This is my first post in English. It's been about 10 years I don't write anything in English longer than 1 line, so I may be a bit rusted. I live in São Paulo, the biggest brazilian city, where more than 11 million souls live (more than 20 million, if we consider the neighbour cities, a complex we call “Grande São Paulo”, or Big São Paulo).
It's autumn here. Temperatures dropped below 15ºC. This is very cold for us. Houses in Brazil don't have central heating (with very few excepctions in the south of the country, where it's colder). 90% of the houses in São Paulo (the number is a wild guess, I haven't done any research) have just one point of hot water, for the shower. The water is heated by an electrical device like this, called “chuveiro”:
Fonte: http://mauroeletricista.blogspot.com/
There are dozens of manufacturers and models of chuveiros. It's obvious they don't heat the water to a pleasant level when the temperature is cold, so people have to let just a small stream of water run from the tap, in order to make it hotter. Newer blocks of apartments come with LPG water heaters, that work much better. I live in a 30 year old building, but the pre owner did a modification to install a GLP heater. One handicap is that LPG is expensive in Brazil, as any other utility like electricity, gasoline or telephone (the exception is water, that is cheap, until now).
At least temperatures never drop below 7 or 8ºC in São Paulo. We are not prepared for that. And soon, when the cold front is gone, we'll bask in 20 to 25ºC again. The only problem is, when high pressure system is back, pollution reaches very high levels.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário