I own a condo and in theory all of our units are heated seperatly. Once I had moved out of my condo over the winter and left the heat off. I was reling on the heat from the appartment above and below me to keep everything from freezing. I got a call from the upstairs neighbor asking if I could turn the heat on and that he would pay for half of the cost since he couldn’t warm his apartment without extra heat coming from mine.
I guess I’ll join the corus of “it depends”.
My wife and I lived on the top (third) floor of an older apartment building when we were first married. The building had steam heat, and the cost of heating was included in our rent.
To a certain extent, we could regulate the heat in our apartment, by opening or closing the valves for the radiators in the various rooms. But, on the whole, we didn’t have to – it was usually* so warm in that apartment during the winter that we could easily go around in short-sleeved shirts in the apartment (likely due to both “heat rising” and the people in the apartments below us keeping their apartments very warm). We, too, often had to crack a window or two to keep our apartment from becoming too warm.
I can imagine how frustrating that would be. Ours were self-contained apartments with separate heating and air conditioning systems for each unit. We each paid our own utilities bills separate from rent. Their apartment may have been very cold, due to being on the ground floor, but there was nothing we could to prevent their heat from rising into out apartment and it was stifling at times. Opening the doors and windows was really our only hope for comfort.
But are you using only the heater, or supplementing with other sources? In any case, the problem isn’t that it’s an apartment: it’s that the heating system is less powerful than you’d like - or the insulation blows.
I keep my thermostat at 16ºC most of the time, raise it up to 22ºC when I’m hitting the shower. If my downstairs neighbor (aka “he who likes being in his underwear when there’s snow outside”) is home, his heating alone keeps my apartment at 21ºC. OTOH my mother’s house has central hot-water heating; they have just renovated the heater, and now when it’s on (twice a day, at noonish and dinner-timish) the different flats get between 24ºC (the lowest ones, closest to the heater) and 20ºC; when it’s not on, most rooms get closed off and the space heaters get switched on.
That’s what I’m afraid of, I knew a friend who lived in apartment that had a thermostat that you could set to whatever you want but he was always complaining that it wasent warm enough and he had to run his oven alot to warm it up. How common is this?
I don’t think there is any way to know. The whole heating setup is going to depend on a multitude of factors: Type of heating, who controls it, who pays for it, how old the building is, how well insulated it is, how cheap the landlord is, what floor you are on, etc. There may be some broad regional trends, but each building is going to be different. I think your best bet is to hang out in a public and ask residents about the building. I know you could achieve your goal (for free!) in my building, but the same may not be true in the building next door.
I’d have to look at my lease for the maximum allowable temperature, but I know it’s in there. I know I’m required to keep the place at 45 degrees or above (presumably to keep pipes from freezing).
Space heaters are explicitly forbidden in my apartment complex (presumably due to fire risk).
It depends on the apartment. I’ve lived in buildings where the heat was set by the building superintendent, and others where you controlled your own heat. Since it’s an important issue to you I suggest you mention it when you are shopping for a unit to rent.
Also, it’s important to know if the heat is included in the rent, or if you pay for your own heat. I’ve encountered both methods of doing things.
Mine would never go near 45 even if I never turned on the heat, because of the surrounding units. In fact, I almost never have to turn on the heat in my room no matter how cold it gets outside (and I have about the lightest bedding and pajamas I can find), and the bathroom attached to my room has a single switch that controls both the vent and the heat lamp (wtf kind of sense does that make?) so I took the light bulb out, and would never dream of going into the bathroom without turning on the vent. It’s hot and stuffy enough even with it on, no matter how cold it is outside. A heat lamp?? Are they trying to kill me?
Unfortunately for me, I think because my room is next to a “telecom room”, whatever that means in an apartment complex, my bedroom and bathroom are always quite a bit warmer than the rest of the apartment. I hate it. And one other apartment I’ve lived in was deathly hot, always. My electric bill was so low there (we don’t have AC here, so it was low year-round, but miserable). If someone wants a warm apartment, they can be found!
I’d guess that it’s a closet or small room with the junction boxes for the complex’s phone, cable TV, and / or internet lines. Might be independently heated, or it might just throw off heat on its own, if there’s computer equipment in there.
From the outside, it doesn’t look small though, it looks pretty big (it’s on a corner)! And I think there’s one on each floor. I haven’t checked every floor, but there is definitely more than one.
The rooms bordering it are at *least *10 degrees hotter than the rest of my apartment, and the whole place is bordered on 5 sides (including above and below) by other units and an indoor hallway. What the heck is going on in that room?
Electrical resistance.
No, really - electricity traveling through wires/cables/computers/whatever always meets some resistance (because we don’t have room temperature superconductors) and that generates heat. If you have a room full of electrical equipment you’ll have heat generated by that equipment.
What did your friend define as “warm enough”? I’m happy to wear a sweater in the house; my downstairs neighbor, well, like I said, you knock on his door in January with a couple feet of snow outside and he answers in his underwear. I found my Madrid studio a bitch because the heaters just weren’t set up properly and the insulation blew (in theory the heating system was the same as for my Glasgow studio, but the one in Glasgow worked much better despite being about 60 years older) - he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes there.
I can’t imagine how badly insulated a place would have to be to be occupied and have the indoor temps be less than 45 degrees. It was that warm in the morning several days into a winter power failure even when the fire in the fire place - the sole source of heat that week - had gone out hours before overnight.
I was too young the last time I lived in an apartment to remember specifics about heating, but my dorm in college didn’t charge us separately for heat, and as a first floor resident I kept the radiator in my room shut off 90% of the time because so much heat rose up from the rooms below. And yes, at times I opened the window, even in January or February.
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? We rented an apartment in a 60 year old complex, heated with steam heat from a shared boiler. Thermostat was on the wall. A year later, the complex went condo, and we bought our unit. Part of the changeover was to have the thermostat replaced. We asked why they were replacing a fairly new thermostat, and we were told that the old one didn’t actually do anything. It was mostly window dressing, to make renters feel like they had some control.
Sadly, you probably won’t be warm no matter what the temp is set to. Most apartments have crap insulation. If you don’t have good insulation the cold walls will pull the heat from your body and you’ll feel cold. It’s some physics thing. I’ve forgot what it’s called.
Yes.
Now I live in NJ, but my apartment experience comes from NYC. It was always my assumption that rental units were built for ease of maintenance. Better to maintain a single boiler than a furnace for every unit.
Another piece of advice for the OP is to get a unit facing south. Much warmer.
ha, why is he paying for only half the cost ?
Does he expect you to be paid by your other neighbors too ?
but yeah, if your apartment is cold then your ceiling is making his floor cold… sucking heat out…(and then to your walls and to the outside…) If your apartment is warmed, he doesn’t loose heat to your apartment. no flow through the floor.
I live in a New York City apartment and we have steam heat. It’s on when the boiler is on, and off when it’s off. It all depends on the temperatures outside. I have zero control over it (other than being able to just turn it off in my bedroom when it gets too hot.)