The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: FrugalRubles on February 05, 2016, 12:21:43 PM
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Happy Friday All,
I am currently renting an apartment in a building owned by a friend's family. The building uses gas as a heating source through baseboards. This is the first winter we have lived in the apartment. Our gas bills have steadily risen from September, when we moved in.
The bills are now double what we paid in October ($70 to $140) and our apartment is separately metered. The issue is that we rarely use the heat. My fiancee and I work work full time and even though we spend a good amount of time in the apartment on weekends, we rarely turn the heat on. Even when my lady does, it's usually for 30 minutes and then shut back off. We have never left it on during the day and never used it overnight. We actually sleep with a window open most nights.
We have been noticing that the heat has come on at times at night, which we actually thought was tied to the downstairs tenant running his heat, but my friend told me that he has a different heating source.
As a complete novice in the HVAC world, I believe that the thermostat may have some sort of regulator on it that I am not aware of. Our only option on the thermostat is the pendulum (for lack of a better term) that ranges from 50 - 90. It's always all the way to the left, aiming at around 50. Perhaps when the temperature has dropped below 50 outside, the heat comes on to keep it at that level.
Can someone enlighten me on what I am missing / can do to decrease this bill? My friend said he can look further into it, perhaps installing a different thermostat, but I don't know if that's the issue.
Thanks for all your time.