Saturday, November 24, 2007

There is snow outside, and the apartment is HOT!

When we moved into our apartment, the agent told us that the apartment had "city heat", which means that we don't really have any control over how warm our apartment is. In the ads, they frequently call it "floor heat", because in addition to a radiator in every room, the parquet floor is heated. The only place in the apartment where the floor is cold is the kitchen, which has tile. We also don't have any real control over how much heat we get. Supposedly you can adjust something on the radiators, but I haven't figured out how. We don't pay by how much heat we use; instead, we pay by the square meter. The heat is turned on based on some formula (x number of days under a certain temperature), and we pay 50 bucks a month every month that it is turned on.

The result, is that there is still snow outside, it is very cold, and we have two windows open. I just put on a pair of shorts. We've had two big snowstorms, and the only blanket we have in the living room is the thin blanket Melinda stole from the airplane. By they time I get done climbing the 6 floors to our apartment, I am very warm when I come in from the cold outside, and then our apartment is toasty as well. I can't get my winter clothes off fast enough.

3 comments:

kcmeesha said...

It can always turn the other way around - you could be sitting in the cold apartment because the boiler man doesn't think it's cold enough or just ran out of coal. Although I did like the radiators better than furnace- no noise and no blowing air.

Melinda said...

No blowing air is kinda nice. It's just a little strange because I'm used to a very cold apartment (my apt. in KC was in the basement so I constantly wore layers around the house), and we figured that here, that would be one way to save money. But I'm LOVING the floor heat and would love to have that in my home when I come back to the States.

Anonymous said...

we love our wirsboro(hot water)running under our diningroom and kitchen floor. just make sure your next house has hot water heat. the downside is kitty curled up right in the pathway between rooms as that is where a tube runs! also keeps the basement rooms where it runs a tad warmer. our pellet burner is great; uncle cw is in shorts,too, when he chooses! auntie em