I think I heard on the morning news that there were 2200 lack-of-heat complaints within the previous 24 hours to the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development or the City's Citizen Service Center at 311.
I don't know if I heard correctly, but I don't find it hard to believe. It was freezing last night and today. The wind chill made it feel like 15 to 20 degrees below zero.
And unfortunately for me, my apartment is not well insulated, and there is a draft around the window. The exterior walls of my studio are cold to the touch. I've tried to stop the draft along the windowsill with rolled towels, and I'll be dreading my electric bill if I have to continue running my space heater all night long. The building has had the radiators on the past few nights, but they're stingy with the heat.
In New York City, residential building owners are required by law to provide tenants with hot water year-round and maintain an indoor temperature of 55 degrees when the outside temperature falls below 40 degrees. And since heat and hot water are included in my rent, my building makes sure it doesn't go a degree above the law.
1 comment:
Home Depot and other hardware places have that plastic stuff you can put over the windows (and then you use a hair dryer to make it taut). It really helps with drafts. I was lucky for most of my time there to have the kind of apartment that's so hot you need to open a window even when it's below zero. But my last place was old and drafty. I still ran the space heater but that plastic stuff on the windows helpe a lot. And when you do it right with the hair dryer, you almost can't see it so it's not like having a big ugly piece of plastic on the window.
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