Heating Soap Box

Wow! So Christmas is this Friday. Crazy. Sometime life feels like it is on slow motion fast-forward or something like that. This is my fourth week of school, making my first of 6 months gone. We will be on Holiday break for a week before returning, which is a bit of a relief. I will definitely be spending a good part of the break studying! I am loving every minute of it though--even the not so fun minutes (basic muscle chemistry anyone?) and cannot yet believe that I will get to make a living doing this after I am done. It makes me feel very lucky.

So, moving on to my soap box/rant. We have had a major run-around with our property management company and the heating system(s) at our house over the last month. It is nearly resolved but far from over at this point in time. Our house has been cold since the day we moved in and, after learning the costs and logistics involved with getting kerosene and/or propane for the house (everything was empty when we arrived), we had decided to see how long we could make it with a few electric heaters. About 2 weeks ago it started to get cold enough that we decided to break down and buy a new propane canister for the upstairs propane heater ($110-the canister here is one of those 100 pound ones that is considered "portable" but I would beg to differ). We brought it home, finally figured out how to hook it up only to discover that the heating unit inside didn't work. We went back and forth with property management for about a week before getting them to confirm this malfunction ("we've rented this house for 6 years and have never had an issue with the heating system..."). They also informed us they would not be replacing it because they didn't think it would "make much of a difference" in the house temp...

With our options running out and the weather getting colder, we turned to plan three: the kerosene heater in the (unfinished/unused) basement. We had fought against this heating system because there is no duct system, the space is unused, and the part of the house that needs the heat is two flights of stairs up. It struck us as a terribly inefficient way to heat the house. This combined with the minimum $300 delivery fee was not our favorite, however, we had been left with no other options. We had the tank filled up last Monday only to come home, try to turn on the heater and discover that...it DIDN'T WORK! Noah basically went to the property management office and refused to leave until they scheduled someone to service the unit for later in the week. During this sit-in, one of the maintenance men basically admitted that they knew the person who lived in the house for four year prior (a student) never called when there was a problem and just stayed at a friends, meaning they basically knew the house was not up to snuff and could have cared less about it before renting it again. Ugh.

Thursday morning I was home when the kerosene repairman came to service the unit. After initially observing the set-up, he came in and said to me, "well the problem is easy, there is no kerosene in the tank." What?!! I'm screaming in my head They took our check, I have a receipt from the oil company for refilling it!!! I called the oil company and confirmed they made the delivery. The repairman suspected the tank or line had a leak in it, but since the ground was still frozen, could not be sure because we couldn't smell the kerosene. Overall, he said the set-up of the whole system was terrible and didn't even know how it had passed code. On top of this, he discovered that the unit in the basement was also broken and that it was so old the parts for it were no longer even made...I thanked the repairmen and asked him to tell property management everything he had told me and then started looking up online what my rights as a tenant were in North Carolina, ready for drastic action if necessary.

Fortunately, property management called after speaking to the repairman ("You've just had the worst luck with that house...are you sure the tank was filled up?"). She said they had contacted the owner and that we would be reimbursed for the kerosene. To make a long story a little shorter, they agreed to bring us up a few extra space heaters that day to help get us through until a new heat pump system could be quoted and installed, skirting around the possibility of compensating us some for our extra electric costs. But, whatever.(Thing is, when the heat pump guy came to quote the job, he said the house set up was not conducive to an easy/cheap system...we still have not heard back from property management what will happen next, for now at least we are warm).

With the extra heaters, we were happy to wake up to a truly warm and cozy house Friday morning for the first time since moving in, which was perfect because it started to snow, and snow, and snow...but that's the next post. Thanks for letting me rant about the ineptitude of our property management company and our "adventure" with heating systems, it's been a big deal the last few weeks.