“It’s 12 degrees in the apartment”: some residents of Narva felt the consequences of an accident in heating networks for several days

2024-01-18 15:00:32

In some long nine-story buildings near the Tallinn Highway – the “Chinese walls” – the temperature in the apartments as a result of the accident dropped to 13-14 degrees. Photo: Natalya Starostina

The consequences of a short-term accident in the Narva heating networks that occurred on January 4, which was eliminated within three hours, have been discussed by townspeople for the second week. The main question that interests everyone: “How much will we pay for January warmth?”

This is due to the fact, the townspeople tell NG, that they know well: in order for the houses that cooled down as a result of the accident to warm up quickly, apartment associations had to regulate heating units and increase the supply of coolant to the house, which, in turn, cannot but affect on the accounts. NG, of course, is not able to cover the whole picture in the city, but nevertheless, some of the CT chairmen assured the newspaper that their houses did not feel a jump in temperature at all and there was no need to regulate the heat supply either. On the other hand, the Ekomatic company, which services heating units, confirmed that on January 4 and the following days there were more calls than usual.

Lawyer: no compensation
In the apartment of KT board member Gulnara Paal in one of the apartment buildings in the center of Narva, even now the air temperature is 18 degrees, and on January 5, a day after the accident, it was generally 16 degrees, in a similar apartment on the ground floor – 12-14 degrees. The same problem exists in all 18 end apartments of the building, a member of the board told NG. Before the accident, the temperature was constantly about 20 degrees.

“The house cooled down very quickly; in the apartments on the first floor it was 13-14 degrees. And it gained heat slowly over several days: it is one thing to maintain heat constantly, and another thing to return it.

And although one of the reasons for the prolonged cold in apartments, of course, is that the house is not insulated and, after a sharp cooling, heats up slowly, residents would like to know how the accident will affect their heat bills and whether the residents of the house are entitled to compensation for additional expenses.

According to Gulnara Paal, some of her housemates had to walk around the apartment all week wearing almost a coat, but at the same time use heaters. That is, not only heat bills, but also electricity bills will obviously be higher due to the accident. And that’s not all: in some apartments, hot water pipes leaked after the accident, and parts of the risers had to be replaced.

The manager of this building, Galina Egorova, confirmed to NG: yes, some of the pipes had to be changed, and one of the apartments was flooded as a result, but, fortunately, it was insured. Are pipe leaks related to an accident in heating networks? The plumbing company that services the house declined to comment, telling NG that the question seemed “strange.”

Galina Egorova says that of the 15 houses she services, problems arose after an accident in the heating networks in only one. “The rest of the houses, mostly Khrushchev buildings, didn’t even notice that there was an accident,” she said.

The head of the Narva Association of Apartment Associations, lawyer Alexander Gamazin, told NG that KT contacted him with complaints about the sudden cooling of houses and with questions about compensation. “In my opinion, Narva Soojusvõrk is certainly to blame for what happened. But in order to receive compensation, to go to court, you need specific amounts, specific calculations, which no heating engineer will undertake to do. In my opinion, compensation in this case is impossible,” says the lawyer. On the other hand, the head of Narva Soojusvõrk Pavel Rushelyuk said in the ETV+ program “People Matter” on January 13 that due to the accident, heating bills for Narva residents will not rise.

The worst thing happened to the “Chinese walls”
The largest apartment buildings in Narva in the Tallinn Highway area felt the accident in different ways.
Natalya Alekseeva, chairman of the Soldina 18 CT, told Narvskaya Gazeta that on January 4, already at eight in the morning, her phone began to ring off the hook with calls from residents of the building asking what had happened. “The house cooled down very quickly; in the apartments on the first floor it was 13-14 degrees. And it gained heat slowly over several days: it is one thing to maintain heat constantly, and another thing to return it. We had to increase the supply of coolant to the house in order to quickly reach normal temperatures in the apartments,” said Natalya.

Elena Matush, chairman of the CT “Tallinn Highway 42”, told NG that residents of the building also called her and complained that the temperature in the apartments had dropped to 13 degrees. But, in her opinion, the drop in temperature also largely depends on how the apartments are insulated, and not just the house as a whole. “I was at home at the time. And yes, the batteries quickly became icy. But thanks to the fact that my walls around the windows are well insulated with a layer of mineral wool and foam and there are no heat leaks, I didn’t feel cold for a minute. But a neighbor on the floor above felt the cold just 15 minutes after the radiators cooled down. But it’s blowing from her windows so much that the curtains are moving,” said the chairman. “And after the accident, the heating units in our house began to play, their settings were lost,” added Elena Matush.

Unlike their neighbors, the residents of the house at Tallinn Highway 46 did not experience any problems with either the heating unit or the heat in their apartments, says KT Chairman Sergei Lvov. Photo: Irina Tokareva

There were similar problems in Estonia’s largest apartment building and the largest “Chinese wall” in Narva – Tallinskoe shosse, 32, which contains 360 apartments, where the emergency service also had to increase the heat supply to the heating units, said KT Chairman Natalya Grishina.

But in the long five-story building on Tallinn Highway 46, the changes were minor. KT Chairman Sergei Lvov told the newspaper that the residents of the building did not call him, and the temperature in the apartments remained normal – 20-21 degrees Celsius. Sergei Lvov learned about the accident in heating networks from a message from friends. “Of course, a lot depends on the location of the house, the material from which it is built, the insulation, and the condition of the apartments. For example, several years ago we insulated the ends with high quality, after which the air temperature of the residents of the end apartments increased by 2-3 degrees,” the chairman told NG. At the same time, Sergei Lvov, who is a member of the city assembly’s commission on urban services, believes that the notification of the incident by Narva Soojusvõrk was clearly insufficient. “We discussed this issue in the commission. We would like the management of Narva Soojusvõrk not to look down on CT, but to consider them as equal partners and cooperate with us. After all, on many issues, people first call the chairmen and ask them what happened. Of course, this applies not only to heating networks, but also to any crisis situations in the city in general: we in the commission came to the conclusion that the procedure for notifying residents must be clearly spelled out, and this must be addressed.”

Not enough heat?
And yet, why did the apartments in some apartment buildings remain cold for so long? There is a rumor persistently circulating around the city: the reason that the houses took a long time to warm up is that the batteries have become less hot even in normal mode, since recently heating networks have been supplying residential buildings with coolant at a lower temperature than is provided for in the current agreements between KT and heating networks. And this, in turn, is due to the fact that the boiler room at the Baltic Power Plant does not have enough power.

Our sources, who did not want to identify themselves because, according to them, they do not want to aggravate relations with the monopolist – Narva Soojusvõrk, nevertheless claim that if we do not begin to renovate the boiler house, emergency situations may arise in the future. Moreover, supplying houses with coolant at a lower temperature than before will force KT to change expensive heat exchangers in heating units. Which, in turn, will lead to significant new costs that will fall on CT. And again he will shelve the high-quality insulation of Narva residential buildings, which they needed, as they say, yesterday.

Let us note that Narva residents asked alarming questions about whether everything is in order with the Narva heating networks and whether they are capable of uninterruptedly supplying the city with heat through our newspaper last week. And then the head of Narva Soojusvõrk assured that the Narvians need not worry about this.

From the editor
The story of a short-term and seemingly insignificant accident turned out to be much more serious than it seemed at first glance. There is no certainty yet that she has uncovered really serious problems in an enterprise that is strategically important for the city, which, for its part, assures that everything is in perfect order. But we will definitely return to this topic in the future.

“It’s 12 degrees in the apartment”: some residents of Narva felt the consequences of an accident in heating networks for several days

“The house cooled down very quickly; in the apartments on the first floor it was 13-14 degrees. And it gained heat slowly over several days: it is one thing to maintain heat constantly, and another thing to return it.

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