Snow has fallen in Zabierzów, ankle-deep and crisp, and that questionable miasma of overgrown lawn and mud behind our house has turned into a lovely vista stretching down to endless white fields. We stand at the back doors, our noses pressed to the glass, to enjoy it, wrapped in our winter woolies, two pairs of flannel pyjama pants, two pairs of woolen socks, three sweatshirts, hats, scarves, and occasionally coats.
We're not venturing outside - the back doors are still sealed with layers of masking tape, blocked by rolled towels, unpacked Ikea furniture, bits and pieces without shelves to put them on. We're dressed this way because we haven't yet figured out how to make the heater work properly, and it's 10 degrees inside.
This is day 2 of our official move-in, a Saturday. All Friday long, Piotrek and his parents were putting on a final coating of paint in the hall, tidying up, and trying to get the house warm after the recent cold snap. By the time I arrived on Friday evening, the gas cylinders had been replaced and running for several hours, although the radiators were lukewarm. By bedtime the upstairs temperature was still around 12C, so we decided to sleep downstairs, on our new Ikea fold-out sofa, next to the fire.
For the first time in years, I woke up to the sound of complete quiet in a pitch-black room (despite our current lack of curtains). It would have been heavenly if my nose and ears had not frozen stiff. As I pulled my winter hat more firmly over my eyebrows, I noticed there was no more crackling coming from the fireplace, and the radiators had lost their gentle whirr. I stuck my hand out to the one nearest me - ice cold. The fire was out. Our indoor thermometer showed 12C.
On a trip to the bathroom, I observed through the window into the shed that the gas heater was not running. Time to investigate, I resolved. I climbed back under the covers and poked Piotrek - "Go investigate," I told him.
And so began a very long, cold morning of “I’m going to reset it,” “I’ve done that already,” “I’ll try it again,” “That won’t do anything,” “There’s an error message on the panel,” “What does it mean?” “I have no idea”, etc, etc.
As all wise and resourceful people would do, we googled it, and discovered an instruction manual for our gas heater online. (Before finding the instruction manual, Piotrek also found a consumer review forum, in which customers emphatically confirmed that, unlike other models, this one “never breaks down.”) We discovered that error “F-1” could, in fact, be any of a list of things having to do with gas not getting from the tank to the heater.
After a lot of fiddling, it was unanimously decided by our skilled crew of one that the valve had not been connected properly, and instead of flowing into the heater, some of it had been leaking away. (I would like to add, for the peace of mind of all readers, that Piotrek, said skilled crew of one, has reassured me in countless long explanations that there is no possibility of any of us being blown up in any of the gas-tank-related fiddlings here described.) The result of the leakage was that we burned off an entire tank in one afternoon, and it was simply empty. Since the tanks cost 50PLN apiece, this was not necessarily good news, but we were overjoyed as soon as we connected the second tank – removed from its station as the cooking gas supply – and felt the radiators fire up from ice cold to burning hot. Hoorah!
I spent the rest of the afternoon removing the cardboard and plastic from the floors, washing the dishes and stacking them precariously into a sieve to dry (still no drying rack), and walking around the kitchen in circles scratching my head while I tried to decide which of the awkwardly-placed low cupboards was least inconvenient for pulling out a box of tea. With the fire going and the heat on, we got as high as 19 degrees by the evening, when some friends came over and we ordered pizza from what has quickly become our “regular”.
For good measure, we duct-taped a flannel sheet over the bedroom windows, propped pillows in the window sills, rolled sweaters at the base of the balcony door, and stood a massive great suitcase in front of it to block any draughts. We then turned the electric heater on for about half an hour and closed the door, and it quickly became toasty warm. And while it remained toasty warm in our little sealed room, during Saturday night the heat went off once again, and we woke up to a sparkly, snowy day with 10 degrees downstairs and the same error message flashing on the heater in the shed...
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