Piano man

Here's a very middle-class statement for you: we had the piano tuned recently - as you do.

Apparently this is a yearly necessity here in Moscow, where the central heating and dry atmosphere play havoc with most wood-based instruments*.  Given that in addition to these problems it was manhandled to a different room - twice - over the summer, left unattended in a houseful of workmen for 6 weeks (more of which another time), and that the humidifier Boy #2's piano teacher recommended we buy to keep it in good condition has been sitting in a cupboard after I used it for a week only to realise it was making everything in the room damp (go figure), my hopes for a speedy visit from the piano tuner were not high.

Natalya** the Piano Teacher had assured me that we should probably expect the tuner to need to stay for at least an hour and a half, perhaps longer, so I told Husband - who was the one due to be in the house at the time - to Be Prepared.

However, the Tuner was in and out in around half an hour, and even passed on to Natalya how impressed he'd been by the state the piano was in (he had been the person who originally tuned it for us after it was delivered a year ago).  She herself was surprised, and wondered why that was.

Oh, that's easy, I told her.  It's because of the heating.  You know how you, Natalya, are always complaining that our house is too cold in the winter? (We keep it at around 20degC; warmer than the 18degC my parents used to set their thermostat to when I was growing up in a draughty and badly-insulated but completely charming mill house, but significantly cooler than the at least 24 - 25degC most Russians favour in winter).  Yes... she answered, perhaps knowing what was coming next.  Well, that's why the piano is in better condition than expected, I continued.  Because it's not subjected to such extremes of temperature.

Interesting, answered Natalya.  You might have something there.

Of course, neither of us mentioned what we both knew was the real reason for the piano's relative tunefulness.  

Outside of his hour-long lessons, Boy #2 does a grand total of 20 minutes practice a week (and even that is an improvement on his previous record).

Of course it wasn't out of tune;  the damn thing hardly ever gets played...

*and, fyi, furniture.  If you're considering moving to Moscow, leave your much-loved antiques and inherited tables etc back home.  Yet another reason why Ikea is the decorative choice of so many expats here...

** Not her real name, which is at least as Russian as that, if not more so

Save energy, save money. Russian vs UK central heating issues…

This is a sponsored post.

It is also a true story… 

When we arrived in Russia 4 years ago, during the coldest winter for a decade, I was amazed by how super-heated the buildings were.  It was cold enough outside to freeze the inside of the lock on our metal front door (sustained lows of -25 degC for a month will do that), but the temperature in the house was always a balmy +23 degC.  Wearing much more than a t-shirt meant you were ridiculously hot, throwing the almost 50 degC temperature difference between indoors and outside into even sharper relief.    And it wasn’t just our home that was like this; almost all Russian buildings were as warm, if not warmer.

In a country where energy is cheap (petrol, for example, costs only 68p per litre here), most Russians will turn up the thermostat in winter rather than put on another layer of clothing.  And that is assuming that they even have a thermostat; in many buildings the heating is centrally controlled and is switched on mid-October, staying that way until the beginning of May.  This puzzled me.  What do Russians do if they feel too warm, I asked my Husband.  His answer was simple.

They open a window.  It might be -25degC outside, but they open a window.

This is all very well but aside from seeming incredibly wasteful, at some point in the next couple of years we will be returning to the UK.  Winters there may be warmer, but buildings are less effectively insulated and – crucially – energy prices are much higher. 

Not only will I have re-educate my children to put on a jumper when they are chilly inside, turn the lights out when they leave a room, and close the back door behind them as they run back in to find their missing backpack / trainers / swim kit when they leave for school in the morning, but we will need to bite the bullet when it comes to paying higher electricity and gas bills.  Anything that helps us as a family to consume less energy will be very helpful, which is why I was interested in E.ON’s current campaign designed to help their customers do exactly that.

As one of the leading energy suppliers to UK customers, E.ON recognises it has a duty to make sure that everyone has all the information they need to work out the best way to help save money and use no more energy than they need. The new E.ON Saving Energy Toolkit will put customers on the road towards running a more fuel-efficient home. If you’re already set up with an online account then you can get access to plenty of useful hints and tips as well as fantastic interactive tools. This includes a comparative feature which allows you to see how green your home is in relation to similar households in your area and charts and graphs which track the breakdown of your energy usage over a set period of time.

Whether it will give advice like ‘stop being such a wimp and just put on another layer’, however, remains to be seen…

A Heated Issue

You might wonder, having read yesterday's post on the current freezing temperatures in Moscow, how the people here cope with that. Do they sit inside, nursing their Ovaltine in fingerless mittens, watching their breath cloud the air in Dickension style as they huddle down inside their slanket and kangeroo-hop around their homes inside their big slippers? Do they sleep in their overcoats and in three layers of clothes? Are the insides of their windows prettily decorated by Jack Frost when they wake in the morning? Or do they simply crank up the thermostat to the max and think 'be damned to the heating bills!'

Well, outside of Moscow, I'm afraid I can't say. But inside of Moscow, none of the above. In fact, as far as I know, most homes don't actually posess a thermostat to control their own hot water or central heating, because it's all centrally controlled. So - and the environmentally aware reading this should probably look away now - the heating (the cost of which is usually included in your rent or service charge) goes on in October / November regardless of your individual preference, and off some time in the Spring. (If, that is, the White Witch ever releases her grip enough on Narnia/Russia to let Spring arrive, and I'm thinking that the jury is out on that right now). It doesn't matter if there is an unseasonably mild spell, or a ridiculously cold snap, the heating rumbles along whatever.

You might wonder whether central control of warmth means that people are left to freeze in their sleep by cost-cutting administrators, but actually - due no doubt to the wealth of natural resources here - the opposite seems to be the case. Most houses / apartments / public buildings that I've visited are warm and toasty, if not roasting. It's possible to be practically weeping from the cold as you (well, me, in any case) return from the school run and yet within 5 minutes of finding refuge inside, feeling so hot that you end up stripping down to a t-shirt.

Obviously this adds an interesting aspect to trips outside, because you find that you're piling the layers on yourself or your children in anticipation of the minus 15deg C day waiting for you whilst still inside your 25 degC home. Think about it; the difference between the two extremes can be around 40degC or more...

I was discussing this with Husband, who is of course a lot more experienced in dealing with this problem than I am, having lived here before.

Me: "How do people live like this?"

Husband: "Well. The Russians, of course, have developed a highly sophisticated method of dealing with over-heated homes that allows them to control the temperature precisely."

Me: "Oh, thank god. Can we get whatever it is? Is it easily available? What do they do?"

Husband (deadpan): "They open a window."