Normally, I wouldn’t have to think of these things. But here, in the far northern wilds of Jerusalem, central heating is a luxury that few are willing to pay for. It is, apparently, nearly unaffordable.
For those privileged few who have “central” heating, the standard rule of thumb is to turn on the heat for 1-2 hours a day. Those families with one or more bread-winners might go up to 4-5 hours a day of heat. The cold is painful. The remedy is to llive in a small room, with portable electric or gas heaters.
The building where I live is not yet completed — and I am the only one who asked for heat. No, please don’t give me individual gas cannisters, I said, both out of fear of gas explosions, and out of some stupid idea of communal solidarity. No, please put the gas in the underground storage container (I thought my neighbors might join in after I made the initial contribution — but I was wrong.)
So, this is the gas meter for the whole building, but I am the only one using it — and so it is my gas meter.
Before I moved in, I said I must have heat. I cannot live through a cold Jerusalem winter without heat.
Gas is cheaper than diesel, cheaper than electricity, I was told. This is the best system available, the top of the top.
But, nobody really knew.
I was the first one to use this system — and it has to be said that it has not really worked very well.
From the 1st of November, what would be start of the traditional heating season here (if people heated their homes), until the present — a period of about 93 days — I have been 22 days without heat (1 to 10 November; 22 to 30 December; 30 January to the present). In December and in January, that also meant having NO HOT WATER, as it was normally supplied though the gas heating system (and nobody understood very well how to make the optional boiler heater work).
And what did it cost? To date, some 8,500 N.I.S. (new Israeli shekels) I am told (about $2420.00 at the present rate of exchange), for 72 days of heat…
To be perfectly honest, the gas delivery man failed to vaccum out the air from the tank before he made the first delivery into the outdoor underground tank. So, the system did not work (1-10 November). Then, when the landlord and his deputy, my neighbor, opened the tank to take out the air, a lot of gas escaped. So, the first delivery of 1.2 tons of gas was pretty much a loss.
After the second delivery (on 30 December, after 8 days without heat), I put the heat on so low that the windows in my bedroom were dripping with condensed moisture, and mold grew all along the outer walls.
When that gas ran out*, during a snowstorm on 30 January, during the coldest spell here in 100 years, it took seven days to get the landlord to get a truck to deliver a little more gas. [*It apparently didn’t run out. One amateur theory was that the gas froze, but experts say that gas does not freeze…It seems that there was indeed a quarter of a tank of gas left, but that did not provide enough pressure to make the system work…]
“She uses the heat from morning to night”, the neighbors and the landloard say disapprovingly…even if that is not exactly true… The disapproval is so thick it could be cut with a knife.