how does a shared heating source work in a large apartment block. Is heating charged separately or is it part of the rent, can one person use way more than another and everyone pays the same or is it metered?

20 comments

1. Totally depends on the apartment building and the landlord. My experience is that if it’s a shared source it’s typically included in the rent (and rent is subsequently a little higher than units where this isn’t the case).

   Most newer buildings though have individual heat for each apartment so each tenant pays their own.

2. Heating (and AC) is charged separately to each tenant. I pay a monthly bill to Dominion Energy for the amount of power I use.

3. Depends on how the system is set up. It could be a flat bill for the entire building that’s factored into the rent or it could vary based on the usage of each individual apartment unit.

   It all comes down to how the heating/cooling is generated and distributed.

4. It just depends. I’ve experienced both scenarios.

5. In my building (22 units with a central boiler serving radiators in each unit), it’s included in the rent.

6. I think my apartment has heat pumps, and so it’s covered by the electricity bill

7. My mother lives in a 115 year old building. Her heat comes from a radiator, which is fed by a hot water line that runs from floor to ceiling up three levels, and I assume branches out across the complex.

   When she doesn’t want heat, she turns a knob at the point where the radiator meets the line, and it blocks it off, leaving the radiator empty, but the water free to flow to other levels.

   Her building is so old that individual units can’t be metered, especially with a setup like this, so her utilities are all included in her rent, which is maybe $150 higher than otherwise.

8. This will be addressed in your lease. They may tack on your individual usage, may charge a flat fee, or just not add anything and build it overall into your base rent.

   In most newer buildings heat is just powered by electricity and every rental I’ve had in central Indiana, electric is always in the tenant’s name. You call up whatever electric company handles your area and deal with them directly.

   When I lived in an older apartment building, they tacked on heat usage in addition to the monthly rent. I have no idea how they determined who owes what, place was shady as fuck.

9. Depends – I lived in an apt complex where the AC was split evenly amongst all apartments. So, even if one unit used v little AC and another had it running all the time, their bill was the same.

   That was not typical though, most places aren’t like that IME.

10. Depends on the building… often there’s a boiler in the basement that provides heating for all units and the bill is paid by the landlord, with the expense rolled into the overall rents but not metered.

    When I lived in a condo high rise, the heating/cooling was provided by the building, costs paid by the HOA. We just had fans that controlled the flow of hot/cold air into the units we paid the electric for.

11. The last apartment I lived in that had a shared heating/AC system, the price was paid by the owner of the building, and the amount factored into the rent.

12. So I’m in an older building with base board heating, it’s included in the rent. We don’t control the thermostat though so it can get quite hot in the winter.

13. I think individual metered would be electric heat with each apartment paying their own metered electric bill.

    Included in rent would be central air, each apartment having it’s own thermostat. Likely it could be powered by natural gas.

    I would not choose any place where the landlord divided utilities and passed on fee amounts. I would prefer monthly flat fee for unlimited use or individual meters installed by the utility company.

14. There are multiple ways you can do it. The easiest way is to just divvy up the cost of heating between the tenants. Larger apartments would usually pay more than smaller apartments.

    I once lived in an apartment that would divvy up the actual cost of utilities between apartments. I was poor and didn’t want to add to the cost so I didn’t use many utilities. However, I soon realized that it didn’t make a bit of difference since I was one person out of many.

    Alternatively, if you have heating via hot water or condenser water, you can submeter that heating for each apartment. I don’t see this that often (I design mechanical systems for apartments) but I’ve done it before. It works by measuring the flowrate and the temperature difference between the water in versus water out. From there, you can find out how much energy (btu/hr) you’ve used.

    In the vast majority of apartments I design, each apartment gets its own DX split system. Sometimes the electricity will be submetered, which is easy if they are electric split systems (heat pumps). Sometimes gas is submetered if they are gas furnaces.

15. In most places it’s metered by the apartment.

    I had one apartment with gas heat, and every unit had its own furnace, blower, and gas meter. I had a few apartments with baseboard electric heating, also metered by the unit. And one had a heat pump, electric, metered.

    I haven’t seen an apartment building with any sort of shared heat arrangement, but I’m sure there might be some oddball arragements out there. Maybe for situations like a single family home that was split into a duplex for two sets of tenants.

16. In older buildings in Manhattan, they use old boiler steam heat systems that are included in the rent & tenants often can’t control the setting. There’s legal liability for insufficient heating so landlords tend to crank it high during the winter.

    People opening their windows during the middle of winter is a normal thing. Apparently as a public health measure this was intended—they wanted air circulation in tenements during the winter.

17. Built prior to 1960: part of the rent.

    Built after 1975: *probably* metered to the unit, or the tenant’s responsibility (individual through-the-wall electric aircon/heaters).

18. Depends on the building. If it can’t be individually metered, it’s included in rent. If it can be, it’s usually individual.

19. If you have your own thermostat, you’re charged individually.

    If everyone receives the same heat and only the building supervisor can change the thermostat temp, it’s a flat rate included in rent.

20. It’s not common for apartment blocks to have shared heat here, here being Illinois. Usually though, if it’s something that isn’t separately metered, it’s just included in the rent. Here water is often included, because it’s not separately metered (and pretty cheap), but electricity does have meters for each unit, so it’s billed separately.