I took a large adjustable wrench and struck with it. It wasn’t hard blow, but just enough to loosen the nut from the pipe. A black mass began to flow out of the gap, like from a wound. It spread across the beige tiled floor of the bathroom. The bathroom began to resemble a murder scene from a new thriller. I had often had to deal with plumbing before, but this was the first time I had seen something like this.
The main thing we lacked in France was right here. A full-size bathtub! Almost every evening we had get-togethers there. It was a very warm place, compared to the rest of the house. We lit candles, drank tea with sweets, watched movies, spreading our camp blankets on the clean floor.
The rooms in our new house in Saint Antonin Noble Val did not at all resemble hotel rooms. The furniture was homemade, the carpets were antique, some of the interior items were from a large store. On the numerous shelves were arranged ikebana, candles, paintings and souvenirs, pieces of scented soap in vases. In each room there was a tea set, sweets and cookies so that guests could drink tea right in their own room. Some rooms were slightly warm. In others, electric heaters had to be installed to somehow warm up on damp and cold nights. At the request of Madame Andrea, I took it upon myself to look at the heating system. My goal was to find out why the radiators were not giving off heat. In the lower room there was a fireplace. Or rather, it was only a fireplace in appearance. In fact, it was a gas-wood heating system, which had been there probably since the 70s. I had already seen such in Europe. And I was fired up with the idea of checking what was wrong and pleasing our hostess with warmth in the rooms. Technically, it was a simple scheme that provided a flow of hot water through two risers. A pressure gauge, a thermometer and a pump that almost did not pump. The water did not rise to the very top and did not pass through the radiators. I began the operation to clean the first riser, installed a new filter, disassembled and cleaned the pump. Then the water began to flow from the hole under the roof of the house not in a thin rusty stream, but in a full flow. So much so that it watered the bushes in the semi-abandoned garden in the yard of the house from the roof. One problem was solved. The radiators on the first riser heated up. Now it remained to find out what was wrong with the radiators on the second. I decided to remove one and see what was inside. There were no tools for this. And we went to the nearest store located in the city of Montauban. The trip took a day. Having disconnected the radiator, I got scared. The radiator was filled with this liquid. It was black only in appearance. I plugged the bottom of the radiator with a rag and began to wipe the floor with a towel. The black mass did not wash off, smeared and changed color to burgundy-red, brown. It looked like someone had committed a murder here, and now I was sweeping up the tracks, wiping the floor from the blood that had already spilt over almost the entire room. It was rust. Fine, more like a thick mass mixed with scale. The rust particles were very small. This pasty liquid was clogging the outlet holes of the radiator. I tried to drain this crap, but the radiator was very heavy. I put it back in place and devoted half a day to cleaning.
It was a failure!
I did not have the strength and means to clean these radiators, to flush them. It was easier to replace them. And that is a lot of money and a lot of effort. And we did not have time for it. That day we were already invited to Madrid, and we had to leave in 2 days. Our landlady was upset. She only had hope when I managed to warm up half the house! The only consolation was that I realized how many years the water had been boiling in the fireplace, forming scale, mixing with rust and clogging the radiators.
I described the problem and explained to the owner how to solve it. The owner was very grateful to me, and I felt confused and ashamed. I did the maximum I could. But these feelings helped me in the future not to immediately grab onto things that I could not complete.
“Who goes hunting loses his place.” Guy de Maupassant. Norman joke. Photo taken in a plumbing store in the city of Montauban.