Who Needs a Furnace? I Have A Pentium4!
November 12th, 2006 by PotatoMy landlord did the move-out pre-inspection today. She was astonished at the great shape our place is in. I know we’ve been very careful to keep the place clean and in good shape, but it wasn’t in great shape when I moved in (peeling paint and a pre-stained carpet), so to be so astonished is kind of weird. Must be very telling as to how the undergraduate hordes have been treating their places (and we know how poorly some of them are from the smell).
An interesting point: she commented on how hot my apartment is. I said “yes, and I don’t even have the heat on!” and she gave me this look of horror. “Oh no no no no no.” she said “You’ve got to turn the heat on! If it gets too hot, just open a window, but the radiators will break if you don’t turn them on, and it’s a flow-through system, so if your heat isn’t on then your neighbour’s can’t get any.”
That sounds very wasteful and dumb, and I also have to wonder a bit if it’s even true. Yes, leaving it off could let air pockets build up in the radiators, which would cause some cavitation banging and whatnot if and when we do eventually turn them on, but I have to wonder if the building designers (even the building designers of the 50’s) would really use straight-through radiator plumbing. Surely they had wagered on somebody turning their heat off, or at least the heat gradient that would inevitably arise as the water progressively cooled from the person closest to the boiler to the person at the end of the loop.
Anyway, the heat’s only been turned on for about 3 weeks total out of the 4 years I’ve lived here, so leaving it off until I move out isn’t going to kill it.