I live in an old building, 30 meters apartment. Even if I set the heating to the max, 24/7, windows closed, the place is still cold. The apartment has two of this big heaters (I think they're called radiator?) and a thrid smaller one in the bathroom.
My desk is next to the heater, yet, in the last week, I'm needing gloves, double socks and a jacket just to be able to sit and work. I have a decent cold tolerance btw.

So it’s one of two:
1. Something is wrong in the heating system, I should contact the landlord
2. This is normal and one of downsides of living in old buildings. People usually buy additional electricity heaters and I should do the same.

by iLostMyOldReddit_

12 comments

  1. I don’t know how old is the building but red bricks and old.
    My rent includes the heating, water and all fees, so I don’t know how much is being paid for heating.

  2. Touch the heater and see if it’s cold. You should not require gloves indoors.

  3. That white knob on top right of the radiator is a temperature adjuster — it might be off or set to low temp.

  4. Maybe lemme rephrase the question, How often do people in Poland need to buy external heaters? Is it the norm or the exception?

  5. What’s the temperature inside the flat? I live in an insulated old block and I don’t even need to turn on the radiators and temp. rarely falls below 20 degrees.

  6. You probably have air in your radiator. Watch this vid on YT /watch?v=UIhYItRpSgA or this (in english) /shorts/sH10wlzmRCM. You should see then difference after doing this.

  7. There’s no proper air circulation. Hot air you’ll be thrown out at the top of the radiator but it’s blocked by curtain and don’t spread thought flat. Put the curtain on the windowsill and it should be good.

  8. Is the radiator uniformly warm? If you touch it and it’s colder on the top but warm on the bottom, there may be some air trapped in the radiator and it needs to be let out. In English, this process is called “bleeding the radiator” and if you’re a bit handy, you can find how to do it on YouTube.

    It’s definitely not normal to need gloves inside the apartment.

  9. You should remove the knob-controller and see the valve under it. The valve has its own scale, and if it’s set on low, you can turn the knob all you want and it won’t help.

  10. One of these things set to max should be too hot to touch for more than a few seconds. 30 max. Mine hurt much earlier than that, but the ones I had at school, university, and work were sometimes colder. Still, when set to max, NONE of them were safe to touch for long

  11. Unfortunately this is a charm of living in old buildings, cause they may not have sufficient thermal isolation.

    I saw some articles and vids where people put cardboards wrapped with silver foil onto wall behind radiator so it would bounce off heat toward the room instead of the wall sucking it in

  12. My advice:
    If it is hot on on one side and cold on the other – there’s probably air inside and you should call landlord or administration.

    But I have another funny story. The knob on my heater was misfit and screwed on too tightly, so that even on the highest setting, the valve restricted water flow significantly and it was too cold. So maybe try removing the knob altogether if possible and then check if the heater gets hot. If it still doesn’t work, well, contact landlord or administration. (Screw the knob back on beforehand though, just in case they tried to blame you)

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