As the end of October nears, many Ukrainians are talking about just one thing – and it’s not the presidential election.
The cooler weather has many wondering when the city authorities will turn on the communal heating systems, which traditionally starts on Oct. 15.
Although some Kyiv ZhEKs (communal housing committees) tested heating systems on Oct. 16-17, many apartments in the capital are still without heat, even as the temperature hovers just above zero. So when will the heating season start?
‘It depends on where you are,’ said an official at the Kyiv Communal Housing Administration, who asked not to be named. ‘Most of the streets downtown have been turned on. The start of the heating season is now in full swing, so all the heating engineers are busy at work now, checking the systems.’
They have their work cut out for them. Kyiv inherited a creaking Soviet-era centralized heating system that stretches through most of the city – a spidery network of rusty pipes connected to blackened boilers that feed heavily insulated water supply lines. According to analysts at Kyivenergo – one of the companies that runs the city’s heating system – in some areas the piping pre-dates World War II.
About 85 percent of the hot water that runs through the city’s radiators is provided by Kyivenergo’s large electrically powered heating stations.
Another company, Kyivzhylteplokomunenergo, runs the boiler houses that provide much of the heat for the rest of the city. Each boiler house heats water that is piped to a single apartment block, or perhaps several blocks.
The older boiler house system promises to cause the most problems in future.
‘The boiler houses and pipes are very old,’ said Petro Yankovsky, a department manager at Kyivzhylteplokomunenergo. ‘They’ve reached the end of their working life. Some of the boiler houses have to be renovated, but we haven’t got money for that. The state doesn’t provide us with enough funds, so we rely a lot on the consumer, who, in turn, doesn’t pay. It’s a vicious circle.’
Boiler-houses belonging to what are termed ‘departmental ZhEKs’ are in the worst state of all. In Soviet times, departmental ZhEKs were formed to manage services for big state-owned companies, which often provided their workers with housing, kindergartens, sports facilities and community centers.
When the big plants were thriving, the departmental ZhEKs were some of the best funded. Now, when the big plants are struggling to survive, these same ZhEKs are some of the poorest in the country. The state is unwilling to take over their management, because they already have officially designated owners – the bankrupt plants. But the plants have no money even to pay their workers, let alone fund communal services like the heating system.
‘The situation with boiler houses in departmental ZhEKs is terrible!’ Yankovsky said.
As far as boiler houses are concerned, Kyivzhylteplokomunenergo is increasingly finding itself having to deal with departmental ZhEKs’ problems.
‘The government transferred management of the boiler-house belonging to Dovzhenko Movie Studios to us two years ago,’ Yankovsky said. ‘But we won’t be able to run it until it is fixed up. And where will we find money for such a renovation?’
Nevertheless, some renovation work urgently needs to be done, according to Kyivzhylteplokomunenergo analysts. Leaks could spring anywhere in the system’s miles and miles of rusty piping, but if a burst occurs inside an apartment, the consequences could potentially be life-threatening.
In winter, the temperature of the pressurized water in the system reaches 150 degrees Celsius. Anyone hit by a scalding stream of water pressurized to five atmospheres could suffer lethal burns.
Yankovsky is confident most of the boiler houses assigned to his company are ready for the coming cold season.
‘We’ve checked our boilers – most of them have already started working. But I doubt boiler houses that are run by departmental ZhEKs are ready, and I’m not sure if they’ve started working.’
Delays in bringing the heating system up to full speed could cost dearly, and one opportunity to save money has already been lost this year, according to Tetyana Solohub, a researcher at the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute.
The heating system should have been started before the weather turned cold on Oct. 11, she said, to allow the system time to build up to its working temperature using less energy. Now that the residual heat from the warmer weather has dissipated, much more fuel will be needed to warm the system up.
But that’s par for the course – the present communal heating system is hardly the most energy efficient. Though the heating supply companies insist that they turn the heat down when the weather gets warmer, many people find they have to throw open their windows in the depths of winter to cool down their baking-hot apartments.
Nor is the system likely to change any time soon. The huge job of installing individual boilers in apartments would cost too much, and the heating supply companies say they will spend what little money comes their way on patching up the old system.
So Kyiv residents are going to have to put up with the inadequacies of the Soviet-era system for some time to come. If you live in a communally heated apartment block (as most people do) you would be well advised to check your heating pipes when the heating system comes on. If the heat-supply pipe leading into the apartment is hot, but no heat is coming from your radiators, you may have a blocked pipe that should be cleared immediately. Contact your ZhEK plumber directly or make sure your landlord does so.
