You have just spent your fourth day collecting olives, (which the Calasparrians eulogize as the high spot of the social calendar but which is actually backbreaking hard work) and you are looking forward to a long, hot shower. No chance if you are the proud owner of a water heater that operates on bottled gas: very economical but not very effective in winter!
Nexonr has received a stream of complaints and queries from readers who have told us their gas water heater (which must be installed outside unless otherwise specified) doesn´t heat the water during the winter months because it has frozen; the pipes have frozen; the water pipes laid from the mains are too close to the surface and they have frozen or the bottle of gas is frozen or is very, very cold impeding the gas from flowing freely, all of which means cold water.
Most of us who live with this problem have had to come up with our own solutions: my favourite is showering in the middle of the day when the Calasparra sun has warned all the pipes up. However, a NEXOnr reader has given me an excellent tip about how to keep the gas bottle warm. I was already using a woolly jumper, which turned out to be no use at all, as a cover for the gas bottle: he brought me a duvet.
It helped but it didn´t solve the problem. The water was never very hot, fluctuating between warm and downright freezing. But he had another suggestion. He recommended disconnecting the gas bottle when not in use and placing it in the warmest room of the house (not to near the fire for safety reasons!) for as long as possible.
After a lukewarm shower the day before my muscles were still aching and there was the prospect of a few more days of olive picking before we completed our harvest. I was desperate for a hot shower so I followed our reader’s advice and it worked!
Nowadays we treat our gas bottle like a pet: keeping it warm, moving it around the house to warmer zones and generally nurturing it. We clean the «cal» twice or three times a year and we check and change the battery regularly. We are model gas water heater owners but we still don´t have any hot water!
The specification that the water heater should be installed outside is a novel concept for most UK residents but it was a novelty that swiftly wore off during my first winter when the whole heater froze up! Because it was frozen the damage was not covered by the guarantee, the technician informed me. I reminded him it was an “outside water heater” and he reminded me “it never freezes in Calasparra.” But it was frozen. Stalemate. I paid up and got some lukewarm water for my troubles.
Of course, the heater works brilliantly in the summer when you have to try and cool down the scalding water with the cold water tap without actually turning the whole shower cold. No alteration of the gas or water flow levels on the heater seem to make any difference to the wild extremes of temperature: that is cold in winter and boiling hot during the hottest months.
But never mind, the olives are in and thanks to our reader´s advice the shower is more hot than cold and anyway there is something quite decadent about taking a shower in the middle of the day!
