yeah, you are probably the only one who thinks it is stealing. Is the fact I have a dog stealing oxygen from you? I have a stand alone home, is the rest of the universe stealing heat from me? It is up to me to insulate, after that, any heat that escapes is for the taking. It is not like the guy is drilling a hole into the apartment above him and sucking the heat out. That would be stealing in my unqualified meaningless opinion.
When I first moved to my current town (in Washington State), I lived in an apartment on the third floor (of three). We never turned on the heat - the heat rising from the apartments below and from the sides did just fine. (Of course, that first winter was a pretty mild one.)
I’m not paying for oxygen. If I were, and if you created a vaccum in your general area which pulled air that I paid for into your general vicinity, then you’d be stealing.
I’ve also had the “lucky” third floor apartments where we had to open the windows in January and turn all our radiators off because our neighbors’ heat was overheating us. But, as I said before, there was no intent to take something someone else paid for, it was an attempt to get rid of a “gift” we didn’t want. Furthermore, our actions didn’t cause their cost to rise (no one in the building paid for heat, except the landlord who chose not to resolve our overheating issues.)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hanging on to this soap box for dear life. This is most definitely a venial sin, and probably not worth getting panties in a twist over in real life. But the OP asked for ethical opinions, and I stand by mine so far.
Again, how is this different from stealing wireless internet?
I don’t know if I’d call it stealing or not, but I live on a top floor condo, and prior to purchasing it this past May, I lived in a top floor apartment building.
I always had problems with the apartment being too warm in the summer and I didn’t have to turn the heat up very high in the winter except during the spring cold snap.
It appears as if my condo has the same issues. It’s not something that I plan on, or do on purpose, it’s just a condition of living where the heat rises. I don’t know that I’d call it stealing even if a person did it on purpose, though I don’t know if keeping it on 58 will cause the surrounding condos to keep his condo a comfy temp or not.
Unfortunately, my previous apartment didn’t have a normal thermostat, it had this annoying heated water thingie that you had to physically turn up and down based upon whether you were too cold or hot. I had a store purchased stand-alone thermometer in the apartment just to see what the inside temp was though and it seemed to stay at the mid 70s or above most of the time, (except during that cold snap) regardless of how far down the heat was, unless I opened the window.
Both my former apartment and my current condo were on the top floor, but my apartment was exposed on three outside walls, my condo is only exposed on one outside wall and a small section of another. It hasn’t gotten cold enough to use the heat very much yet, so it remains to be seen how much it will “Help” my heating bill by living on the top floor and being surrounded on 2 and 2/3rds sides by other condos.
We’ve lived in two condos, both on upper floors, both heated by electric baseboard heat. We hardly ever–maybe once or twice a year, if that–turned on the heat. Maybe I like it a bit cooler than normal, but the suites seemed to stay at a comfortable temperature without touching the heat. If anything, it would be too warm, and I would open a window. I never considered it “stealing” from the neighbours by not turning on our heat, just a by-product of being surrounded by other units beside, above, and below. I don’t consider the fact that it didn’t get cool enough in our condo to warrent turning on the baseboard heat an instance of theft from our neighbours. I have no idea what temperature they kept their units at; it never even occurred to me to wonder.
For those who think it’s stealing-what if your neighbors liked their heat up so high that turning yours on made your own space far too warm? Is it then “stealing” to not turn yours on?
Think of it that way.
My house, which has some storm windows, a door that’s not very tight, and a fireplace, and is exposed on 5 sides, and has poor insulation on about 1/3 of the roof, doesn’t drop lower than 49 when it’s freezing outside, unless it’s consistently that cold for days on end. Hanging blankets over the door, fireplace, and windows increases inside temperature to around 53-55 (I assume it cuts the drafts). I often leave the temp at 58-60 and wear a fleece hat and vest if I’m alone in the house because the forced-air heating system is too dry for my sinuses, and I just don’t like to use the energy if I don’t need it. My partner likes the house rather warmer. The difference in the electric bill is pretty negligible. This suggests to me that a) your friend won’t save very much money, and b) your friends’ neighbors are going to spend a negligible amount to compensate for his decision. I think there’s an interesting ethical argument to be had about the intent to cause neighbors to compensate for the temperature differential vs the intent to save money by not heating to a normal US household temperature.
I already did, twice:
The difference between an overheated apartment (or condo) where you turn your own heat off and open a window is that you neighbor is giving you heat you don’t want and there’s nothing else to do about it and remain comfortable. The OP’s friend’s *intent *is different - it’s to take something someone else is paying for without their prior knowledge or consent.
**DocCathode **and I make two.
I agree that it’s the intent that matters (if anything does.) Keeping your thermometer low because that’s how you like it is fine. Keeping your heat off because you are already too warm without it is fine. Deliberately planning to have your apartment heated by mooching off your neighbors…not so fine.
Similar example: if you go to a fast food place and end up with a handful of extra packets of ketchup on your table, I don’t see anything wrong with taking them home instead of throwing them away. On the other hand, if you DELIBERATELY grab a bunch of extra packets so as to take them home and save money on buying ketchup…that’s stealing. Even if it’s the exact same number of extras as the first case.
OTOH, this ‘heat mooching’ is not an egregious enough matter than I’m going to hassle my friend over it. It just made me go ‘hmmmm.’
What’s that old rule? Something like, don’t do something that would create problems if everyone did it?
Yes, absolutely. Most people don’t realise how much of their disposable income leaks away in those $20-here, $10-there amounts.
That’s not particularly cold. If he gets a little chilly he can simply wear more clothes.
If the neighbours don’t like what he’s doing they can turn their thermostats down too. I have to say that every time I go to Europe or the US in or near winter I find almost all indoor spaces heated to a ridiculous degree; the same temperature in summer and they turn on the AC! I don’t get it.
He’s not taking anything.
He’s not venturing into anyone else’s space.
He has no legal obligation to heat his space (in the context of more or less matching what the neighbors are doing).
I don’t see how a persuasive, much less convincing or compelling, argument can be made that he has a moral or ethical obligation to do it.
I find it almost laughable that the EXACT SAME BEHAVIOR is considered acceptable with one motivation but despicable with another. You have a situation where someone is in his own space and through no effort of his own receives something that is sent to him, and whether or not it’s labeled stealing is dependent upon whether or not he wants that which is sent? Try defending that notion in court sometime. Or save yourself the trouble - it’s a ridiculous distinction.
It is opportunistic. While certainly not altruistic, opportunistic is a far, far cry from larcenous.
When my sister lived in a townhouse a couple of years back, her gas bills were around $30 per month in the winter. There, she only had two shared walls; the front, back, and top of her unit were hers. So I’m assuming that costs in a condo surrounded on 5 sides would be even less. Have natural gas prices risen enough in the past few years that this would no longer be reasonable?
Back to the OP’s situation, if the neighbors didn’t like it, they could take measures to decrease the heat leakage. They could turn their own heat down, or they could hang tapestries on the walls, or have extra insulation put into the wall spaces. In fact, they have pretty much the same options for stopping heat flow out of their home that someone living in a standalone house would have. They are still benefitting over having a standalone house by having the OP’s friend sharing a wall from them; under his plan, they’re just not benefitting as much by it. Therefore, there’s no theft.
Well lets take this further, you like it cold and your neighbor likes it hot. He turns his heat up to 100F, which heats your space to 75F so you turn on your a/c, are you stealing from each other?
The wireless internet stealing thing is complicated because you are activaly communicating with your neighbors router, which you are not authorized to do.
Heat doesn’t work like this, it just sort of seaks it’s own level of tempature. The neighbor is responsible for containing their heat, and MAY be responsible if too much escapes and you have to deal with unwanted heat.
Now I see nothing wrong with passive heating. Now if he does thing to activally heat his apartme nt, like having a fan blow against a heated wall, leaving the door to the hall open to take heat from the hallway, remove weatherstrpping from that door, or produce negative pressure to force heated air from the nearby units to heat his space, I’d say it’s scummy and may be stealing.
Another third floor heat stealer here who also prefers the house to be on the “very cool” side of things. While I certainly don’t control the laws of physics (yet) maybe it works out for the neighbors during the summer when all my cold air falls down into their apartments.
Simple solutions to complex problems. I salute you!
I think this bears repeating.
I think any savings he’s gonna get by getting heated by the neighbors he’s getting already.
Let’s say by not turning his heat on at all the surrounding condos will heat him up to 65 degrees. If he now sets him thermostat at 65 his heat should never come on anyway. Is he stealing from them?
If he sets his thermostat at 70 it will kick on but he’ll only be paying to heat his condo up by 5 degrees.
I guess my point is that any “heat” he’s stealing from the neighbors he’s already doing regardless of whether he sets his thermostat at 50 or 70. How could he prevent it?
This worked for me in college some. The guy downstairs was from Pakistan and like his place very warm. My floor was comfortably warm all winter. Agreed, this was in Alabama so it never got freezing cold but it worked well enough.
Don’t forget to put plastic on the windows for winter. I have single-pane windows so I taped the seams and put that shrinky plastic over them. I did this last year and knocked at least $50/month off my $250 bill. Our place leaks like a sieve.