[The Dream House (11)] Hot water and the common wisdom

Aside from making me nervous at the sight of its exposed wires so near to my shower nozzle, it had a bad habit of breaking down right when I had a head full of shampoo. The water would turn really cold, and those times were the closest I ever got to wishing I had never even eaten turkey, much less moved to the country for which it was named. Although it was kind of our brothers to install it at no charge for the labor or the heater, I’m afraid I harbored unholy thoughts about them, as well. The problem, solved after it didn’t make any difference, was that when the washing machine, three floors down, was on, the heater shorted out. Well, of course, how could I not have known?

Next to our underground garage, there was what Common Wisdom explained to us as being a boiler room, with of course nothing in it, so I don’t know how Common Wisdom knew that, except that they must have been more familiar than I with Turkish houses. The only boiler room I ever knew intimately was the one at the elementary school I attended in California; it was this mysterious place that only Mr. Wilson, the janitor, was allowed to go, so of course we sneaked in there any chance we got and scared ourselves silly peeking at the flames that heated the water tank. I was pretty impressed, all these years later, to have a boiler room in my very own house. What was more of a puzzlement was the adjoining room, which was NOT empty, but which contained a very large iron tank, that quite literally filled the room and stumped even the Common Wisdom. It had been welded together in situ and made a terrific noise when banged upon. After we tracked down the previous owner, we discovered that the tank was built to supply diesel gas to the boiler. He owned a gas station, and I guess he could get a decent price on diesel. There are others in the neighborhood that use it to heat, and on still winter days the fragrant scent of diesel wafts over our garden even today. We decided right away, then, that we would consider alternatives, and were helped by the assurances of the Common Wisdom that we couldn’t get diesel permitted anyway, under the new building codes. Thank God for small favors and the Common Wisdom.

We went to our mentor, Merve Hanım, who it turned out had a 1,000-liter propane tank buried somewhere on her spacious property. Common Wisdom had also told us that the new codes made you bury your propane tank, so as usual she had been right on the money to install it that way, before the new laws took effect. She was paying TL 1 per liter for her propane. We like propane, having used it for 20 years in the States, and we got pretty excited, until we found out that it would cost about TL 5,000 to buy, bury and permit the tank. Hmmm. Somewhat more than our greatly depleted and painfully over-extended budget could stand at the moment. However, there was hope – that rascally Common Wisdom proclaimed that natural gas was right around the corner, and we would be wasting the money we didn’t have anyway to buy and bury a propane tank. There were available, however, 50-liter canisters of propane that could be used to fuel the new technology kombi system, which we had just started to hear about in the States, but not by that name. I believe it was called “on-demand” heating, or some such, and the pictures of it were of large and very complicated machines that heated up one’s water as it was needed, as opposed to the old water-heater tank system, which we had always used. The idea was appealing, but very, very expensive in the US, to the point that only posh new houses were being equipped with it. On the other hand, with natural gas sure to be here in a few months, that seemed the wisest way to go.

The house had come provided with pairs of hoses sticking out from the interior walls in all the rooms except the utility rooms. They were for hot and cold water, Common Wisdom explained, and were for the attachment of radiators. Again, the only radiators I ever knew were from my little elementary school, where my father had warmed his bottom in his time, and then I mine, on chilly winter mornings. My memories of radiators were good, so I was enthusiastic, and besides, how else would we heat the house? Even the boiler system, fueled with the demon diesel, had to push the hot water somewhere, and central heating was not an option, in a concrete house with no ducting. So far, the hoses had been a source of annoyance, for whenever a certain set of nieces came to visit, the younger ones delighted in turning on the toggles and shooting water all over the walls and floors then shrieking and running away. Normally, they were fairly charming children, but give them unattended, unconnected radiator hoses and they became small villains.

Once we had decided that the kombi was the way to go, it was a great shock to learn that the price for one of the appropriate size, plus refurbished radiators and the labor involved, was quite a bit more than the TL 5,000 we had found so prohibitive for the buried propane tank. However, we would have had to buy the radiators even if we had buried the tank, so we were somewhat ahead, or so we consoled ourselves as silly things like furniture became a distant dream. But we had to have something more reliable than the little shower machine fiasco, and we owed it to the nieces’ mother to prevent any further embarrassment, so we bit the bullet and had the whole thing installed. Common Wisdom gave its grave approval, and we had hot water at last, paying TL 3 per liter for the gas in the 50-liter canisters. Surely we would pay much less for the natural gas, and our investment would soon prove itself sound. As it turns out, unfortunately, we rarely use the lovely radiators because heat for even one room for two or three days uses up a whole canister of propane, and the prices have of course increased, so we just put on more layers of clothes and sometimes turn on the space heater we bought just this winter.

We still listen a lot to Common Wisdom, but with a slightly more skeptical ear; going on four years later, natural gas has still not found its way to our little village. Common Wisdom can be just that – pretty common. At least we have hot water.

*Elsie Alan lives in Gebze with her husband.