I’m staying in an apartment temporarily and I have absolutely no idea how it is heated. It’s a two-bedroom apartment. There is no thermostat. There are no vents. There is one radiator in the apartment’s living room, at the front and down the hall from the bedrooms, and one radiator in the bathroom.
I have felt every wall in my bedroom. All of them are cool. The floor is also a normal temperature.
And yet, despite it being at or below freezing most nights in the past month, I can be in my bedroom without a shirt on and be comfortable. It might be nice to be a little warmer, but I don’t feel cold or anything.
I am mystified. How is it being heated?
It sounds like my old place. So long as you don’t have a corner unit you’re not being heated. You’re being sheltered from the cold by the surrounding units. The baseboard heaters are only there to touch up if you crack a window or something.
Good insulation in walls and ceiling
There is one radiator in the apartment’s living room, at the front and down the hall from the bedrooms, and one radiator in the bathroom.
Depending how big is two bedrooms (In an era were there is cramped 40 m^2 3 bedroom, and huge 200 m^2 one bedroom loft) it’s more than enough to heat-it.
Perhaps adjacent/lower apartments are heated and are leaking enough heat to you.
Would the walls and floor still be cold if they were doing that? I honestly have no idea how that would work.
Actually yes, because “warm air” and “warm solid surface” are at two different temperatures to us due to unequal heat transfer.
The walls just have to be slightly above the air temperature to heat it up, and they may feel a bit cold anyway.
I think the issue has s largely been explored and solved but I’d like to add something to the mix.
Complexes have hot water pipes running from the water heaters on the lowest floor up to all the suites. Usually they are stationed somewhere around the center of the main building, sandwiched between a commons hallway wall and an apartment wall.
The amount of heat that these can radiate is insane, especially if there’s a hot water circulation system in the building.
It’s probably just good insulation
Are you sure it is?
I’m not sure how else it stays that warm when it is below freezing outside.
i don’t think it is heated.
i leave the heater in my bedroom of all year. when i leave the door open it is just a bit colder that the rest of the flat.
So it’s just really good insulation?
You are in the UK now so the chance of it being underfloor heating is very slim indeed unless you are in a new build from the last 5 - 10 years or so, even then I would doubt it though.
It is probably a combination of the amount of insulation we put in walls, floors and roof spaces along with the fact you downstairs neighbour or neighbours if there is a basement will be using theirs and obviously heat rises.
I know many people here that live in flats above other people that will never switch their heating on and live comfortably.
It is likely that those radiators are your only heat sources coupled with presumably a gas boiler to serve both the radiators and your hot water taps. There will be some kind of controls for it somewhere though, not all systems with have a thermostat in place. My current house has 3 radiators with no thermostat. It is either on or off or you can set time intervals for it to switch on and off by itself but there is no temperature based control.
Are you in a house or an apartment?
I’m on the fifth floor and pretty much never have to run my heat.
Apartment. First floor (second floor for Americans). Heat does rise, so maybe that’s it?
Yeah; rising heat, plus the extra insulation of neighbours sharing walls. It’s uniform enough that the walls/floor doesn’t feel any warmer than usual, but it makes a difference.
This is certainly helpful. I am in an apartment that I’m certain has no floor heating. I hardly ever have to turn on the heater (gets as low as about 13-15 degrees sometimes). During the warmer days, I have to open my windows or else it gets extremely humid.
Are you on the ground floor? If not then maybe whatever is below you is really warm and the heat is coming up through the floor. But I guess in that case the floor would feel warmer.
I am not on the ground floor, and I thought maybe it would be some under-floor heating thing like you are saying, but I have walked all over the room in bare feet and felt no heat in the floor.
I have floor heating, and have set it to very low (almost off). It’s freezing outside, but in here I can walk around in t-shirt and barefoot. The floor does not feel warm, it just doesn’t feel really cold.
Maybe that’s the the same case for your apartment. Though I don’t know why there would also be radiators in the living room and bathroom. Maybe the heat from below is just warm enough to have the same effect.
If everything is already warm enough, there’s no need to add additional heat.
I would have to guess that your apartment is being heated by radiating heat from other apartments (probably below you) as well as insulated by good quality walls and windows, and then this is supplemented by radiators when deemed necessary by some kind of sensor.
It’s also possible you have underfloor heating if you live in a newer apartment in a country where that’s common. But it wouldn’t be my first assumption.
Checked the temperature of the ceiling?
The ceilings here are super high. I wouldn’t be able to reach it. Would a heated ceiling be all that efficient?
Maybe still floor heating? If the apartment is well insulated, the floor is only slightly warmer than the air, since the large area allows for heating with a small temperature difference.
Ambiently
The water in a floor heating system is around 30 degrees celcius so it’s not warm enough for you to necessarily be able to tell by feel. However bathroom would be the first room I’d imagine them including it on and the fact that there’s a normal radiator there leads me to believe it’s probably not floor heating. Ceiling heating is a thing too but quite uncommon.
