the cold apartment thread

so cold, so cold, so cold

i wish mine was colder bc i have a feeling i will be paying way too much for this comfort when utility bill comes!

landlord told me before i moved in 2.5 years ago that he was giving me new windows. still waiting.

you need to get that shit in writing

he pays the utilities :((((

ok my apt is really cold now. Our heat is working only intermittently. SmartWool time!

the central heating doesn't go upstairs in my house, so all i've got is a piece of shit baseboard. obv i'm not gonna leave it on all night, so when i get up in the morning i can see my breath. fcuked up!!

No apartment I've ever had has been warm in the winter. Landlords, it's OK to have the heat go on once or twice at night ... don't worry, it won't backrupt you, you heartless bastards.

and the only part of me that's ever cold are my feet, but they get so fucking freezing it's impossible to fall asleep. Lousy shoddy circulatory system.

we pay ours :( actually the warmest apt I've had was one where the landlady controlled the heat!

he gave me a space heater a couple years ago but i could never use it because it made the power go out (in addition to having shitty, old windows we are way overloaded) then last year i made him give me my very own conduit and now i leave it on all the time. it helps but it's still super cold. last year my neighbor was like whoa lol it's 55 degrees in here (this was december, it doesn't get really cold until january here) and i called him to complain about it and he was like "well what did you do last year" and i was like uh last year it was also very cold? then he said i could stay at his house and i was like that does not help! i am paying rent in THIS house! but he's like 29 so it's like arguing w/ your brother or something. useless.

they rly are heartless, he's a nice dude but you can't be a landlord without ruining your tenants' lives once in a while, it's a systemic problem

i looked up the city code to see if that was legal and it was confusing--it said it has to be 70 degrees when it's 0 degrees outside. so if it's 10 degrees??? can it be 55 when it's 30 out?

I think NY has rules based on time of day

Msg from ex:

"fly home and put up the plastic sheeting on the windows now plz."

guys come live in oakland: it's still shorts and tank top weather here.

don't tempt me.

that said, my apartment is pretty warm, and this is the chilliest day in a while
(full disclosure: i took a four hour nap this afternoon, after waking up at 12:30.)

Do you guys know what? Here in southern NM we have a law about how electric companies can't turn electricity off in the winter, same as Mass. as mentioned above. But the winters here get to be maybe 45-40º F at the lowest.

They do not have a similar law for the SUMMER when things get to go over 110º F for several weeks. But all the people who grew up here think it' insane when I suggest that this is maybe the opposite arrangement of what makes sens. "But you could cook to death in the summer!" "NO. No, man. The winter is when it's COLD." "Well yes I know that, but it ian't at all threatening to be fatal like in the summer." and round and round and round

last year, i lived on the top floor of a house in semi-rural Ohio, and my heating bills were quite cheap compared to my downstairs neighbor-- $800 a month!

that said, my heat didn't work until the day before Thanksgiving, which meant that i would bring boys/men back to my place and they would be like, "woah, it's cold." then i would be like, "mm-hmmm," and wink at them.

my apartment is too warm in the winter. radiator heat through the whole building - i don't pay extra for utilities. it makes it hard to sleep! i usually keep a window open.. but not willing to do that yet until i'm sure the nasty house centipedes that can get in through the screen have died off

this is the first time in a while i've had that problem, my last place across town i rented a room in a townhouse and it was freezing, i'd sleep wearing like a fleece sweatshirt and pants and a hat on and all the blankets i owned & still cold, and the downstairs never got all that warm either.

it is chilly in here! I just realized the a/c is still in the wall. Unfortunately, the metal plate that replaces if is not much better as far as letting cold air in.

i had the window open for a while today

i like to see how much cold i can take and don't use any heat until well after the cold season starts. my apt's pretty warm tho.

Haha, agree with Abbott completely. People in the desert have no fucking idea what cold is. You can always put on some long underwear or another pair of socks when it's cold, but it doesn't work that way in the heat. Buck naked is kind of a brick wall, and running around with your flappers flappin only sounds fun when you don't have to.

i like doing that too, but you probably live in a building where neighboring apts' heat subtly warms your place. we are first floor, and the basement is ours, too, so we get no neighbor heat benefits :(

that was an xpost

the desert can be very cold at night

the average low in Albuquerque on NEw Year's Eve is lower than that in NYC

http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/070725/wedding/khan_l.jpg

it's very cold in space...

Whoa, seriously? I lived in AZ off and on, been camping in the desert, and don't remember anything even close to that cold.

Then again, the difference I remember between southern and northern AZ/NM was pretty drastic.

altitude, my man

so cold in here wtf

They do not have a similar law for the SUMMER when things get to go over 110º F for several weeks.

A right to A/C! There would be nothing more American.

Getting nippy at my house...but of course this is ONLY the BEGINNING. Bah. I will complain about this a lot in months to come.

Also, I bought a new down comforter in the double/full size and it's OMG fluffy and really wonderful. Deep dark winter will be the final test of its warming and comforting abilities but so far it is making me very happy to go to bed.

unemployment is cold

omg. heat is out again. fucckkk it's cold :(

I just got a brand new bunch of flannels from ll bean and I think there's a good chance I fall victim to heat death tonight. Oh well.

perhaps i will invest in a new electric blanket. i guess that is not v. green though...

I've been falling asleep with long underwear, jeans, shirt, 2 jackets, etc. and as a result having v. v. vivid dreams, waking up in a sweat.

The dreams are totally worth the discomfort waking up, btw.

are we in the 21st century? and the first world?

do you all need space heaters? do you have money??

Just turned on the heat here for the first time in 2 years.

oh are yall worried about your carbon footprints or something

No, just lazy about debugging the gas fireplace.

It doesn't really get very cold in San Francisco.

Yeah, it's a cold apartment thread. I try not to turn on the heat, but we got snow here in Seattle.
Could be colder, though. But there is ice outside and you wouldn't believe what I went through just to walk to the corner store. I was so sure I was gonna fall on my ass and get the wind knocked out of me like a little kid. I came close a few times.

I guess we're not supposed to turn on the heat, though.

And yeah, when you start seeing your breath in your apartment, that is craziness. That happened to me earlier in the week and I was like "wtf?"

We're lucky so far this year, nothing cold enough to really note for the purposes of this thread. Check back w me in January, though.

However, my all-cement building DOES know how to hold in the cold and damp, which means that it's 60-some degrees outside today and probably only 52 in my apartment.

u know its against the law in ny for an apt to be below 55 - call the police

That might require the bldg to be zoned residential in the first place.

ah see

It doesn't really get very cold in San Francisco.

it has been fucking freezing this weekend though

Oh, totes. I mean, it's not "fucking freezing" compared to Wisconsin in January, but hey, a dude can crank up the gas fireplace about now.

Cold apartment? Hahahaha. It was about 60 outside today so I wanted to turn down the thermostat - it was set at 70! 70! I know exactly which roommate set it there, and I dread our December utility bill.

Holy crap, its cold here. And it rained all day. AWESOME!!!!!

I'm keeping this room a little cold intentionally tonight, because I'm running the shit out of this old Dell laptop that has its fans placed all wrong and always runs hot because it's just plain poorly designed. But it's 9 degrees out (Fahrenheit, low tonight -3), so I cracked the window about an inch and put the computer near it, so what little fan power it has is sucking in seriously cold air. It's loving it, and I'm ok too if I keep my shoes on.

i can see my breath in my room

― alpha ville (jergins), Monday, December 15, 2008 1:08 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

wearin my jacket atm

computing in my bed atm

I think this is my first Minnesota winter ever not spent in a ridiculously freezing apartment where I've duct taped the weird gaps between the ceiling and walls to keep my fingers from falling off.

single glazed sash windows look beautiful but they suck

fyi

also thanks landlord for ripping out the boiler-powered radiators and installing electric ones, I enjoy paying out the ass on my electricity bill

i think my landlord is getting revenge for me talking him into paying utilities by shutting off the heat

> single glazed sash windows look beautiful but they suck

yeah, the whole of london is like this.

(some places recommend putting up bubblewrap, cheap and effective - http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Conservation/bubblewrap.htm )

i had ice on the inside of my bedroom windows on thursday morning.

This is my first winter in a heated apartment in two years. It is so civilized and warm and makes regular life seem luxurious.

There's a reason I've sucked so hard at job hunting since I've got back.

Even though I'm in Miami, I finally know why on days like this my apartment's colder than the blustery evening. So far.

how long does it take for heat to dissipate from a room? like, in general. if all the other rooms are cold. and your windows aren't exactly incredibly fucking efficient.

Not very long, in my experience!

bout five minutes tops

Aye, it usually happens faster than I can get changed into a pair of pyjamas and get into bed.

i don't understand how we maintain a temperature just warm enough that the pipes won't freeze (according to the landlords, they say it has to stay at 65) and our heating bills last month were completely, depressingly ridiculous. our windows were installed really recently too.

its true water freezes @ 64

I'm currently running through about £30 of electricity a week, almost all (summer bills are like £10 a week) thanks to this little plug-in oil heater that's just about powerful enough to keep me warm if I keep my duvet over the top of it. Let us not speak of the kitchen and bathroom.

i don't even want to think of my bill. I can't get into the meter so i'm just on estimated bills the now and pay hardly anything, next time they have a guy come out to check it and i get the proper bill i'm going to have to pay probably hundreds of pounds. Keeping a big lump set aside for it.

well yeah water doesn't freeze at 64 but underground/outdoor pipes do freeze even with indoor temperatures above 32! but our gas bill almost tripled from november to december and we are wondering if this is maybe more than normal even accounting for colder weather. so now i understand why people go for higher rents that include utilities, will have to calculate how much extra you pay in the warm months vs. how much you save in the cold months when considering whether to move next summer.

any of you guys tried the plastic sheeting you put over windows to hold in heat?

guh yeah i have always gone for utilities paid before this one and now i realize why that was a good idea. they can often be as cheap as ones that don't include them, too.

i did the plastic thing in my last apartment (which was extremely cold) and found that it made a noticeable difference.

cool, that gives me more hope!

We've had a family of hornets living on our roof since the summer, and every so often one of them flies into our attic bedroom, dishing out heebeejeebees about once a fortnight. We thought the winter and freezing cold temperatures would put an end to them, hence why we've refrained from getting the exterminators in. Unfortunately this has only encouraged them, the upstairs heating making our house a very attractive place to visit. So we've had to turn off the radiators. Great.

boy is it cold. gee willikers

my heat went out sun-mon, oil man came and it was back on. now it's off again!

I'm kidna worried about my turtles. I have two turtles but only one tank. one is a big turtle and the other is a small turtle. I think the big turtle can tough it out for this cold snap because you are sp big! so the small turtle will get the tank.

heat came back on again last night but now it's off again wtf why

being able to access the internet in bed destroys my days off

the boiler has been broken for the past few days and it's 29 degrees outside and not that much warmer inside. woowee!

i made it through the winter w/o once turning on my heat. i usually wait until my extremities feel numb. not that i'm cheap or anything. i prefer to think of myself as a rugged uncompromising individualist much in the tradition of the founding fathers such as paul bunyan, j. appleseed, and principal weatherbee

my coffee only stays hot for like 5 minutes

may i suggest coffee koozies?

knit me one!

UGH THIS PLACE