Is 'underheating' your condo an offense against the neighbor units?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a friend who is trying to get his financial house in order. As in, after some years of living over his income, he’s got maxed out credit cards on top of a big consolidation loan that took care of the previously maxed out credit cards, a fully mortgaged condo (given the current condo market, it’s like he has negative equity in the condo), plus about 20 thou in student loans. On the bright side, he finally has a job with a stable company who seems to like him and offers good prospects for advancement.

As with many of the newly reformed, he seems (to me) to be swinging too far to the other side of the line. As in, not only is he doing ‘ordinary’ frugal things like brown bagging lunches most of the time, but doing things that, well, involve a lot of inconvenience for not very much saved money. Like he makes a big deal out of reading a particular magazine at the library, and fumes over how many trips he sometimes has to make before he catches a particular issue available-- is that really worth saving, what, $19.95 a year?

Anyway, he told me about his latest ‘savings’ plan: he is going to keep his thermometer set at 58 degrees all winter. Not ‘turn it down at night’, leave it at 58 degrees all the time. <brrrrrrrr>

See, the units above and below and on both sides of his own are occupied and heated, plus there’s a corridor that runs the length of the interior side, which means means his unit is only exposed to the outdoor temperature on one wall.

His theory is that enough heat will ‘leak through’ from the surrounding heated areas to keep his unit warmer than 58, so he won’t incur any heating costs at all.

I don’t know if this will work or not – I’ve never heard of anyone doing it – but it seems to me that if he is getting his heat through the walls/floor/ceiling, then he is cooling those surfaces off for the people on the other sides, and thus making them spend more on their heating costs.

IOW, I think he is proposing to ‘steal’ from his neighbors, even if they won’t ever know he’s doing it. He disagrees: says it’s no different from having an unoccupied unit there, and I couldn’t say that “nobody” was stealing from the neighbors.

What do you think?

2

I think that when his neighbors set their thermostats, they are making a conscious decision to pay whatever the cost may be to keep their condo at that temperature. I really can’t see how sharing walls with other people makes one obligated to keep them toasty during the winter. If their heating bills go up because he isn’t heating his place, then they need to deal with it themselves. After all, millions of people live in detached houses, and get NO overflow heat at all.

I doubt that your friend will incur zero heating costs, though. He’d better have very well insulated windows.

3

Actually, I think that’s a rather clever idea. The temperature differential isn’t that great unless his neighbors keep their units at 90° all the time and it’s -30° outside. You didn’t mention where you live, so I don’t know what the average winter temperature is. But with the average amount of insulation in the walls and floors, there isn’t going to be that much heat transfer between units. Your friend is just taking asvantage of his physical position to save some money. Not much, but maybe a little.

4

Pesonally I think you have too much time on your hands, and he is going to be colder that he thinks, and will bump the t-stat before the winter is over.

5

I suspect that your friend is going to be disappointed with his overall savings (and the faint numbness in his extremities), but I don’t think he’s doing anything really wrong.

I live in a second floor apartment in a four apartment house. My downstairs neighbor hardly ever turns his heat above 62 degrees. No need. I like *my * place toasty, and my heat travels up through the pipes in the walls of his apartment. That’s hardly his fault, and I don’t begrude him that luck. On the other hand, his apartment is liveable under this arrangement, but not exactly cozy. That’s the tradeoff he’s willing to make. He doesn’t owe it to me to keep his heat turned up any more than I owe it to him. When I go on vacation, he has the choice to either turn his heat up or freeze.

6

My apartment lease specifies that I must keep my apartment no lower than 45 degrees. If I set my thermistat at 46, I haven’t violated the terms of my lease. I usually keep my apartment at 60 during the winter, not only due to heating costs, but because I like it at 60.

7

When Suburban Plankton and I were first married, we lived in an upper floor apartment. The downstairs neighbors kept their apartment so well heated, not only did we not have to turn our heat on, but we would often have to open windows for it to be comfortable. So depending on how warm his neighbors like it, it could work out for him.

8

Interesting - my condo is the same as your friends and I almost NEVER turn on the heat.

Like, almost never - and it never gets below 21 in here - the reason I don’t turn it on is because I like it kind of cold - I sleep with my window open, even in winter when it’s -40.

Now, when it IS winter and it’s -40, I usually turn the thermostat up to about 20, and then turn it down when it warms up outside.

Honestly, it never occured to me that I was stealing heat from my neighbours. Secondly, I don’t actually think that I save that much money, but maybe.

9

My house is heated by propane, and propane is expensive. (Last winter it cost about $140/month.) I set my thermostat at 65ºF. I turned it off when I went to bed and used an electric blanket (usually set on 2 or 3). Last spring I put in new, efficient double-glazed double French doors in back to replace the single-glazed ones in their wooden frames, and did the same to the front door. Eventually I’ll do the same to the windows. It will be expensive in the short run (it cost a kilobuck to do the doors, and will cost about five kilobucks to do the windows), but it’s better than seeing the gauge read 5% and falling and wondering when the propane guy will arrive.

I agree with the people who said that it’s up to the neighbours to decide how much they want to spend on heat. The friend didn’t build the condos and is only using the resources that are there. Given that newer buildings are usually better insulated than older ones, I also agree that he probably won’t get that much heat coming through the walls. And why keep the heater on at night? He’s heating a place that’s not being used, while he has blankets to keep him warm while he sleeps. (Gads, I’m channelling Scrooge. ‘These are garments… they last indefinitely. Coal burns…’) Of course it depends on how quickly the place cools, how long it takes to heat it back to 58ºF, and if heated at night how long he sleeps.

10

Since he owns the unit, he has the right to keep it at whatever temperature he jolly well choses. If his neighbors don’t like him “stealing” from them, their only option is to insulate their units so no heat escapes into his.

Life is not always fair.

11

What if he were actually most comfortable at 58 degrees? OK, it’s a bit of a stretch, but there are actually a few folks who like it that cold. Would he be obliged to keep his unit uncomfortably (to him) warm, just to help out the neighbors who like to keep it at 90?

And (provided he doesn’t mind the cool) his scheme will probably work. Most condos I’ve seen have well-insulated exterior walls with small windows, and considerably less, if any, insulation in between units. Plus, there’s a lot more surface area exposed to interior areas than to the outside. At a rough guesstimate, his unit’s temperatures won’t drop more than a few degrees (perhaps 3-5) below the neighbors’, even in the dead of winter.

On the other hand, for much the same reasons that this will work, it also probably won’t save all that much money. The same factors which make it possible to turn the heat off entirely also mean that it’s pretty cheap to heat a condo up to more typical temperatures. Depending on where he lives, the exact dimensions of his unit, etc, he probably doesn’t spend much more than about $100 a year on heating. On the other hand, every little bit helps, and spending some time with every aspect of his life on max frugality mode should help him figure out exactly what his financial priorities are.

12

That’s interesting. I thought that energy efficiency was paramount in units built in the last 10 or 20 years.

13

!!! You live in Torrence and it cost you $140 a month to heat the place? Holy crap - does that include your water? Or do you have a massive house? I didn’t think it got below about 65 degrees in LA even in February. Or have I missed something?

14

I had some friends growing up who kept the thermostat in their house at 58, in Minnesota, in the winter. And the thermostat was centrally located in the house, while the bedrooms were in the “extremities,” albeit upstairs. It was livable. They did it out of beliefs about conservation, not dire poverty. Your friend may want to invest in some pajamas with the footies. Also, he will appreciate the time he spends reading magazines in the nice, warm library. But seriously, if it can be done in Minnesota it can be done anywhere. And I don’t see any ethical problems unless it violates the terms of any agreement he’s signed.

15

Nothing wrong with that approach, the savings will be in living at a lower tempurature, the effect of heat absorbsion from other units will be negligable. He would save more by getting a programable t-stat. I got one for about 30 clams at Lowes, and let the house drop to about sixty at night, warm up to 70 fifteen minutes before I get up in the morning, Drop back to 60 during the day when everyone is at work or school, and shoot back up to 68 for the evening. Saved me a bit of money, I would guess around thirty to forty dollars a month for DEC-FEB, with no loss of quality of life or comfort. I tried to let it drop to fifty, but I have a lot of tropical fish and was too lazy to get extra heaters for all the tanks, and besides, sometimes one of us has to get from under the covers and go to the room, and sixty is plenty cold when in sleeping atire, or no attire at all.

Strangely enough, I found that during the summer turning the AC off during the day made very little difference, it is easier tokeep the house cool than to let it get hot and get it cool.

16

I live in a 1000sq ft house with a basement and I kept my thermostat at 58 degrees last winter. It’s really not that bad.

If I had nice cozy neighbors stuck all around my exterior walls, I’d have done pretty well. I like your friend’s idea.

Being poor - or trying to get out of massive debt - makes you do weird things. Don’t be too hard on your friend, he’s in a stressful situation.

17

:dubious:

Surely you meant per month, not per year.

18

Really? I’m the only one who thinks the guy is stealing?

For me, the ethical question is answered by the intent: he wants to save on money by turning down his thermostat and heating his unit with his neighbors’ heat. If he liked it at 58, or if he was willing to live in 58 degree heat and just bundle up, that’d be one thing. But he knows (or thinks) that it will stay warmer **because **of his neighbors’ heat. Were he to keep his place warm, their place would not lose (so much) heat to his unit. This isn’t like a hand-me-down coat that he found in the trash - the neighbor would still be making use of the heat if it wasn’t being drawn away from his unit by conduction and convection to a much cooler place.

I don’t see much difference here between this and, say, setting up a bunch of straws at the edge of your neighbor’s lawn and sucking some of his sprinkler’s water into your yard. Sure, it’s not very valuable, but it is water that would have gone to his grass that he’s paying for.

How is this different from stealing your neighbor’s wireless internet?

19

My house in Birch Bay, WA is heated by propane.

20

Ah. Well of course that makes much more sense.