My ondol (Korean floor heating) is electric, not gas, so using the ondol during winter to stay warm means a sharp rise in my electric bill. I'm now a rent-payer, no longer coddled by my place of work, so the bill I get is no longer just admin fee + electric, but a full-on utilities bill (my rent is separate and goes straight to my landlady). The bill I got at the beginning of March (presumably for February) was over W500,000. While I'm not totally surprised by the highway robbery—these are Gangnam prices, after all—I'm still disappointed. For all of February, which is the period covered by the March bill, my ondol was on level 2 out of 10. W540,000 for that? Seriously? So living in my place has jumped from a range of W200,000-W400,000 a month to nearly W1.3 million a month. Yikes.
The boss is telling me the place in Suwon will set me back a simple W1,000,000 for the deposit, then maybe (maybe!) W500,000 a month for the rent. I have no idea what the utilities might be. Surely not over W500,000 like here. I guess the nice thing about such a tiny deposit is that I wouldn't have to fork over much at the beginning, but the problem is that I wouldn't get back very much at the end.
Upshot: while I'm not thrilled about the Suwon apartment's location (old, noisy neighborhood on a steep hill, crowded local mountains), it'll be a financial relief to leave my current digs. Also: I'm currently relying on a third blanket at night instead of using an ondol at all. I'll be curious to see what a minimal electric bill looks like.
How long do you run the ondol for? I think, during the winter, we had ours set to run thirty minutes every four hours.
ReplyDeleteIs that what Koreans usually do? Damn. I run mine all night. I guess that's why my bill always shows a power-consumption rate that's often at least 150% of my neighbors'. (I also didn't even know it was possible to set a timer for the heat. Maybe the company sent a PDF about heating years ago, and I'd ignored it.) Either way, we'll see what zero ondol does to my April bill.
ReplyDeleteI'd find a realtor that specializes in low cost rentals off the main hot spots or in overbuilt areas. A student's mother, who was just starting out, got me a smoking deal (350,000 won/month with no key money) in a great area that just had too many new, small, family-owned and built, apartments. These new apartments owners did not do their research on supply and demand and lack of enough new population to populate their new nest eggs.
ReplyDeleteThat electric bill is shocking! I'd be charged up about it, too. (Sorry! Couldn't resist)
ReplyDeleteDiscovering ondol heating (along with the toilet-lid bidets) was one of my favorite things when I first moved to Korea. Of course, I've not used a heater in seven years now.