Every year a common problem that I hear about is pipes freezing or bursting. Korean winters can be brutally cold! Imagine going a week or longer without water due to frozen pipes!
To prevent this let’s go over some things:
- For the months of December – February when not at home always leave your boiler ON to the lowest setting especially if the weather is below: 0° degrees Celsius (32° Fahrenheit for Americans)
- Leave the water dripping in the kitchen sink OR bathroom. Preferably luke warm setting
- Cover your boiler which is usually located outside your apartment with foil or wrap around with a thick old blanket (which is what I did) You can buy foil from DAISO!
Here are some basic boiler settings translated for you:
온돌: floor heating – no hot water
실내: indoors/ inside – floor and water gets heated
예약: appointment / reservation – you can set the ondol to only stay on for a set amount of time, which you can control with arrow buttons or a dial
외출: going out
Korean-Canadian. Living in Seoul, Korea.
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