Be sure to tell your tenants:  PLEASE DO NOT TURN YOUR FURNACE OFF OR WAY DOWN during this very cold weather!

It’s amazing (and embarassing) that landlords would have to tell their tenants not to turn off their heat when the weather is freezing, but you may as well learn from our mistakes so you don’t have to suffer what we just went through:

We just had residents on two different properties cause severe and costly damage to the property by turning off their heat “to save money.”

In one apartment, they turned off the heat to save money over the holidays while they were out of town.  When they got back in town they called to say that they had no water and their tub drain was backed up…..as in frozen solid!  It took our maintenance contractor about five hours to get the pipes unfrozen.

In another apartment, the tenants also turned off their heat over the holidays to save money because they were out of town.  When they got back we found out that every single appliance had been frozen and had to be replaced:  the water heater, the dishwasher, the garbage disposal and the furnace all were frozen and failed.  The cost?  Approximately $3,000.00 so these tenants could save maybe $30.00 in heat costs over the holidays.  (By the way, the boyfriend had the chutzpah to call and tell us what crappy landlords we were for renting an apartment with all the appliances dead and dying).

Last year we had a tenant who complained that her walls and windows were sweating and causing water damage.  Our maintenance contractor found out that she was turning her heat off in the day time while she went to work to save money.  This caused the walls and windows to condensate and “sweat” when she came home each night and turned the heat on because the walls the windows were ice cold.

Last year we had another couple who turned their heat down as low as it could go every day when they went to work.  Then they would call and complain repeatedly that there was something wrong with their furnace because it kept shutting off.  We had several furnace experts come out and inspect the furnace at high costs.  The experts figured out that the furnace’s safety mechanism was repeatedly shutting the furnace down because it was working so hard to reheat the apartment that it was overheating itself.

Hopefully, this will help you learn vicariously from our misadventures!