What do you pay per month? What is the heating cost per month you have to pay now? Move if that’s too much for you. You’re leaving anyway. Paying a buttload to keep from moving isn’t good economics....
Move out now.
You can find short term housing at a motel or hotel and keep your sanity.
I couldn’t really follow what you said, but I would guess that if you light a fire in that old chimney, the place will burn down (you didn’t mention a lining).
We use this since the kids aren’t in the house. We only really need our bedroom, bathroom and kitchen area toasty and in Texas it isn’t like it’s crazy cold all the time.
http://www.consumersearch.com/space-heaters/lasko-755320-ceramic-tower-heater
It does cut off, too.
If you don’t need both window units remove one.
Close up the fireplaces and pur clear plastic kits over the windows.
Use the space heater when you are out (MAKE SURE IT IS SECURE FROM THE PETS) and when you sleep.
Do you have a lease? It may say landlord pays heat since he did at first.
You have a heat source.... that’s the good news.
What we used to do back in the old days when I lived in an apartment with a similar problem in OH is open the window in the winter.
If you pay for electricity it’s a crappy solution but at least you kinda control the temp.
Best fix would be to get a thermostat wired into the LG heaters IMO.
Do you have more than one of the units?
Sounds complicated. Maybe a letter (less detailed than your post) to the landlord with a deadline date by which they must resolve the heat problem, or you will report them to whatever agency should care. Cite the specific section of the lease, or a highlighted photocopy of the lease, and/or any local ordinances, which indicate that the landlord is responsible for the heat. A nice sweater for your dog?
Is it that the landlord pays for heat, but you pay for electricity? So running space heaters is an expense for you, not the landlord?
Have you talked to other tenants to see how they are resolving this?
If it were me, I would stop paying rent until the heating issue is fixed.
Move!
Space heaters are not intended as sole heat sources. Aging building wiring and space heaters cause fires daily across the country in the winter time. This is one reason new construction requires arc-fault circuit breakers, especially in bedrooms.
As mentioned, live in a motel till spring, life is short enough already, no need to make it shorter.
If your lease included the landlord paying for the heat, and that was not changed, then the landlord is not fulfilling their part of the contract.
Your recourses are:
1. Move claiming breach of contract. The burden will be on you to get back your deposit etc.
2. Withhold rent, based on breach of contract.
3. Withhold last, two-months rent, subtracting out the cost of heating and your deposit.
I am a landlord, and I would not do what you have described to any of my tenants. A contract goes two ways. When I had an A/C go bad, I had a new $5000 unit in place within 24 hours.
To be blunt, the place sounds like an explosion or fire waiting to happen. If it were me — I’d put whatever I didn’t absolutely need into storage and move somewhere else NOW for the remaining time you’re in the state.
The fireplaces will draw the heat up the chimney and pull cold air in through every crack and crevice in the house. The coal will also stink up the neighborhood and you may get complaints from neighbors. If you do use it you will only get radiant heat and the rest will go up the chimeny.
What kind of cooking stove do you have? Electric or Nat Gas? You can use the nat gas stove as a heater but you need to beware of CO if you do it. If on propane or natural gas, you can hook into it with a small non-vented space heater, depending on your city codes.
I live in an old house on natural gas and have several space heaters. There is enough air leaking in to prevent CO poisoning.
I will always have a natural gas or propane system as when an ice storm knocks out all the electricity it also takes out the central heat as the fans in it run on electricity.
Quartz heaters as needed is what i do in places I have no other source...old coal fireplaces are pretty and will burn a little wood too but make sure they draft nice...small fire only...but they are not much for heat...a buckstove will run you out of the home in all but NE South Carolina in winter.
I’m in Nashville metro...probably median winter US wise..going without heat in a bad winter here like two years ago would be rough
Renting can be pleasant or excrutiating.
IMHO...
Laws vary based on the municipality and state and are extremely different, especially in practice, depending on where you are.
In NYC, “low income” tenants are pretty much set for life no matter what they do or don’t do, including paying the rent.
In nice suburban towns where renting is very politically incorrect, everything is turned in favor of the landlord and against the tenant. There is absolutely no charitable feeling towards tenants in these areas; I was once evicted 3 or 4 days before the lease expired and was only not physically evicted because I had already moved. I was barely able to keep my head above water at the time and could not come up with the last month’s rent and the deposit on the new place, so I just scooted and let the landlord keep the security deposit. The dude paid costs of evicting me legally when he did not have to; he just wanted in his own mind to feel that he “evicted” me. The court went ahead and issued the eviction order, even though landlord was not due any money because he had the recourse of keeping the deposit, which he did. A complete waste of the court’s time, but it was following “the letter of the law”. I’ve had another landlord that literally waited years for repayment after I moved out, simply kindly calling me.
No sense, IMHO, in “swimming upstream”, i.e., expending mental energy in vain.
Allow me to introduce you to something new: the little tiny cheap portable electric space heater. They have gone a LONG way technologically. Some have thermostats. You really only need one for each 400 to 500 square feet of apartment.
Big problem: they are dangerous if not properly used. All electric devices can cause fires if not properly used.
As a programmer, I’m naturally paranoid just short of the point of insanity (I’m actually just a stickler for getting things right). So if I use heaters, generators, motors, fans, whatever, I go to extremes to make sure I’m not overloading the typical 15 AMP circuit, have no “tinder” anywhere near wires or devices (things like rugs, blankets - anything). Electrical resistence produces heat. Wiring that has too small of an electrical capacity for what it’s being asked to do will heat up and can burn through. Of course all of these devices are now made by laughing communist Chinese who build all electrical equipment they send to use such that it will start fires (power supplies in computers are famous for this). Whatever devices I have around the house, I make sure I’m not setting myself up for problems - I assume that it WILL burst into flames at some point. Pets can cause problems too (chewing, etc.) but will be very reliable if properly trained. They have an uncanny sense of heat sources and will stay away - they can sense electrical current and do not like it.
If one is not meticulous, electrical space heaters may not be the way to go; a house fire is such a bad event that even if it increases the chance of a fire by 0.00001% you would probably not want to take the risk, seeing how you and puppy are in there.
I do all that I can to be prudent and pray that God might protect me for all the things I did not forsee.
The electrical heaters will use electricity, i.e., make the bill higher, so one should try to minimize overuse. There are probably local ordinances that prohibit space heaters, along with smoking, drinking, possessing a firearm and permitting puppy to poop outside. It would probably be smart to keep the space heater between just you and the few million folks who read FR.
IMHO.
Sounds like a case for constructive eviction. Ask a lawyer.
Wow, crazy situation you have there. I can’t figure out why if the heat didn’t work because the radiatiors needed to be bled, they didn’t just bleed them? It takes about 30 seconds. Same for why the owner didn’t just go buy a radiator handle for like 3 bucks?
As to whether the situation is legal, most likely it is not, but it will depend on the laws in your state/locality. Even when you have a lease where you are specifically responsible for providing your own heat, the owner usually must provide the means for the heat, and you just have to pay the bills. Not providing usable heating generally falls under the category of “unlivable conditions”, which means, in most states, you do not have to pay rent until that situation is rectified by the owner.
I’d go see a lawyer that specializes in tenant law, because you can probably not only get the situation remedied, but you might have compensation coming your way, the way this sounds.