Utility Madness - Water
Okay, water is a utility that also has a single card but there are three meters for this card. I'm not sure I understand yet how it works. Luckily, this card can be recharged with cash down at our apartment office.
When I went down to pay, I took 500 RMB so that I wouldn't have to worry about the water for some time. I handed over the 500 RMB and I was told that I needed to choose how much to apply to water and how much for A/C. (?) What? It's the _water_ card but it is somehow connected to the A/C system? Okay, for the time being, I chose to put 200 RMB into the water and 300 RMB on the A/C system. Whatever...
Now, this single card smart card (after being charged up) was inserted into three different meters near our apartment! One was an A/C unit right outside our apartment and the other two were hidden in compartments in our walls that allowed access to the plumbing and water metering devices. I'm thinking that one is hot water and one is cold water but I don't know how the two different meters communicate with each other. Maybe each one took half of the 200 RMB water money but then...
So, the most interesting piece of information is that I think our heating and air-conditioning are both water driven. Maybe the A/C and heating are powered by a heat-exchange unit that produces the hot and cold air while electricity drives the fans that blow the air into the apartment. At least this explains why our A/C went out twice in the first few days (once due to electricity and once due to water). It also explains why our electricity bills are so low even though we were running the A/C full blast for the first week we were here.
What are the rates? Here's some information that supports the heat-exchange theory:
Hot Water : 13.3 RMB/cubic meter
Cold Water: 3.7 RMB/cubic meter
There's also some cooling and heating charge on the water card based on kwh but I can't understand what that's all about. The card was never inserted into any meter connected to a power line. Okay, this ends our utility saga but you can see that we had to spend a number of days gathering information that really could have been easily spelled out for us. I think that the apartment staff needs to be reminded that things really _are_ different from the US. Even basic concepts like pre-paid utilities, smart cards and metering devices have to be explained to us as if we were idiots.
When I went down to pay, I took 500 RMB so that I wouldn't have to worry about the water for some time. I handed over the 500 RMB and I was told that I needed to choose how much to apply to water and how much for A/C. (?) What? It's the _water_ card but it is somehow connected to the A/C system? Okay, for the time being, I chose to put 200 RMB into the water and 300 RMB on the A/C system. Whatever...
Now, this single card smart card (after being charged up) was inserted into three different meters near our apartment! One was an A/C unit right outside our apartment and the other two were hidden in compartments in our walls that allowed access to the plumbing and water metering devices. I'm thinking that one is hot water and one is cold water but I don't know how the two different meters communicate with each other. Maybe each one took half of the 200 RMB water money but then...
So, the most interesting piece of information is that I think our heating and air-conditioning are both water driven. Maybe the A/C and heating are powered by a heat-exchange unit that produces the hot and cold air while electricity drives the fans that blow the air into the apartment. At least this explains why our A/C went out twice in the first few days (once due to electricity and once due to water). It also explains why our electricity bills are so low even though we were running the A/C full blast for the first week we were here.
What are the rates? Here's some information that supports the heat-exchange theory:
Hot Water : 13.3 RMB/cubic meter
Cold Water: 3.7 RMB/cubic meter
There's also some cooling and heating charge on the water card based on kwh but I can't understand what that's all about. The card was never inserted into any meter connected to a power line. Okay, this ends our utility saga but you can see that we had to spend a number of days gathering information that really could have been easily spelled out for us. I think that the apartment staff needs to be reminded that things really _are_ different from the US. Even basic concepts like pre-paid utilities, smart cards and metering devices have to be explained to us as if we were idiots.
posted by agoel at
10:06 PM
2 Comments:
hmm... you handed over 500, and got 200 water and 200 A/C.... No wonder they say the chinese are good in the maths and sciences.
You been SERVED! ;)
I have so been served! I've already updated the post since I obviously can't do math while posting but they did give me 200 water and _300_ AC. bleh.
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