Program heating settings for nighttime

At some point, if no remedy is provided, your tenant will move out and you might get rent dodgers [vielleicht willst Du das].

Hello at this late hour,

Sayings like "Stinginess is cool" are quickly thrown out, that sounds great, you feel morally superior - how cheeky, someone wants to let their tenant freeze! Unbelievable!

As so often in life, it won't be that simple and things always have two sides. Whether you are interested in that or only in catchy phrases, I don't know, I don't know you. This thread should actually already be confirmation that we don't fundamentally not care and that we are looking for solutions - for me, a solution can also be that we sit down again, discuss what we personally maybe naively assumed as landlords with flat-rate rent, which she wanted after all, what is technically possible at the moment and what is possible at what additional cost. I don't necessarily understand the purpose of a tenancy to mean that the landlord has to ensure that it is 24 degrees in an apartment at 4 a.m. so that someone gets up briefly and then is gone for 12 hours.

Problem again:
- We can't set anything new at the moment, a new control system costs 1500 euros and that for an oil heating system that is 23 years old
- for us, everything is fine, we would really only take such a big amount of money in hand right now so that she feels subjectively warm at night
- if at 5 a.m. it is 19.8 degrees in the apartment, we are far from having a lawyer or tenant protection association get involved :) So, IF you already come up with such sayings, they should have a bit more substance
- we cannot separate the main house and the granny flat in terms of settings and would then have to start heating all 11 radiators at 4 a.m. or have to attach such wireless devices to each radiator for about 60 euros each, which prevent that.
- She also believes she is freezing in summer and we would have to set the heating so that it also switches on at 4 a.m. in July – in a house of a total of 240 sqm.

I don't find it completely wrong that as a landlord you consider whether to go along with this. We are not talking about a 120 sqm apartment in Munich in a top location, but a small apartment in a village where we would rather have to assume that everything that remains from the rent after tax would be spent on such things. That is a young woman, currently apparently without a partner, maybe she will move out here again in a year completely independently of 20 degrees at 5 a.m. and for that we would have made such an investment in such an old heating system.

And of course we don't want her to freeze, that is clear. We really are thinking about it, just that alone annoys me terribly.

I would buy a used controller from ebxxy and have it installed. Sure, there is no warranty, but it is the cheapest solution at first. Then you'll have peace of mind for now and maybe enjoy the system for many more years.

Edit: Just google it, for example, I immediately find Fa Darche, who even offer such things as an exchange.
From my point of view, no alternative will be cheaper and safer!

The same principle also exists for old car control units.

Since we cannot regulate the main house and the granny flat separately, we would additionally have to invest in various wireless thermostats so that the heating doesn’t turn on everywhere at 4 a.m. at night. 4:30 a.m. is also not enough, because she wants it to be warm by then, and that also in summer. After all, the basement is probably not “warm” in summer, if you’re cold at 21 degrees. There are still some things to clarify with her; the heating behavior she wants cannot be regulated with a flat rate as agreed, and as landlords we are, at least mentally, not willing to bear the costs for such an investment, which we don’t need, alone.

I don’t quite understand, if it was already warm at 4 a.m. for her before, it should have been warm for you as well. What would be different now than it was before?
By the way, based on your explanations, I suspect that your heating system stopped winter operation on 01.03.2018 and therefore no longer heats through at night.

We still have too little knowledge about issues like gas boilers or other things, but buying a new control system and equipping the entire house with wireless devices will cost us around 2000 euros, and when you can only talk about a new gas system starting at 10,000 euros, that is crazy expensive for us-

The problem with you is that there is only one circuit. You can exchange the boiler, but you still have to control the rooms/apartments separately.

If I lived with you and was freezing, then you would either have tenant protection or a lawyer on your neck plus a rent reduction

There is a difference whether you freeze at 20°C or at 16°C...

@TE

Completely independent of the current tenant and her problem, I would look to implement a regulation that heats the main house and the granny flat separately. As an investment in the future. Everything running on one heating circuit is already somewhat unfortunate; even as a tenant I might not want the exact heat that my landlord prefers (it could be too warm for me instead of too cold).

So I would invest that money anyway and never consider it a lost investment, even if the tenant moves out in a year.

That won't be possible with the regulation. Physically, there is certainly only one heating circuit.

I would also buy and install (have installed?) an old, used controller. You will probably have to invest a few hundred euros if you want to rent it out. If the whole house then has to be heated from 4 o'clock, so be it. If according to your statement it's already almost 20 degrees in the rooms in question, then it also costs "almost nothing" to get them up to 22 degrees. I don't understand why you are on the one hand thinking about an investment of 10k (the boiler may have to be replaced soon), but on the other hand don't want to start a solution-oriented minimal variant. A heating system without an adjustable controller would be a no-go for me as a homeowner anyway.