Korean Floor Heating

Time for you to learn how to use Korean Floor Heating, also known as Ondol Heating. Yep. This is gonna be a bit of a boring video, kind of like our How to Use a Korean Washing Machine video, but it’s necessary! We had no clue how to use the floor heaters ourselves until we were taught, so now we’re gonna spread the Ondol Heating Love.

See, we did our How to Stay Warm in Korea video a short while ago, but we didn’t mention the floor heating, because, well, we barely use it at all. Maybe it’s the crazy Canadian in us, but we don’t like it when the air gets hot. We like to be bundled up and to breathe cold air. Using a heater, though, makes the air all warm and nasty, and we don’t like that. Is that weird?

Anyhow, we’ve recently changed our tune, because it’s just getting so bloody cold that we sometimes, SOMETIMES have to resort to the floor heater. Yes, floor heater. A Korean floor heater, known in Korea as an “Ondol,” isn’t like the heater we’re used to back in North America. Back home, the heaters would just blow hot air through the vents. Ondols, on the other hand, don’t use hot air. They use hot water below the floor to warm up the floors, and then the room gets warm and toasty as a result. Nice! It’s especially popular in Korea, since Koreans are a floor-sitting rather than a chair-sitting culture. And, boy, sitting on an ondol heated floor is totally comforting.

If you’re in a bind for time, here’s are the few steps you need to know to turn on your Korean floor heater:

1) Plug it in under your kitchen sink: most of the time it’s under the kitchen sink, at least. That’s where we’ve always seen them.
2) Crank your thermostat up: Find the thermostat on a wall somewhere in your place. Crank that badboy up to something like 24 degrees or so
3) Slightly turn the water lever under your sink: That’ll get the water flowing. Don’t turn it up all the way. You’ll pour in too much water unnecessarily. In fact, we did that last year, and somehow it caused a short circuit in our place. Too much water = bad.
4) Wait a few hours: it doesn’t take effect instantly. Go out and play. Or go sleep. Or go eat. Go make a movie. Yeah!

Before we end, though, we’d like to say thanks to our YouTube subscribers, because we’ve just reached 30,000 subscribers! Amazing! We never thought we’d have this many people subbing to our channel! So thanks to all of you! Also, thanks to JB and Annie from [닉쑤] Enjoy Your Happy Life~* for translating this super boring video. Since it’s so boring, Martina drew a picture, because she likes drawing pictures. Here it is:

Hooray Korean Floor Heating! And that should be that. If there’s anything we missed, if your Korean Floor Heater/Ondol is different than ours, or if we’re flat out wrong about anything, please let us know!

Tagged As:

Korean Season, Life in Korea, Winter

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