Would love to get all the complainers here to spend one month in winter where I live. We frequently have -35 to -45°C outside, and +30-35°C inside. How about a 70°C temperature difference?
By prayer. It happened a couple times, although not yet on the city scale.
I don't personally know anyone who was affected. What they did, according to the local press, was stuffing every crack and cranny with old rags and sleeping fully clothed (as in fur coats and the like) and under as many blankets as they could get their hands on.
It's standard advice to keep blankets or the like in your car for this specific scenario. Besides, for the majority of people in the Nordic contries, their normal winter comforter is warm enough to keep them warm should the heating fail.
Those people were ready, when you live your whole life in such environments you quickly get "infused" with a lot of experience that was accumulated over generations.
So I'd be more worried about people in a regular country getting severe low temp weather than a failing heating system in one region used to extreme cold.
Of course, instead of opening the windows, you could always install a gate valve (or whatever it is called in English) and close it to make the water go through your apartment's heating elements without actually (mostly) heating them, and that's what they recommend, but why bother? The level of self-entitlement of many people here, you wouldn't believe. I could tell stories all day long.
Like a caricature of a stereotypical American tourist.
In the basement of my building there's a heat exchange, which uses the steam to heat water. This water is piped around the building.
My fairly new apartment has a meter fitted on that hot water pipe. It measures how much heat I extract from the water, and I'm charged accordingly.
In some older buildings, they have some sort of temperature logging device on each radiator. I assume this is to charge the residents according to their usage.
The trend is towards heating the water less, houses are getting better insulation, less energy is needed, and the hotter water is more expensive when heated by a heat pump and also in losses.
In each building there is a system which takes the district heat and uses it to heat the water of the building. Both hot tap water and central heating. But the water is separate from district heat, so in each building the temperatures can be adjusted.
In older buildings you still have the issue you describe on a macro level - apartments on the bottom floor are too hot, and on the top are too cold - but it doesn't matter how close or far your building is from the district heating station.
I mean, how much coal do you have to burn to warm the air outside by 10-15°C?
I am from an ex-Soviet city too, by the way.
What I've heard is that some portion of pension is given as free heating. So it makes no sense for the individual to conserve it. Giving it as money and then billing for the heating could create some other problems too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka
These buildings were developed in massive numbers back in post-WW2 years, across the whole Soviet Union. with the task to move people out of barracks in some sort of relatively comfortable housing. Back then there wasn't much money to spare (still isn't). They typically have pretty bad insulation and are built out of, as we say, "cardboard" walls.
When it's cold enough outside (-35°C and lower), you can see the energy losses with a naked eye, as hot air escapes through every crack in the building (and there are a lot of them). No need for thermal cameras.
People over here just don't give a fuck about nature. Now it's the middle of summer, it's +33°C outside. I am sitting in the office with two ACs running at full capacity and with all windows open, because "there isn't enough air". I tried arguing with this, but it's pretty difficult to go against all my coworkers at once. It's a cultural problem, and I have no idea how to fight this.
Thanks for the sanity check, though, at least I know it's not me going crazy.
> I am sitting in the office with two ACs running at full capacity and with all windows open, because "there isn't enough air". I tried arguing with this, but it's pretty difficult to go against all my coworkers at once.
When people complain about not having enough air it's almost always mean that ventilation system in building is insufficient and there in fact too much of CO2.
About a half also smokes, and then they "don't have enough air".
By the way, the office faces an arterial road, as they are called, with heavy traffic right outside. When you open a window, it fills very quickly with traffic fumes. This gives me persistent headaches almost every day.
Is it really better than CO2?
> They don't seem to have any problems in the middle of winter, when windows stay fully closed for at least 3 months each year.
Also oxygen consumption and overall feel can be affected by temperature of environment.
> About a half also smokes, and then they "don't have enough air".
> Is it really better than CO2?
Personally I don't smoke and have healthy lifestyle, but I still extremely sensitive CO0 and without proper ventilation I just can't work efficiently if at all. So any room I stay in will always have open window no matter if there is AC working or not.
So it's great that you don't have same issue, but please keep in mind that people not just imagining things. Yeah they can quit smoking and watch their health, but CO2 is still extremely important. If you don't believe me rent some air quality meter and check it for yourself.
It's cheap low-quality coal with high sulfur content. The level of air pollution it produces is insane. In winter time you can feel the taste of coal on your tongue. The level of visibility is like 150-200 meters, after that it's a solid grey wall. Nobody here cares though, and if you do, you pick up your things and move elsewhere. That's what I am currently preparing to do.
You'd have to be in a pretty small community, not a City, in maybe NU?