Doha Logic: Hot and Cold

Shortly after we all arrived on the 30th, John made a passing comment to me: "hey--the hot and cold on the faucets are all backwards."  I had about 497 other things going through my head at that moment, so I'll confess I just let the comment enter my ear and go straight to the black-hole storage container known as my brain.  A couple of days late, I looked carefully at the faucets, and everything looked normal to me, so then I decided either I didn't hear things right or John is crazy...Of course, all the on-off switches are wackbards here (lights are off when the switch is up), so the whole thing already has me confused.

Here's a picture of a faucet.  Hot on the left, cold on the right.  Looks normal, huh?

Well, it would be normal...except for this:

On the left is the water tank for our house.  Every house has one of these.  I'm not sure how they fill them...I think from a pipe under ground.  It's like our own private water tower, except it's only about 8 feet tall.  Notice the top of the tank.  I'm not sure what those little castle-like ridges are around the top.  I suspect they're simply for architectural "camoflauge," as these are typically put on top of houses/buildings.  Notice also that our own private water tower (still on the left) is located in an enclosure in our back yard.  Notice that the enclosure is open to the sun.  Notice that the temperature here is typically in the 110's to 130's in the summer.  Today, the temperature at noon is 43 C, which is 104 F.  Humidity is 48%. With the heat index, the current temperature is 50 C, which is 127.4 F.  Think about that water...sitting there in that tank on the left...in the sun...

Then consider our hot water heater, pictured on the right.  It's housed in a small, covered (typically with the door closed) concrete shed right next to the water tank.  The hot water heater sits in the dark all day.  It's insulated.  Ponder that.

I bet you've figured it out by now!  Yes, the practice (and logically and rightfully so) here is to turn off your hot water heater and use it as a water "cooler."  So you turn the faucet (or washing machine or shower) on hot to get cool water and on cold to get steaming hot water. 

Today, I washed all the white towels on the "cold/cold" setting. 

I'm still not sure what to do about the dishwasher...put it on energy saver?

Now I'll leave you to ponder what that means when you flush a toilet.