Our water is off during the daytime today and tomorrow. I’m assured it will be on overnight. See, the water company wants to do maintenance on our pipes, and so last Thursday they put up a notice saying that the water supply to each building in our community would be cut off some time between the 23 and 30 for pipe maintenance. I asked the guys at the gate- they’re not security guards, I believe they’re from the neighbourhood committee, and they assured me that the water company was going to work building-by-building and that the water would be off for probably only a day, and that a notice would be posted the day before our building would be affected. Cool. And then yesterday morning the notice was put up on our building’s doors, and I scrawled a quick translation of the essentials on the notices on doors housing foreign teachers, because most of my colleagues don’t speak or read Chinese- and many of them seem to have made no effort to learn whatsoever (although there is a significant group that is actively studying Chinese). Fine. Pipes need to be maintained, and we had fair warning. Hopefully nobody complains.
Anyway, seeing the machinery that was piling up outside yesterday in preparation for today’s and tomorrow’s work made me glad they were cutting off the water. I mean, that’s some big, hefty machinery they’ve got out there, the kind that is towed behind a large truck. I’m thinking, if they didn’t turn the water off they’d stand a good risk of blowing out our bathrooms and kitchens.
Actually, I have absolutely no idea what this machinery is and what exactly they’re doing. All I know is it’s pipe maintenance. I’ll be interested to see what kind of water comes out of our pipes this evening and tomorrow evening, though. Our water supply here is pretty good, cleaner than other parts of the city. Hopefully this maintenance will make it even better.
The Big Pain in the Arse is that this maintenance work required them to dig a hole right in front of our door, which is slightly less than convenient.
Ah well, they’ll be finished by tomorrow evening.
Water water!! My house is some 6 or 7 years old and almost all the water pipes developed prostate problems. Nobody’s willing/caring to do some maintenance. If I call the water company, they’ll charge me 50 Yuan+ to replace a valve (additional 30 Yuan or so). I wonder if this will do the trick. So you are still lucky in Beijing.
Perhaps I should ask the workers outside to take their machines down to your place and clean the pipes out?
Yep, I’m lucky here. We’ve got decent water and a company that maintains the pipes and warns us in advance of disruptions to the supply. Compared to many other places I’ve lived, that’s pretty damn good.