Where did our hot water go?

So the heating man shows up last night to check on our heating unit in our kitchen. Something about how it's too close to the counter top. Anyway, he looks at it for a while, grumbles a bit, then leaves. From that point on we seem to have no gas in our apartment. No hot water and radiators are all cold.

I don't want to mess with the heating unit and really foul things up so i thought I'd see if anyone else encountered something similar and what the best way to fix it is.

The other thing I noticed is this contraption in our hallway (see pic). It has one lever on it that has always been upright. I pushed it down then back up but that didn't seem to do much.

Any ideas?? I have photos of the Junkers (junk is right) heating unit if that helps as well.

Thanks!

What did the tradesman say when you rang him up and asked him what was wrong, what he did, and when will he fix it?

The guy just seemed to shake his head and is supposed to follow up with our landlord. He didn't speak english and our german still sucks so that's about all we got out of it.

We're trying to make some phone calls to track down the issue, but weren't sure if there were some sort of easy fix. Trying to not freeze again tonight and come to work smelly because it was so cold I didn't want to get in a ice cold shower.

Here's what he was looking at http://www.thejarvii.com/waterheater.html

It looks switched off, is it making any noise? The easy fix would probably to turn it on, but I wouldnt reccomend that. I would hold off till the expert gets back, he switched it off for a reason most probably.

Is the pilot light on the boiler lit??? There looks like a button to push there to ignite it...

I assume you know this, but in case not - on mine you have to set the thing to either water, or water and radiators or off, so make sure it's set to both. Also make sure the dial is turned up pretty high - on mine it goes 1-9 and I was told that the thing must be up to 9 to do the radiators as well as the water.

Perhaps though he just turned the flame out and all you have to do is reignite the pilot light, and then away you go???

EDIT: As Kza points out, careful tho, in case he turned it off for a reason!

Do NOT try and turn the thing on yourself. Gas in Germany is not scented (unlike in the UK where scent is added so that gas leaks are easier to locate) and you could blow yourself up quite easily because it does not sound like you know what you are doing. I'd contact your landlord asap and ask him what is going on.
Katrina
PS You can still get a bath at the Müllerisches Volksbad.

And if the heater is too close to the worktop it means that there isn't enough air circulating which means that the heater is burning inefficiently. It can also mean that fumes could build up and go back into the room and this is dangerous.
Do you have a gas fume detector? You can buy them cheap from Obi and they are good for piece of mind.
Chase up your landlord though!
Katrina

@ Kza, Jimbo, Katrina Thanks for the responses. Katrina has definitely scared us into not wanting to touch anything for fear of seeing part of Schwabing blow up. I've made another phone call and have some folks more knowledgable than me tracking things down.

As for the heating unit too close to the countertop, that could have it's own rant! In short, we bought the kitchen installed from the previous tenant (1 month ago) who had it in it's current configuration for many years. And now there are problems??

Probably the previous tenants didn't get it serviced (the heater not the kitchen!) in the meantime so maybe it didn't get spotted until now? Or is it a new service company? I know that it is bloody inconvient but at least you won't have to pay for it, the heating bit is your landlord's call.
You're in Schwabing? Now if you lived in Neuhausen I would have come over and physically stopped you from turning it on, well, I've only just got those pictures hanging straight like...
Let us all know how you get on though.
Katrina

BANG

Well, guess he just took my advice after all...

i wouldnt worry too much, germans are experts on gas (allegedly).

Don't the Germans have a saying like, "Du warmwasser duscher!", which roughly translates to, "Your a puff".

warmduscher.

klar.

Intrestingly the first google image for warmduscher is...

Here's a pic of my hot water heater. It is a Valliant brand.
The other day when i used the dishwasher at the same time as the washer (and probably ran the sink and toilet too) the water pressure dropped, causing the system to shut off. I thought that the little red indicator light (shown) was just an indicator. I didn't realize that I had to push it in to get the fire going again till the Landlord did it.
Agree with Katrina though. Don't do it yourself.

@ Inflatablewoman Schattenparker (my co-workers said that is a similar insult)

EDIT: I probably spelled it wrong.

A big list of instults...

http://www.schattenparker.de/

Some highlights...

Bettsockentraeger
Bräunungscremebenutzer
Celin Dion Fan
Infahrtrichtungfahrer
Light-Zigaretten-Raucher
Pascal-Programmierer
Sonntags-bei-Mami-Mittagesser

you get the idea...

Du Weißwurst mit Ketchup-Esser!!!

sitzpisser

all time fave

See also: http://www.weichei.de. My favourite is "Badewannenwassermehrfachbenutzer"

Achselrasierer
Is that an insult for a german woman?

I feel like celebrating!! (in fact I think I will) ok ... back from the fridge, beer in hand. Hot water is back! Well it's not back yet, but the heater is operational so I assume the hot water is on it's way.

Jimbo was right and it was the pilot light, but I wasn't here yesterday and am glad I let him come back and mess with it so I could watch. He did mention that he must've caused it to blow out when he closed the door to the heater yesterday

Thanks for all the concern and help ... gotta love TT!

I will bathe in the glory of being right...again. I should have been a plumber - I would be better at it, and richer too...

Isn't a plumber different than the heating man?

yeah, the boiler and heating things are dealt with by your gasman.

plumbers do the toilet´and the likes...

If that's the case it seems that Jimbo quickly sabatoged his streak of being right every time

Not my plumber in the UK - he does boilers and toilets and the like. It's probably best that you accept that I AM right every time. You get used to it after a while.

Wasser - heizung - Sanitär is usually what a plumber does.
So it's all combined in one proffession

So we have a gas man, and an ass-man.


And the song comes to mind... "And we'll all---- go down--- together!"
You bet, Jarvii!

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm, at least all of this sillyness has distracted 'thejarvii' from blowing himself up before the gas man (Endoplasmic Reticulum) showed up