Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

Old Soviet style communities get hot water from central plants, mainly used for heating but also for showers, so when winter is over, they shutdown the heating plants for the season and no hot water at all. Some places in Northern China hook into muni hot water for showers in the winter but use solar hot water in the summer, when hot showers can be a bit less satisfying (in my experience anyways).

View on HN

> Old Soviet style communities get hot water from central plants, mainly used for heating but also for showers, so when winter is over, they shutdown the heating plants for the season and no hot water at all.

That's not quite correct. Thermal power plants supply heat, but local water heating stations can typically work autonomously.

Hot water is typically turned off to allow for maintenance and tests. Hot water pipes corrode about 10-20 _times_ faster than cold water pipes.

District heating is common in many northern European cities, even Italy (e.g 55% of households in Turino). The USA has 2500 (as of 2013) such heating and cooling networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating district cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_cooling

Lebanon has a non-functional government where all publicly-owned everything basically doesn't work. Beirut is essentially a libertarian enclave now, where everyone with means has their own solar panels and gas generators, self-produces all power, and the economy runs on paper US dollars and cryptocurrencies. It's amazing what people can do when their governments are non-existent.

How is police / crime doing?

Terrible, as is inflation, as is almost everything else, and in the south of the country you got hezbollah bombing things. I'm not Lebanese so just know what I know from close friends, but the comment read very strange to me. Life is very difficult there, none of the Lebanese I know want to move back. I'm not sure why OP painted it as an anarchist utopia, that's definitely not what I hear.

You also get Israel bombing the south of the country and a Syrian border run by drug cartels.

Agree with the sentiment on OP. These libertarian views are so often held by comfortable Americans who've never seen what an absence of government looks like.

The OP's handle of "monero-xmr" might give you a hint why.

I never said it was amazing, I said how the country is still functional and people are kept from starving to death, given the government is nonexistent

How is Hisbollah doing?

Makes sense, but when I asked most people answered that it was to save natural gas.

It is so incorrect, it is boderline idiotic urban legend. post-Soviet cities have hot water year around; same heating plants used for winter heating, are used for hot water in summer time, albeit at lower power. Also waste heat from power plants used for the same purpose.

I'll fact check you since I was born and grew up in Russia. No water most of the summer used to be the norm in my city. Checking as of today, in two cities I know central hot water is off every summer for 2+ weeks. My city improved and another one regressed. In a third city I asked about (one of the coldest) it's off for just single digit days.

What you describe is not normal today (unless we are talking about some Mukhosransk type of cities), and certainly was not normal in USSR, which kept civil infrastructure in a good shape.

As someone who is currently living in Central Asia, yes I do have no water for two weeks a year, they switch it off for "maintenance". However all last 5+ years, I had water through summer, with only occasional failures. We did have no heating one year, but water was all the time present.

Sure, they keep water hot in select cities, and the rest is Mukhosransk territory that doesn't matter. You could be from Moscow with that logic!

Respectfully you have no idea, planned hot water downtime in summer is reality for most cities in Russia (including SPb with official maximum length of two weeks), don't try to paint it look better than the mess it is.

Other post-Soviet countries probably do better, especially in Europe, but I have no info

have you read the original post?

Because if you reread it, you'll get the ridiculousness of that claim. So what you saying that situation in ex-USSR is such that there is only hot water during the winter. This is ridiculous, even taking into account grievances you have about Russian infrastructure.

It's almost as if USSR and China are vast territories and experience might vary.

Exactly my point.

Your point was "post-Soviet cities have hot water year around", and your point was wrong.

My point was that the original poster was wrong saying that Soviet and Post-soviet cities had and have hot water only during winters. This is idiocy; you know that, I know that. Right now, while I am writing, my relative is using hot water to wash her head.

What is your point?

"Right now my relative is using hot water to wash her head" is very far cry from "having water all year round"

By the way, that's not quite a flex since people still use hot water to wash heads when there's no central hot water. My friends and relatives in Russia were doing that before this month ;) Spoiler: kettles and buckets.

If you doubt me and have no one to ask then trust things like https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7lLlnmAAHt/. pretty sure Belaya Dacha markets to middle/upper middle class countrywide

You said

> It is so incorrect, it is boderline idiotic urban legend. post-Soviet cities have hot water year around.

Probably every city in Russia most certainly don't have water "all year around", and never have going back into USSR times.

How the plants work exactly I have nothing to say, but if there is an urban legend perpetuated here then I'll tell it which it is: it's how good soviet and Russian infrastructure is.

Even if you've never had to take cold showers in the summer, I have. I'm not sure why you can't believe our experiences would differ. The only reason I mentioned the USSR at all is because when I asked in China they said they got the system from them (and south of the Yangtze, you don't even get that).

Not sure what is your point. You've mentioned USSR and it was wrong, as Soviet System has never been like that - "hot water only during the winter". Ergo, you should not have brought up USSR.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com