Has Anyone Else Had This Heat Game Played?

[RebeccaG]

Our landlord recently got a housing violation for inadequate heat and hot water. All winter we were freezing with either no heat, heat that hardly ever came on, or heat that was turned on at our request and then went off a few hours later. Much of the time we had no hot water, and it seemed to "keep going off".

The thing is, this was ONLY when it was COLD outside. Whenever it has been above 55 degrees, all of a sudden the heat is BLASTING ALL the time.

Today it is 60 degrees with 90% humidity. The heat is blasting NON-STOP. Hours ago we asked them to turn it off, more than once. Each time they said they would. The heat is still blasting hours later (you can tell by the continuously hissing, boiling hot radiator).

They have done this many times during warm weather, whereas, as I said, when it was cold, all of a sudden, NO HEAT AT ALL.

If they're not deliberately trying to torture us, I don't know what they're doing.

But this happened in another building I sublet for a while also, on the upper west side. When it was cold, no heat. When it was warm, they blasted it so that it was so unbearable I couldn't sleep.

Is this some kind of cruel game supers play? What the hell is this?!

[RebeccaG]

I just want to specify that, when they got the heating violation notice, they gave us SOME heat---so that it would come on for an hour, go off for a couple of hours, and so on. However, when the temp is 60 degrees, suddenly it is on NON-STOP. No going off for a few hours, etc.

This has happened many times before.

This is a pattern.

[jot0n0]

Don’t know if LL is playing game or just have incompetent maintenance people. Heating the building when it’s not required is only wasting money for the LL in terms of fuel cost. Here’s a few theories I have that may explain it, but not entirely, (1) the outside thermostatic which monitors the outside temperature and signal the boiler to generate heat is not calibrated correctly or located too close to a heat source such as a night light which would give an inaccurate temperature reading resulting in low to no heat. (2). They reversed the order of the high and low trigger temperatures, resulting in no heat in low temperature and heat in high temperature. (3) The boiler’s heat timer is broken and the maintenance people switch it from automatic to manual, resulting in continuous heat, pausing in between when boiler’s safety pressure switch cuts it off. (4). The building may have independent heating and hot water units, so you may have hot water and no heat and vice versa. Well that's my 2 cents.

<small>[ March 21, 2003, 03:19 PM: Message edited by: John ]</small>