21-XI-2017.
Woke up this morning, no blues, just too early. Because I had to - Zdravko is taking off at his job and we meet there so I buy the new gas-powered water heater/boiler (which would be a very wrong name, it's so far from boiling, for our in-floor heating it should deliver no more than 35°C). Got there on time, paid, went home.
Around 13:30 they came - he and his kum (my students both), and started drilling the garage wall to put proper copper tubing where I had the 3/4" pipe (which we threaded ourselves back in 1991).
There was a funny moment around 19:00, when he decided it's all ready, and tried to start it, and it wouldn't budge, displays E4 or some such cryptic error, the description of which is even more cryptic in the manual... but I was a bit faster and just noticed what was wrong. Reached under his nose to the incoming gas pipe, and opened the valve. Then it worked. The remaining two hours he spent laying insulation on the tubes in the garage and some in the basement. Which is when I agreed that it was time to bring out the rakija. They guessed on second try, after three swigs and one clue („its made of two similar fruits“ - nope, not apple and pear) that it's the hare trišnja, the 3:1 of sour:sweet. It was okay at the time, he's finished with anything involving gas or electricity, and I know he can drink a lot and then gets all emotional and dewy eyed.
Took them up to 21:00 to put everything in order, and we got warmed up. Actually, warmed a lot - in a kind of repetition of what we had the last six days of 1993, when we had the heating but no thermostat. And the incoming water's temperature can't be set lower than 39°C.
Actually it can - the next day I went to the shop, settled the bill for materials and bought the thermostat (has remote!). In the evening the guy came and connected the stuff, set it for in-floor at about 35°C - could try lower later, good enough for now - and we were all set. The fourth day she decided to still employ the solid fuel system, to burn all that wood and leftover coal from last winter - the basement is cluttered with all of that.
The old electric heater is left hung on the wall, goodbye clunker, even though all its parts work - its pipes are congested. With this new one we have hot water at all times, unlimited amounts, as long as there's incoming water and gas. One rebirth, so to say.
(didn't work that way - this works so well that there's still some of that coal and wood five heating seasons later, and we keep getting more wood from the yard and the garden)
Mentions: kum, rakija, Zdravko Lakatoš, in serbian
3-XII-2017 - 31-X-2025