Thursday, January 14, 2010

Insulation. Heard of it?!

A recent notice posted around our apartment complex basically asked residents to keep their faucets running on the hot over night. With temperatures dipping below freezing, the pipes might freeze...and they have before in the past. From last winter, I can still remember feeling sorry for the shivering maintenance crew guy standing outside on the balcony holding a hairdryer for 45 minutes on the water pipes as he endured the gusty winds. No one seems to think insulation is important in newly apartment complexes or what we jokingly call concrete palaces.

These 'palaces' also lack wall insulation. The outer walls of our apartment are simply painted concrete. With heat running in the winter, it's a breeding ground for mold to grow, which it has before at a previous apartment we lived in. Ay ya (expressing disappointment in Chinese)...another example of how things are built cheaply here without thinking about the potential consequences. Does it make sense to have to run hot water all night?

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