Helsinki Ventilation #1

Although, it could be said the mechanical changes did fix the black mould problem by drying out the plaster.

Every day, somewhere around 9am. The giant ventilation exhaust outside my apartment window begins to hum.

It’s a strange low frequency hum. Because it is the movement and flow of air, it also effects your ear, silently, a strange constant ripple oscillation of pressure like invisible bass.

The immediate effect of this is to cause agitation and anxiety. I don’t know what the physical effects are yet. Though the studies tell me heart problems and more.

When I moved in. When I rented the apartment. It made very little noise. This is because it had not yet been altered.

They would be putting a dance school in, two floors below my apartment.

Not Jazz.

Not Ballet.

Flamenco.

Time would show it was, is, would be, is still, an illegal Flamenco school. I am not going to begin to describe this torture. This is not about that. This is about ventilation.

The ventilation was changed and mechanised.

I remember, because when they changed and “rebuilt” it, was about when I began to have my suspicions about the construction that would go on until 1 or 2am on Sundays and other days.

I watched two men half-tear the top off a vent shaft. They never properly replaced it. Never bothered to replace screws. Which made it easy after my first complaint for them to come back and jam a load of blue foam down it.

It is not regulation distance from my apartment.

The sentence sits there glum. Even to me it feels like a bit of a whinge. But if you have ever worked in a bar or restaurant and had to duck out to the alley for a smoke, you will remember the sound they make. Now think of one your leg away from your window. Humming.

The regulation is a couple of meters or something, I forget now and to look it up for this, the just the start piece, would make me too angry to think.

Finnish ventilation regulations would seem to state it is supposed to have been inspected by the city when any changes are made and have gauge information displaying its workings on the of its body. None of this has happened.

I will later be told that the Government regulations and guidelines I find on air safety, ventilation. Are not enforced by the city health and safety, At least, not in my apartment. I will not ever discover if they’re just not enforced.

The city’s way of dealing with irritating requests about safety and legality in English is to ignore them.

If you get a Finnish person to email in Finnish for you. They will ignore that also.

A strange insurance broker by the name of Mikko Koskensyrjä will later pop up to impersonate a safety inspector and assure me it is safe.

The city health inspectors will tell me that they only deal with environmental safety within apartments, just not mine. When pressed they will tell me they do not follow the laws in the environmental guidelines and law PDF I downloaded.

City health inspectors will tell me they do not measure low frequency noise. Even though you can feel the change in the atmosphere when it begins to hum. I will send people photos of the black dust blown into the vent that comes into my apartment. Finnish city officials and Mikko Koskensyrjä the insurance broker, will tell me, that although my vent faces out onto a quiet courtyard and did not intake black dust before the changes were made to the outside ventilation tower. That it is likely safe, natural and my fault and that no one is responsible for the safety of the air and environment within my apartment. Except me. But, that I have to understand they are responsible for the safety of the environment within apartments within Helsinki.

This does not seem to make sense. I attempt to point this out. I do not get a reply.

I request repeatedly for the air and safety of the air to be tested. I do not get a reply.

I ask is it safe for an insurance broker to be telling me he can judge the safety of things he has not measured or, seen. Or stood beside. In lieu of the city health inspector. Whom he tells me is sick that day and he is covering for them. No one will answer my questions and I get sent around Helsinki city apartments with brusque replies.

The only thing I do get is that no one wants their name used in documents about the ventilation.

I would complain to my landlord again. But then, he has threatened to shoot me.

This, it seems, is Helsinki.