Well, here’s a crash course in the type of heating system you’re describing:
In your basement, there is a boiler, which most likely has a natural gas line going into it (originally, it was probably a coal or wood-fired boiler). Inside the boiler is a big vat of hot water. When the thermostat demands heat, the boiler burns gas to boil this water, sending steam through pipes. These pipes connect to all of the radiators in the house, and each radiator has a regulator on it that controles the amount of steam that’s allowed into the radiator, giving you some control over where you’re heat goes.
The steam goes through the radiator, transferring much of their heat to it, which is then radiated out into the room. The steam then condenses back to water and returns to the big vat of hot water through different pipes.
Hopefully, this better explains my confusion. There’s no way to fairly charge you for heat unless there is a boiler that’s supplying steam to your radiators, as there’s no way to tell how much of the steam is going to yours and how much is going to your neighbor’s.
First of all, I do want to thank everyone who’s responded. I don’t think the plumber ended up making any changes to the heating system last week. In any event, I sent an email to my landlord stating that paying for the heat was not an option. We’ll see what happens.
LordVor, you stated:
Does this also apply even if we have our own thermostat? We do have access to the thermostat and can turn the heat up or down ourselves. Even so, there appears to be only one boiler down in the basement.
You’re reaching the edge of my knowledge on the subject. Some possibilities I can think of:
Your neighbor does not have their own thermostat, and you also control how hot their apartment gets.
Either thermostat would turn the whole system on, or
there may be a valve somewhere in the system that shunts the steam only to one set of radiators (or both, or neither) depending on the state of the two thermostats.
Even if #3 is the case, to get a fair reading on how much to charge you the gas meter connected to the boiler would have to switch between two accounts to get an accurate reading on which apartment was being heated when the gas was used, which I don’t think that it can do. And even then, the amount of gas used would be dependant on such things as how long it’s been since the last time the boiler has run, and when both apartments are being heated you don’t have a way to measure how much heat is going into each apartment.
I doubt it’s #1. The landlord used to live in the other apartment until they moved to Israel last summer. I highly doubt they would have completely surrendered the heat controls to us.
#2 May be possible, but doubtful. How would we turn it down if it got to hot in one apartment but not the other?
Well, we’ll see what happens. I sent them an email last night, so we’ll see what they say back.
BTW, I think they might be selling the place. They’ve sent an appraiser around to look at the house.
A boiler in the basement does not necessarily mean that the apartment is heated by steam radiators. If Zev has a thermostat, I’m guessing that he’s got an air handler. An air handler is basically a fan and a heat exchanger; air is heated using a boiler or a furnace, and it’s blown through ducts to the target area. Zev, do you have a radiator (buncha pipes against one wall) or air vents (usually in the ceiling)?
A new air handler/boiler setuo might be what’s getting installed, with a meter to determine what fraction of hot air is being routed to each duct.