horizontal reinforced concrete plate over the existing flat roof. During the binding process the concrete had been supported by a polystyrene layer that was left on place. However, also concrete is made from material and materials deform under load. The small bending (a few cm) would have done no problem, had the ‘professionals’ used flexible cement for the tiles. However, as it had not been the case, the tiles in the central three rows let go and became independent. At the beginning it only gave a hollow sound, but later because of the walking on them they cracked. I didn’t know at first what to do, to tell the truth I haven’t decided yet. But I think, I will have to glue them back with a flexible cement – I long bought it – and after that to cover it with PVC.
The most frustrating thing I was experiencing was that the kitchen sink drain was getting clogged. It has not been a simple greasy grime as it is usual with kitchen sinks, it did nothing with even the most powerful drainage cleaners, but it was a kind of hardened construction material. In the first case when it was not draining down I opened the siphon and found that it was full of a white stuff as lime. It was cemented caulking stuff. The ‘professionals’, I mean tile layers, poured the remaining fluid into the sink without flushing it down – maybe there was no water supply temporarily. From the siphon it was not difficult to remove the plug. But it was only one of the two pieces. The other one was within the wall where the small diameter pipe from the sink joins the large one taking drain from the toilet to the outside. When I tried to clean that section with a pipe ram it couldn’t go any farther and there were only traces of the stuff on its tip, but the plug was too solid to damage. From that time on I use a plumber’s friend, but the system works as a non-return valve: the pump can lift the plug, some fluid goes down, then it settles and the flow stops. My plan is to manufacture a kind of drill bit, fasten it to the tip of the ram and do the same as our prehistoric ancestor did with drill bits made of antlers on stone axes.
Around that time we experienced sometimes that seemingly inconsequential events were nevertheless consequent. You would think, if Ukraine cannot pay to the Russian state company for the natural gas he uses for heating, Hungary and other EU countries won’t be deprived from this commodity, it would be the Ukrainians who will get cold. But this is far from the real case. Namely, the EU gets its gas through the same pipe as Ukraine does, even it depends on the Ukrainians if the gas flows through that pipe at all, or it will stop there. In that winter we in our country were only saved from getting very cold by having been very careful during the previous months. For almost two weeks no gas was let flow through the pipe system, all was taken by Ukraine.
The first consequence of that international blackmail was that the price of gas in our country went up considerably. The second one for me personally was that in two successive months the money on my cost transfer account was not enough to pay the bill of gas, and the bank denied payment. In each case soon I got a very polite letter from the gas supplier with the check to be paid. The third thing happened after that: I adjusted the thermostat in our flat by two degrees Celsius lower and both my wife and me put on more cloths. Also the younger generation was informed about the emergency situation, but they reacted only one year later.
I had to do something, but it was impossible to do anything immediately. However, as the spring arrived in 2006 I purchased the necessary quantity of rock wool and covered the roof from the inside with it, as well as covered it with foil to ensure a better life cycle. (The first such layer I had put on ten years earlier, when during our first winter in the upper flat a severe blizzard had blown so much snow into the attic through the cracks that it had taken me a whole day to collect all and pour it into the bathtub, so as not to be washed out by the melt-water later. It also did good as after that the attic had a milder climate, and temperature didn’t go below freezing point.)
All things were not put into order yet, but this activity of mine started then and will stop only simultaneously with my heart. However, someone will have to take up the relay and carry on.