Must We Follow City Heating Rules if the Apartments Are Too Hot?

If you want to live in a cold apartment then you should move into Stuyvesant Town or Peter Cooper Village! Tenants BEG for heat like Oliver Twist begging for a dollop more gruel. And, just like Oliver Twist, are denied. Some tenants complain of too much heat, but the majority freeze their buns off.

It is said that Nancy Reagan used to have the White House living quarters' air conditioning turned to super-cold in the summer time so she could have a cosy fire.

I have lived in many NYC apartments of the last 20 years. I am finally in one that has a thermostat I control, in fact 2 separate thermostats. In my past apartments there was either too much heat or not enough, and I had to open and close my windows to adjust the heat. Such a tremendous waste of resources, so much so that I think we should pass a law to regulate such a tremendous waste.

I much prefer to keep my home cool, and cooler at night. Sweaters and heavy blankets keeper me warm and cozy. When I stay at my parents' home (often, as I help care for a sick family member), I find it necessary to open a window in the bedroom where I sleep because they prefer it so much warmer than I'm used to. Thankfully, there's no thermostat in the room and I keep the door closed, so I don't feel bad about wasting their money as the rest of the house is maintained at a much higher temperature than I prefer. I sometimes miss the city (although not any of the co-ops I lived in!) but love having my own little home, where I make the rules.

What a waste of energy. It would be great to have renters pay for their own heat. If this occurred then all of a sudden renters would want less heat on a daily basis. Now they open windows as landlords lose money from heating costs even on days when the temperatures 55 to 65. Landlords should only have to provide hot water, and an additional charge should be paid by renters for their heat. Or heat should only have to be provided from Thanksgiving to April first. NYC has landlords turn the heat on In October until the end of April. another question which is never answered is if it is healthy to live with heat from natural gas or heating oil for over six months. October, November, December, January, February, March , April. Stop the nonsense. December first to April first would cut down on the demand for heat. get a freezing day in October, provide your own heat. Watch the demand for natural gas and heating oil collapse. buy a few electric heaters if yo need heat in October, and November. Should not be provided by landlords until after Thanksgiving until April first.

When my apartment gets overheated due to the boiler working overtime, I toss blankets over the radiators. This considerably reduces the amount of heat released into the room, and saves steam for neigbors with northern exposures, without sending heat (and money) out the windows. It's a simple, effective, and environmentally sound solution. You can "fine tune" the heat by exposing as much of the radiator as you need to get comfortable.

i have the opposite, rare for nyc problem - my apt is too cold, especially at night. for whatever reason apts are required by law to be warmer in the day time (when i am usually not there, brilliant). at night, when i am actually there, and it's colder outside, it is not required to be as warm, and thus our landlord barely gives us any heat late pm. it's the stupidest law! i dont need heat blasting in the morning when i am heading out to go to work, i need it at 1am, 3am, etc ...

To this New Yorker the 2017 law requiring increased temperatures in apartments at night during the heating season was well intentioned but misguided because, for all buildings in compliance, the result is increased fuel consumption, increased fuel costs and increased CO2 emissions at a time when the Mayor is touting efforts to decrease CO2 emissions from buildings in the City. The law does not address the real problem of greedy landlords that do not provide sufficient and required heat. Nighttime temperatures in apartments of 55 degrees was fine in New York City seemingly forever. Perhaps it's a good idea to go back to how it was.

My building often had tenants at odds with each other. Those on the west side of the building were subjected to westerly winds which made their apartments frigid. Those facing other directions were too warm and kept windows open. Replacement of the old windows with modern double-glazed windows helped to greatly lessen the difference. But I still find the temperature too high and have turned off the radiators in three rooms. The standpipe in the bathroom remains behind my control.

Ummm -- "Ask Real Estate" visited this issue abck in April of this year -- "Can My Building Turn Off the Heat in April? Apartment buildings in New York don’t get to decide when it’s time to switch from heat to air-conditioning." -- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/realestate/heating-rules-in-new-york-city.html#commentsContainer And - the comments section is still open over there - This is a very contentious issue - complicated by people's subjective standards of personal comfort - along with what is often a misunderstanding - if not outright ignorance - of the strict NYC Housing Regulations regarding heat -- Go back abd read the comments from the April article to see how people think and feel about this issue - Also - While the attorney cited in this article claims to "...have a fundamental belief in the ‘home rule’ process...If there’s a unanimous agreement by the shareholders, then they can do this. No harm. No foul.” -- The attorney cited in the previous article from last April says, quite clearly - “Compliance with these requirements is mandatory and unconditional,” -- I live with this issue myself - where my wife complains about being too hot and stuffy in our apartment -- while I walk around (and sleep) in sweat pants, socks and a waffle shirt during the winter months -- À chacun son goût...

It would seem to me that the cost did not go up by 10,000 because the temperature requirements went up by seven degrees at night. The coop should contact a good heating contractor. They will need to inspect the entire building to discover what came be done to lower the fuel cost. You would be amazed how much can be saved. I learned a lot myself from the web site https://heatinghelp.com

Never understood why the thermostat was set higher during the day and lower at night. It's just awful waking up when your place is cold, more so than going to bed that way when the place has presumably held the day's heat.

As I understand, the problem is the temperature too high during the HEATING season, i.e., during the winter. If the minimum temp setting of 62 F is nothing but wishful thinking, the fault must be with the building construction and/or heating system. In our stand-alone modest house, the winter temp is maintained at 68 F (at my wife's insistence, she hates when it is higher in the winter), and at 71 F during the summer (at my insistence, although my wife would be ready to live in a summer heat of 80 F).

A typical fault of steam heating systems is poor distribution of heat. In my 6 story building, many tenants on the lower floors have their radiators turned off while the top floor may be cool, depending on wind direction, with all radiators turned on. Apartment house boilers typically do not have a temperature setting, but rather a selection of cycle programs on a microprocessor "heat timer." The boiler is activated by an outdoor temperature sensor. Cycles increase in length as the outdoor temperature declines so that the boiler is on roughly half the time at freezing and continuously around 15F or so. The steam is always the same temperature when it comes up in the common one-pipe system. There are indoor sensor systems sold that are intended to be placed on the top floor. These prevent the boiler from turning on if the room temperature is too high. However, they are not so useful for turning on the boiler. Outdoor sensors anticipate the need for heat and cause the boiler to send it up just in time. Large boilers are not instant on devices and the building would become too cold if the system was based on an indoor sensor as found in suburban houses. I would work with the super to make adjustments so the proper temperature could be reached in the coolest unit.