I have never lived in a apartment before always a house but am thinking about downsized into a apartment. I have a thyroid problem that makes me always cold all the time and I live in a cold climate so sometimes I need to turn the heat up to 80 degrees. Can you do that in a apartment or do they have a hidden “max” temperature you can put it up to?
I really don’t think there’s a max. You’re paying for electricity (or whatever), so they don’t care how much you use. You can also use a space heater if necessary.
First time I was apartment hunting, I looked at one unit that had the heat on and the thermostat turned up to 85°F – during summer.
Yes.
Depends. Buildings with electric heat or Magic-Paks for each apartment? Yes. Buildings (like mine) with hot water heat? Not necessarily. Our thermostat goes up to 90°, sure, but the temperature doesn’t go above what the boiler will give it, which is usually 68°. Warmest we’ve been able to get it is 70°.
Cite: My frozen toes.
I lived in an apartment in college that didn’t have adequate heating for the winter. There was no thermostat and little air circulation, since the heat came from pipes in the ceiling (we lived in the basement). When it got too cold, we’d peel more insulation off the pipes. If that didn’t provide enough heat, we’d turn on the oven and all the burners and sit in the kitchen. Sometimes, the air near the ceiling got really hot.
Why did we live in such a dump? The rent was really low, especially after splitting it with my roommates.
My son lives on the third floor of an apartment building. He tells me he get all the heat he needs for free from the two people below him. In fact, sometimes he has to crack the back door open to cool the place off during the winter months.
Not in my place. We’ve got steam heat, and when the boiler’s not running, there’s no heat. This is my first winter here, so it may be different once it’s colder, but they only seem to turn the heat on when the outside temperature goes below about 45.
In my recent apartment hunt, I saw plenty of places where every apartment had its own separate heat source. Some were multi-family houses with an oil or gas burner for each apartment. A few of the bigger apartment complexes and condos-for-rent also had a separate furnace in each unit. If you look around you should be able to find a place that will let you crank up the thermostat at your own expense.
It depends on the age of the apartment building. I have lived in many pre-war buildings and you don’t have a thermostat in your apartments. You get heat when everyone else does. Also, it has been my experience that most buildings that were designed to be rentals have have a central heating unit and the individual apartments have little or no control over heat. Other posters here seem to have a different experience, so it may be a regional thing. You may be better off renting a condo, which will more likely have its own furnace. Quite frankly, it is likely that if you are not paying directly for heat, your control over it will be very limited.
Where do you live? I’ve never heard of this being the case (although I wouldn’t be too surprised to find it in a very old building). But I was surprised that my current building has a shared water heater with hot water included in the rent because that’s rare here (I love it though…never runs out), and a friend from the midwest said that’s common there.
My only experience with apartment living mirrors this. We lived on the second floor and rarely had to turn out heat on and yeah, often we had to open the slider and windows to cool it down. I can’t imagine how hot it must have been in the apartment below.
It depends. I currently live in a large, old apartment building with a central boiler. Utilities are included with rent, and you can make it outright tropical if that’s what you are in to. But I think individual furnaces (and bills) are more common, especially in newer buildings.
I guess it depends on the age of the apartment building and the location. Most of the apartments I’ve lived in have been in fairly new complexes in suburban type settings and have had their own heating and air conditioning units with an individual thermostat. These have been in typically two-story buildings with each apartment having its own entrance from the outside and having a campus-like setting.
Quite possibly, it wasn’t that hot since heat rises. We used to live in the first floor of a house converted into a 2-flat apartment, and there was only one furnace for both floors. It had huge ceilings, and heat rises, so we’d be chilly downstairs but the upstairs tenant (my husband’s sister) would be opening windows. This happened for a while before she even said anything. We asked if she could hold back on sending cold down to us through the shared vents, etc. and see if maybe she could close some vents instead. :smack: (Yes, that did help.)
I am in Canada (Edmonton, Alberta specifically), so maybe things are different south of the border, but my current and my previous apartments had power included in the rent (in the one before that I did have to pay for power seperately, so I was a little more conscientous about saving power). Every apartment I have ever lived in has had a thermostat in the apartment, but when it’s -20C outside (-4F for you primitive people down there) all of them have been too cold for my liking inside. However, since I am not paying for power separately I just have 3 1500 watt space heaters handy and turn on one or more of them as needed (needless to say I put them on separate electrical circuits if I have more than one on at once).
It’s going to vary by apartment. My sisters and I have had a variety of apartments in the town where I currently live, and each one was different. If you have a chance, ask a tenant (not the landlord) about it before you sign a lease.
For example, my sister lived in an apartment building where you could ostensibly control the temperature with a thermostat, but because of the nature of the building’s steam heating system, it was always boiling hot in her apartment. In basement apartments, it can often be difficult to get the place as warm as you would like. Et cetera.
It totally depends on the unit. In most modern buildings where you pay for your own heat and electricity, the sky’s the limit. But there are exceptions. In an apartment where heat is included in the rent, the landlord often removes the thermostat from his tenants’ direct control (you could still get a space heater, though). There are also some buildings that have a shared boiler or something, where you can’t control the temperature at all.
At first reading, I thought the OP was asking the stupidest question I’ve ever heard. After reading the other replies, I can see that it’s not. Apparently, I have only ever lived in apartments where I had control over the temps. Therefore, the only real answer is: as you are looking at apartments, ask what kind of heating/cooling system there is. If you see a thermostat on the wall, chances are good that you’ll get to control the temp. If you don’t and it turns out you get heat from steam pipes or some nonsense, then I guess you’ll know to keep looking.
In New York City, it’s very typical to live in a steam heat building where you do not control your own temp, and the cost of the heat is included in your rent. There’s a whole formula that landlords are expected to adhere to in order to meet certain minimum indoor temperatures based on outside temperatures and time of year (although there are always horror stories about landlords who abuse this). In case you’re wondering, these apartment buildings are in a wide range of price levels, so it includes some very nice, highly desirable apartments too. (I get the impression that in some cities, this is more of a student apt/low rent/sketchy situation, but that is not the case in NYC.)
Similar to stories mentioned upthread, in reality this can result in very uneven temps from unit to unit in the same building, depending on level and what direction they are facing. I’ve been in apartments where we spent all winter with the windows open, and it still felt like a sauna, and others where we always had to have heavy sweaters and socks.