Okay, I’m not totally sure of how this stuff works, so maybe someone here can tell me what the deal is. I’ve never lived in a house with a similar heating situation before, so I’m curious.
My room mate and I are trying to figure out what is up with our heating. We have radiators, and what, I assume is a central boiler. The point is that we couldn’t turn on our heat until a few months ago, although it was cold. That seems to tell me that it’s done by a central boiler. Our energy bill is by Keyspan for heat, I believe.
Last place I lived, was in Denmark. Apparently over there, they check out some kind of tamperproof thing attached to all of the radiators which gives them some kind of reading of the energy usage. We obviously don’t have that here, I believe. We have a central thermostat that controls all of the radiators.
We live on the top floor of the apartment, so it’s kind of normal, I believe to not get the best heat. To get the room up to 70 degrees you need to have the thermostat on 78 or so.
My question is, how does Keyspan measure our energy usage? Do they have some kind of device attached to the pipes leading to our house that measure the heat that passes at some stage?
I’m from the South, where everyone normally has central AC and that always includes heat, so I’ve never dealt with this before. I was thinking of getting one of those oil-filled radiators, but I’ve heard that they are actually quite expensive to run.
So I guess the point is this. Is it possible we are getting charged for leaving the thermostat on 80 while not actually having the room at 80 degrees? How do the measure all of this stuff?
Engineer here, I hope you get an answer, as I am very curious. I had a room for several months in Vienna in a complex with centralized steam heat. I never could work out how it was metered (but it certainly was) nor even come up with a fair way to do that.
Electric heat is very expensive. In terms of cost per amount of energy, it’s significantly more expensive than any fossil fuel. Here’s a cite (though it is from a propane industry site, so there’ll be a little bias). So unless you are being grossly overcharged, it’ll probably still be cheaper than using electric space heaters more than occasionally.
Do you pay your heating bill as part of your rent? If so, it is highly unlikely that each apartment is metered separately. The landlord is likely allocating each tenant the overall cost of heating, and you likely have a central boiler. You and your fellow tenants only incentive to keep thermostats low is to avoid a rent increase due to high heating costs.
If you pay your utility bill separately—directly to a utility---- you are being metered separately and are paying for your own individual use. If this is the case, it may not be a central boiler, but individual boilers for each unit. (not too common, and very uncommon if there are more than 2-4 units in the building.)
I don’t have it with me at the moment, but perhaps I will later. (and will post it)
We calculate the “cost per million Btus” every year or so for our customers. The latest one we did showed Propane the highest. That cite looks like they used third party figures (allthough they may have looked for cites that were most favorable to the LP industry) so maybe they weren’t being shady. (they used $1.87/gal for example, significantly cheaper than it can be bought here in SW Ohio)
At any rate, the cost will flucuate as prices for energy flucuate. Historically, electric was the most expensive, followed by Oil and Liquid Propane and lastly Natural Gas; with heat pumps being significantly cheaper than all the others.
This is not universally true any longer, and we’ve seen LP more expensive than electric, and NG approach the cost of oil/LP.
Our energy usage isn’t included in the rent. So either they have some way of knowing, or we are actually using separate boilers, which would mean that leaving the thermostat on 80 would cost us more. We have a smaller building. Each floor is a three-bedroom apartment, and there are 4 apartments in the building, so it would fit the separate boiler candidate.
Another data point. I would turn the thermostat all the way up, and the steam wouldn’t be flowing at all times. I could check this by turning the valve off on a radiator. It would make a noise when it was flowing, and nothing when it wasn’t flowing. If we had a seperate boiler, wouldn’t it always be on if we had the thermostat set to 90?
In a “multiple dwelling” in Brooklyn, that is a a dwelling with at least three units, under Multiple Dwelling Law section 79, the landlord is required to provide heat from November 1 to April 31 of at least 68 degrees from 6 am to 10 pm and 55 degrees from 10 pm to 6 am.
Typically, the building will have a gas or oil central boiler to provide heat to the radiators, which is operated at the expense of the landlord. Depending on the lease, residential Tenants may be billed for electric and (cooking) gas used at the apartment, but would not be charged for the energy cost of heating. I would be very surprised if a Keyspan bill covered anything more than gas and electric consumed in the apartment. It would be exceedingly unusual (if it is even possible) for there to be any sort of measurement or billing for residential heat consumed through a radiator.
If any New York City resident has questions about the requirements or how they may apply – including whether a landlord is providing the legally required amount of heat – call New York City’s information number, 311.
(I am not your lawyer, but providing general information about heat requirements and practices in New York City. If you have particular questions, please contact a qualified professional.)
I have to agree that this jibes with my experience as a New York City renter. We don’t pay for heat (central steam), just electricity+gas. In fact, we don’t have thermostat either - the heat always comes up on full blast and we open a window if we want it to be cooler. I’m pretty sure my parents’ tenants (central steam) have heat included as well.
BTW, it would be more typical for an upper floor to be too hot rather than unusually cold – heat rises and all that.
It is not too difficult to submeter hot water or steam usage for individual tenants in commercial or residential buildings. Here is a link to one type of btu meter that costs just over $500. Many others are available. Where a tenant is individually metered, the property owner either bills each tenant a prorated amount of the total building’s energy costs or charges a flat per MbtuH or KW rate that includes the cost of energy plus administrative costs. In the more sophisticated setups, all of the meters are networked to a central monitoring location which keeps track of each tenant’s usage. In really sophisticated setups, the central monitoring system actually generates the monthly billing for each tenant automatically.
For buildings with a central heating system that is not sub-metered, a common approach is to divide the total costs among the tenants on a per square foot basis. In this instance, the tenant that uses the least energy is penalized by paying a for portion of the energy use of the other tenants, while the ones who use the most energy are rewarded by paying for less than they actually consume.
The way to find out about your situation is to ask the landlord.
Our hot water went out today, so I ventured down into the basement for the first time tonight. I didn’t know that it wasn’t locked, otherwise I would have checked it out before posting this thread. Anyway, when I went down, it was obvious what the situation was. I saw 4 seperate hot water heaters, and then I saw 4 seperate other types of units that must have been for the heating. So we would have to pay separately, I’d think. I forgot to add, that our building was renovated within the last 5 years or so, so it was all added then.
I would recommend that in lieu of oil filled heaters, you go with infrared panels. We got our roommate a cozy legs and she can move it from under her desk to wall mounted dependong on if she is sitting at her desk or laying in bed. I can tell you that the fucking hot water baseboard heaters are goatfelchinly useless. The only heat from them comes if you are sitting pretty much on top of them, otherwise it is fucking freezing. The bedrooms NEVER heat up. The living room gets vaguely heated. If we set the thermostat to 90 it may get to 70 in the house, yet water burbles merrily through them, it just never distributes. We are considering the next windfall we get installing the water tubes in the floor.
I think the cozy legs running all day might cost in the range of .25$ a day, about the same as a 100 watt light bulb. I know the little oil filled heater we have in the bathroom costs way more than that after all 3 of us run it during our morning showers. Check out the nice larger ceiling panel radiant heaters… I saw the commercial ones at a local hardware store as the office heat, very toasty and comfortable, and I seriously doubt a little hole in the wall mom n pop hardware store would go for teh most expensive form of heating…so it must be about as reasonable in power use as the cozy legs.
IME a steam boiler can cycle on and off even if the thermostat hasn’t reached the desired temperature. There is a safety shutoff, for example, if the steam pressure rises above a certain amount. The furnace will shut off and won’t come back on until the pressure has dropped below that cutoff point.
I recommend you contact Keyspan to find out the criteria they use to bill you. Are you separately billed for the energy you alone use or is the energy cost of the whole building just divided up equally?