Electric heater for apartments, with special construction, as demanded by specificities of our electricity distribution system.
The trick is in the existence of two tarrifs, daily and nightly, where the nightly is almost half cheaper. They're switched over by the so-called switching clock (or clock switch), which we all had to buy and then hand over to the electrodistribution (which is basically the same dick as if they owned it from the outset and charged for it as part of the initial setup, so they'd buy it wholesale; this way it was more expensive, what with retail margin and retail sales tax, the setup they charged for anyway). Initially the cheaper power ran from 21:00 to 6:00, plus two or three hours in the afternoon, like 14:00 to 16:00 or thereabouts. The afternoon interval was revoked later, and the nightly was extended by one hour, or maybe two.
This contraption is called thermoaccumulating furnace, because its heaters are set in a rather closed casing, filled with firebrick, which has huge mass and heat inertia. These weigh some hundred kilos, and are practically impossible to move without a special dolly and at least three persons. Which is why it's delivered in parts - in one box there's the casing with ready wiring, in another the heaters, and the rest is firebricks. Which we put together and wired on our own, it's not any rocket surgery, the knowledge of electricity and wiring from elementary school oto suffices quite well.
The heaters are turned n (manually; various timers appeared, maybe, a decade or two later) when the electricity is cheaper, and they heat up the mass of firebrick. It has its internal thermostat, set to 1-2-3 (which may mean it turns on only one, two or all three heaters, or all of them at different powers, who'd know that). The other thermostat was the outer, which you were supposed to mount on a wall a meter or two away, to measure the temperature in the room. It would turn on the fan, cylindrical, which was beneath the heaters, and it would suck out the hot air from the bricks (and heaters, if on at the time), and fresh air would come through a grille somewhere in the back.
There were three models, of 3, 4,5 and 6 kilowatts. The people mostly bought sixers and used them to heat whole apartments. We had two (we and my folks), Oma too, and I've seen many of them around. Saw a few threes as well, in smaller apartments.
By nineties it soon became less convenient to use, as power would be out often, or a drastic progressively graded tarrif would apply (first 1200 kWh a month at one price, next 600 at double, above that sixfold; the system is still applied, albeit with cutoffs at different levels, and maybe different coefficients). So gradually electricity became too expensive to waste on heating. So an age of a house can be gauged by the number of heating systems in it. We went the whole path - from the smederevac (a wood/coal kitchen stove from a factory in Smederevo), over cocklestove furnaces fueled by coal first, electricity later, gas eventually, the TA furnaces, bottled gas area heaters, pipe gas area heaters, in-floor heating powered by electricty, wood/coal, gas, electricty again, wood/coal, airconditioning, gas. Fuck a house without at least three ways to heat it.
25-VI-2026 - 25-VI-2026