My Glenwood apt is freezing!!!

no, our apartment is usually broiling and thankfully they aren't turning the heat up as high. but the buildings' heating system is messed up so that means about half of the occupants ARE freezing in my building. if I'm comfortable, they're not.

but one out of two of our elevators hasn't been functioning properly for days. i'm not expecting much right now, though.

This conversation is a good counterpoint to "buying makes no sense" - "renting sucks."
having both rented and owned, both propositions come with their set of drawbacks, but I much prefer owning.

are you suggesting that co-ops and condos don't experience the same kind of problems? our brand new elevator broke down almost as often as the one it replaced causing huge animosity between shareholders. AR's situation is somewhat unique.

Have we hit the heat date yet? No steam yet here either. It's 69° but feels colder. This is a co-op but of course none of us want to pay for the oil until we have to.

I'd think newer Glenwood buildings would have heat pumps or four-pipe central so you can heat or cool all year 'round.

From my own experience, problems occur everywhere, but how they dealt with, and at what speed, are very different.

maly, in our Seattle condo the heat control just happened to be in our apartment. the tenants were calling me at all hours to increase the heat. i broiled there as well. in our chelsea condo the building was a system that was turned from heat to air conditioning as of a certain temperature. we had unobstructed southern light. in the spring we broiled and our daughter would have asthma attacks if i opened the windows due to seasonal allergies.

so, due to our daughter's allergies i need controlled radiator heat and a/c available all year long. which i get here, along with free electricity. when it gets ragingly hot i just turn on the air conditioners. better for the humidity levels anyway, if environmentally incorrect.

I have pretty bad allergies as well. Part of the attraction to buy where we are now was that the heat/AC systems are controlled in each unit. There is radiant heat and central AC. AC even with filters still blow dust/pollen/mold around. Forced air is the pits.
I experienced building wide heat in my last rental. I lived on the 3rd floor and if the windows weren't opened, from November to April it could get to the 90's. Meanwhile, people on the sixth floor couldn't get warm.
What a waste!

whenever i move, now, the most important issue to me will be the heating and cooling system. took me a couple of tries to realize how important it is to us. but this rental actually works much better than many buildings.

yup - heat just came on this week and it's been COLD. for some reason, they keep the heat off until 4:00/5:00am each night. so we get to fall asleep in a frigid apartment and wake up warm and stuffy.

hmmmn ... as a lifelong (44 years yesterday) NYC resident (draw a 10 block radius around 79th & Columbus - except for college, which was further north on 116th street) and lifelong renter (yeah yeah, I know . . . ) I have to say that the heat has always come on, and I have always opened the window. And then when the heat doesn't come on, I close the window, and sometimes I put on a sweater. And in the summertime I turn on the air conditioners. And I close the windows. Sometimes I think it's better to be simple, and easily pleased.

By law, I believe, once the outside temp goes under 55 degrees, heat must be provided.

lp - exactly how we've lived the last 5 years. windows always open when heats on. for some reason this year (whether it's the early cold weather or a new apartment) it seems like it took too long to get the heat on.

and radiator heat really is so much better for allergies than forced air. much less dust.

But Robot's original post makes me wonder.....is a building manager more likely to be cheap on the heat if your manager is a company, or an arm of a company, that had previously intended to sell the units as condos?

I don't know, but maybe the management arms of these developers are crappy. Are they third-party managers who actually have some experience managing residential buildings? Or are they just some makeshift team that the developer threw together to manage a property that he never intended to hold onto?????

My former sister in law in Limoges would turn off the heat every night no matter how cold and then open all the windows in the morning to "air it out". When we would take a little trip to visit other relatives the heat would be turned off(condo not house so pipes would not freeze). Typically this is how many Europeans live (same experience in Germany and Holland). Took a little getting used to, I kept the tradition of opening the windows every morning to "air out".

My former Polish landlady kept to a stricter regiment with the heat, she turned it off every night around 8pm. Sweaters and sheepskin slippers do the trick.

Thats the nature of multifamily dwellings in nyc. We rent in an old 4th floor walkup and typically it is so hot in the winter that we crack windows and don't turn on any of the radiators in our apartment. Actually it's been cold so far this week in our apt which is unusual - I'm assuming it will get hot soon. Fall is a really bad time for heating systems control. It takes time to get boilers running, and landlord don't want to pay for heat unless its legally necessary.

With regards to the original poster. I think the law just says that after a specific date, if the temperature is below a certain point (which is different during day and night) then the boiler must go on. There probably is a set minimum temp. that the building is supposed to be at, however, I don't think the landlord will care if your apartment is 5deg cooler than someone else. Temperature can vary dramatically from one apartment to another depending on how many windows you have, and if you are near heating ducts or pipes, and building entrances or exits.

It's an inherent problem in urban buildings. The people on the bottom are cold because they're near the door, so they complain and the boiler is turned up higher. It's better that people are hotter in the winter than cold . But then the people up top get even hotter because heat rises and they're not near the door. A better solution would be to put a second heater in the lower apartment, but no one does that.. And then you have the people who prefer to have the heat on high with the window open. Human behavior is very complicated and can mess with energy systems.

We're looking to buy a place that has its own boiler in the unit, it will be nice to be in control of this problem. It won't be nice to pay for our own heat though.

Europeans are better than Americans and have been doing the hot / cold thing for a lot longer than us.

lp, i used to think that way too. then, a week after 9/11 our daughter was hospitalized due to her first asthma attack. game changer.

Asthma does change everything. Part of my drive to control heat and AC comes from the hope my daughter will not have allergy-induced asthma.

ar: game changer indeed. i hope she's doing as well and if I had a spare UWS classic 7 with everything I would give it to you immediately!

Wait, isn't AR rich already? Why is she getting non-existent UWS classic 7's for free?

as is well-documented, i'm cheap.

not rich, not poor.

Nah, you're rich & cheap. Just not as rich as others, but plenty rich. I'm telling you, it's a disease. All that money, but you just can't spend it because you're thinking "Yeah, it's only $x per year, which isn't much to me, but that's like a real person's annual salary, and I ain't going to pay a whole year's salary for that!"

I'm guessing you can afford to buy or rent something nicer than an UWS classic 7 but just can't bear to do it...

Nah, you're rich & cheap. Just not as rich as others, but plenty rich. I'm telling you, it's a disease. All that money, but you just can't spend it because you're thinking "Yeah, it's only $x per year, which isn't much to me, but that's like a real person's annual salary, and I ain't going to pay a whole year's salary for that!"

I'm guessing you can afford to buy or rent something nicer than an UWS classic 7 but just can't bear to do it...

inonada, you haven't been paying attention to my sob story. income-wealthy, savings (relatively) poor. we got a slow start on the path to riches. timing is everything. but the long-term prospects look quite good, and it would be very churlish of me not to admit it.

we currently wouldn't qualify for what we can afford, so we're priced out of the coop market unless i'm willing to settle for much less and i'm not. although i will confess that i haven't really looked into whether or not there are buildings where i would like the apartments and the board wouldn't mind me. another two years and i'll probably be too old and tired to deal with a coop board. and, as you say, i'm cheap. i just can't see paying above a certain amount for shelter.

the downtown condo market is crazily overpriced, still. so it's a good thing i don't mind renting. the apartment upstairs from mine is filled with a frat group. my building is mostly market rate tenants, would be a good candidate for conversion. i might be able to pick up two units and duplex them. and so i wait.

So why not rent the duplex-equivalent now? Or 1.5x? Why does buying increase your appetite for apartment? Simply because you need to leave room for growth that you don't need now?

Also, have you considered renting what you would buy? Clearly, it's a pain in a coop because or subletting restrictions on the term, especially with kids, but how about condos? I think the waiting game may be impossible. To misquote Keynes, markets can stay irrational for much longer than you can stay sane.

I don't mind renting either (perhaps even like it), but if my only options were generic-ish "luxury" rentals, I'd probably feel different. Thankfully, in Manhattan the rental options far outpace what I can stand spending. I have the cheap disease as well. This year we seriously looked at options that were up to twice what we currently spend (and worth it), but at the end we weren't excited to move and didn't. At the end of the day all that matters to me is to pay a cheap price, and because our landlord was willing to come down on price, there was just no motivation. Just really sad...

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/rental/544337-rental-859-broadway-flatiron-new-york

ok, yes, i could rent this, easily. but why? i grew up poor to working class, the husband middle-class. for a while i really wanted to buy something very nice, and could only afford crap. it gave me a bad attitude and turned me into a bitter renter. and then, when i could afford something better, i was stunned to find that it didn't matter, and i actually quite liked where i was living. the trees, the funny older people, even the college kids amuse me. and i like my apartment, it's not grand or ideal, but we're not cramped, i've customized my kitchen and painted, high ceilings, great light, decent storage, and why pay more than double for something that will only provide a certain marginal greater utility? we have a huge home upstate. we travel quite well. i'd say the standard of living is quite high, despite a modest rental.

why would i buy and duplex here? i don't even know that i would if the opportunity arose, but i suspect i will if it does because it will likely be a remarkable opportunity to get a tremendous amount of space for a very low price. not only am i cheap, i enjoy a good bargain. and we would leave it to our daughter. the real problem i have is i'm not sure where i'm going to want to live when our daughter goes off to college, and that's only six years away. but we'd be able to keep this as an investment and still be able to afford to buy or rent something nice elsewhere, even if we needed to rent it out at a loss. just a mass and mess of contradictions. but that's true of so many people. inactivity (or paralysis, as you'd probably deem it) isn't necessarily bad under those circumstances. thankfully it no longer makes me sad, but the temptations are greater these days, i confess.

Happy Birthday, liquidpaper. I'm a cheapskate, too, & each year I play -Survivor- to see how long I can wait before turning on the heat. Finally, yesterday, I turned it on but I did win 'cause I was the last in the building who did ! ! ! ha ha ha

i missed that. happy, happy LP.

I've never had aninstance where I froze. I wonder why. Oh, that's right, because I owned for most of my life.

*an instance*

have you sold yet? i hear the market in alpine is hot, hot, hot.

have you sold yet? i hear the market in alpine is hot, hot, hot.

Back to my origin point: in a newer Glenwood building, it annoys me that they CAN turn the heat up, but CHOOSE to only abide by the minimum city laws. It gets me plenty hot and bothered (pun intended).

Not enough umph for $10K, if you ask me, so I'm with you on that one. Completely in the same boat as you on a good bargain. Matters little to me what the thing is relative to what I want/need, just as long a I'm getting a food bargain.

I can't do the buy-a-upstate/beach home thing, prefer to be in the city most weekends, and prefer to share a place with friends as we have no kids, so half the fun of going to a house is hanging out with friends. Any time we've been out without the friends, after a few hours, we're like "this is boring" given the comparison of doing the mini-vacation with close friends. Obviously that greatly changes with kids.

How do you travel well? Fancy hotels? First or business-class tickets? I can't bear the idea of paying 4x for merely 2x the space. What complete crap! And no way I'm subsidizing the coach passengers' cheap tickets. If there's a subsidy to be had, I'm taking it! And more often than not, I can't stand the idea of paying more than $200 for a hotel as (a) I'm not there to stay in the room, and if I pay more I feel compelled to use the room; (b) the cheaper hotels are in the more interesting areas, and (c) it's not going to be any nicer than my own home, so what's the point? Exceptions perhaps if it's a beach resort, but even then when I'm in, say, Mexico, proximity to culture such as the favorite local taco stand have an unusual importance to me.

So get a space heater, consider the cost of it and the electricity (if you pay) as part of the rent, and if it is higher than what you can get elsewhere, move. What's the problem? Just because the say they are a luxury place an you pay a luxury price doesn't make it a luxury place.

Oh, and stop hijacking the thread. Why don't you just create one about your heat issues and leave us to our random conversation?

nycrob - splain what type of heating unit you have/bldg has

This conversation is a good counterpoint to "buying makes no sense" - "renting sucks."
having both rented and owned, both propositions come with their set of drawbacks, but I much prefer owning.

agree, building is more likely to be responsive when it's resident owned. Especially for an issue such as this.

absolutely wrong. depends on the management of the building; depends on the board, etc. typical of your nonsense.

depends on the building's heating system, and often you don't have a clue until you've lived there the entire year, unless you have what maly has. but not everyone wants new, and it's tough to find in older.

nycrobot, just be grateful you're not stuck there forever. but yes you should have reasonably decent heat, and no i don't have a clue what you can do about it if they can prove they are following the regs. here management gets so tired of the complaints that most years they just blast the heat, and excessively. during these lean times i'm fairly certain that most building management, whether it be in a rental or an owner-occupied building, will be trying as hard as possible to cut costs wherever possible. and oil, while not at its highs, still ain't cheap.

It depends on what type of heat you've got. So very few people know enough about one pipe steam systems that almost no building has a fully balanced system. This means you've got to overheat the building so the "coldest" apartment gets enough heat, and thus all the others get overheated. As a noted expert in the field says "just stand outside the building on a cold day and look for open windows".

Heating season started October 1 and runs thru May 31st. During the day - 6AM thru 10PM - if the outside temperature falls below 55 degrees, the LL must have the heat on and the inside temperature is required to be at least 68 degrees ; during night - 10PM thru 6AM - the LL must have heat on if outside temperature falls below 40 degrees the inside temperature is required to be at least 55 degrees .

A space heater is an option, I don't know what one costs to operate, but be careful with them, they can be a hazard. I have a little electric heater I use in the bathroom when I'm bathing but I never turn my back on it & would never think to use it whilst sleeping.

Only electric space heaters are legal in NYC apartments as far as I know, and they eat electricity like a monster.

30years, I totally wrote the same thing as you hours ago - but no one acknowledged me. Building heating systems in the city buildings are so inefficient, it makes me cringe as an engineer. Don't even get me started on space heaters. I'm actually trying to get a job in building energy, wish me luck , people.

In our building the managing agent every few years puts a flyer under the doors reminding people that valves need to be either all the way on or all the way off. Maybe 15 years ago every air vent was replaced, which helped a lot.

We have a pretty unique situation here. I have a dedicated heat pump to provide central air and heat. The gas is free and I just learned our building reimburses the cost of electricity to run the heat pump fan in winter. And if that isn't enough, we had a load of firewood delivered a few weeks ago and have found the fireplace provides a good amount of heat to our small space. Very nice luxury to be able to set a thermostat or light a fire and not be at the mercy of the boiler police.

The heating laws and systems in the city are outdated - landlords have to heat apartments to 68 degrees even when all or most of their tenants are at work - why are we burning so much oil to keep unoccupied apartments warm for 10 hours/day?

for the pets, baby. for the pets.

Electric heaters cost around 15 cents per hour to operate, the same amount as window ACs or pretty much anything else trying to draw as much current as possible without tripping the circuit breakers. Having one blowing on you directly in the one room you happen to be in is much more efficient cost- and energy-wise as compared to turning up the heat on the whole building/apartment using the boiler. So assuming you are using your electric heater 6 hours a day, we're talking $25 per month. Heating a 1000 sq ft apartment in the middle of winter is on the order of $200-300, for comparison. If you want a smaller carbon footprint, move to a smaller place, but don't skimp on the electric heat!

My Glenwood building has the single pipe that runs through every window area and the occupant turns on the fan to blow the heat emmitted from the pipe.

Although I'm not home much from 8am to 7 pm, there are lots of young kids and babies in the building that I presume are at home most of the day.

My major complaint is the fact that I'm way overpaying for a rental in a luxury building and we are being treated to a heating scheme that is reminiscent of a slumlord walkup in Harlem.

As much of a pet advocate as I am, I doubt that their lobby is keeping daytime heating requirements above those of "non-working" hours. My money would be on senior citizens who tend to require more heat for comfort (last winter I remember coming home and seeing my poor doorman being betrated by one of the elderly women in the building because the heat--overdone IMHO--was inadequatae. As if the doorman had any influence on the thermostat). Between work at homes, seniors and nannies/children (not to mention in this economy the numerous unemployed), I'm not sure that "most if not all" tenants are not not at home during the day.

Spinnaker1- sounds like you're really enjoying your new place and the fireplace. Don't know how you're storing the wood (assume on the terrace)but thought you might be interested in the wood rack we use, because it is just the metal ends, uses whatever length 2X4's you need for the amount of wood you store, then just take it apart, lean the ends against a wall. Takes up almost no space after the season. look at wwodlanddirect.com

You want to feel some anger? I believe that NYC project inhabitants do not pay for heating and utilities. Yep, free to keep their place toasty warm. There was article a few months ago about how some were paying less in rent than the amount the city was paying in utilities.

nyc10023 - was talking to someone a few weeks ago who lives in lower- middle income housing where tenants do no pay for electricity. I said to him that that really encouraged bad behavior - keep lights on everywhere, a/c all day, even if apt. not occupied. (this person was very conscientious, had a timer on the a/c, etc).

A few days ago he told me that the landlord had been in one of the larger apartments, ligthts on in every room, saw a tenant in the livng room and asked who else was home. Was told she wes alone in the apartment .

Well, he's now having electric meters installed in every apartment. The only problem will be calculating the rent reduction per apartment as the electricity used to be included in the rent.

judging by what AR mentioned about PCV and ST, I am surprised they did not do that right after the buildings were sold

ph41, they were going to do it recently, but it was scuttled. i think it had something to do with the j-51, major capital improvements program, rs mix-up. i seem to recall hearing that not only would the tenants now be paying for their electricity (one issue), but TS was planning on passing on the costs of implementing the system as a major capital improvement to the RS tenants (entirely another issue). i think they're waiting for the court decision before they decide whether to go ahead and implement.

i'm not 100% about that though. i don't know the quality of my sources, and i didn't get it from print. although many tenants here are amazingly well informed.

I live in a new building and have my own heat pump unit. Having been in a steam heat radiator building (townhouse) and in a condo with one of the PTAC window units, I wouldn't trade this for anything else. It isn't worth $200 a month to go for an older system.

ph41 - you have no idea how much I'm enjoying it. Well, maybe you do. I'm just storing my firewood outside in lieu of a long term solution at the moment. I'm going to deck the terrace in the spring and build a new fence. Right now its just pavers on top of the roof membrane so I'm going to build a raised deck and a new fence. I'll incorporate firewood and cushion storage as part of that plan.

spinnaker - just to clarify- the wood rack I'm talking about IS for outside - keeps wood off the surface, so that with a cover, wood stays dry - we usually keep about 1/2 to 3/4 cord stored for the winter. Set it up to be about 8' long - then disappears for summer.

and about 4' high - keep a decorative woodholder in the living room that holds a "bundle" or a little more - good for about 1 1/2 fireplace evenings.