Thread: household heating?

Is most heating in Russia oil or electric? I'm wondering because there have been a number of power outages lately and some people have been without electricity for over a week. I'm wondering how they survive the cold.

Mostly, buildings in a city are warmed with hot water circulating in warming pipes running through the buildings. There is one hot water source (warming station) for a bunch of buildings which can cover quite a big part of the city. This warming station heats the water and pumps it through the net of the warming pipes. So there is no need to have electric power in all those building at all to keep those buildings warm. The warming station is the only thing which should be able to work for this.
However small houses for one owner in suburbs can have their own (isolated) warming system. Such systems mostly uses gas or coal to heat the water and pump it through the warming pipes.
In rural areas or villages people still have a big furnace (or stove, or oven ?) within the house and keep fire with wood or coal.

I'm wondering how they survive the cold.

As all homeless always do: Put on warm clothes. The more the better.

Household heating in Russia generally city-wide. E.g. there is a "котельная" wich fueled by gas or oil where water is heated and then hot water goes to apartment buildings by pipes. In my town we have gas-fueled power plant there water is used for cooling generators and then this water used to heat nearby buildings (it heats almost half of the town actually). When electricity was switched off lately (because of ice on wires) problems with heating occured only in places there hot water pumps were electric-powered. And even in such places they were quickly switched to diesel generators and heating was restored.

If we’re talking about, I guess you call them condominiums or blocks of flats, they are most likely heated by a local so called ТЭЦ (heat-electric generating station, which uses coal or natural gas as a power source) or just a heating plant which generates heat only, distributed then through a net of hot water pipes running underground. By the way the pipes, made of iron, made in Russia and thus made not to last quite often burst out, this time generating nothing more than problems, like hot water puddles, heat delivery disruptions and worst of all ruined roads and sidewalks left after blow-outs are mended.
There are houses of course, family owned houses, where heating system works differently. It utilizes a gas heated boilers and in rare cases electric heated boilers, this time the cost of heating rises threefold or even more, so electricity is only used when there’s no alternative or in other words when there no gas distribution system available.
Others may have already chipped in by the time I‘ve delivered my post, so let it be an add-on to what they might have missed. ))

Interesting to hear that Russia uses this system. Sweden uses it too. We call it "remote heating" (fjärrvärme). I wonder what other countries use it? England definitely doesn't.

I like it because:
You can have very "slim" discrete radiators instead of big fat ones like in the UK (where each individual radiator generates it's own heat, using electricity).
It doesn't get more expensive because you raise the temperature. In fact, I think the cost is part of the rent or service charge of the flat.
Seems like a more efficient situation to share heating, because everyone needs heating anyway.

The bad thing about it is that in the autumn they sometimes wait too long before they turn it on, so you would like to use the heating but it is not available... Also, in theory, this system is vulnerable - if the heating station doesn't work for some reason, then everybody freezes. I can't remember that happening though. Also I can't remember hearing about pipes bursting. Is that a common problem in Russia?

Large privately owned villas etc usually don't use this system though.

Here in England, they don't even do it on a per-building basis. Everyone is responsible for the heating of his own flat - a lot of hassle, and the radiators are absolutely huge.

Another problem in England is that buildings are not insulated properly. All the heat just disappears through poorly insulated walls and windows. It is not that cold here.. but enough to want to heat the flat. My current flat is in a very nice rather new building which is well insulated though, but that is the exception in England.

In Russia, do you usually use double or triple glass in the windows for insulation? Single glass seems impossible for somewhere so cold!! Here in England, single glass is the rule although many people are adding double glass.

Condominium / condo is not a very European word.. I have only heard it in references to the US and Asia. Nobody in the UK would say that they live in a condo. They would say "flat". I think "condo" usually refers to quite modern blocks of flats: high-end ones. Americans also use "apartment", I think.

In Russia, do you usually use double or triple glass in the windows for insulation? Single glass seems impossible for somewhere so cold!! Here in England, single glass is the rule although many people are adding double glass.

Yes. Double or triple glass is the only glass used here for insulation. Nobody will ever use single glass here.

The bad thing about it is that in the autumn they sometimes wait too long before they turn it on, so you would like to use the heating but it is not available...

Another bad thing about it is that in the spring they don't turn it off too long. When it became warm outside it became too hot inside.

Originally Posted by CoffeeCup

Another bad thing about it is that in the spring they don't turn it off too long. When it became warm outside it became too hot inside.

Yes!! That's happened to me... In April, maybe even May. You are supposed to be able to turn it off but somehow it's still dispensing heat. Don't know why.

The Russian for "thermostat" is: открой/закрой окно, бля!

Халатность, леденящая кровь - «Московский Комсомолец в Белгороде» МК в Белгороде №43 от 25.10.06

К заявлениям, за которыми ничего не стоит, наш народ как-то попривык. Поэтому, когда жильцы дома № 8 по улице Железнякова к положенному сроку тепла не получили, они не удивились.
Теплая вода в трубах не зажурчала и на третий, и на пятый день. Ходить дома в теплой одежде и шапках стало привычным делом.
- А я дома и не разуваюсь, в сапогах хожу, ноги мерзнут очень, - пожаловалась жительница квартиры № 20 «холодного» дома.