Now That’s Ghetto: Stove as Home Heater
Niko warms up in front of the makeshift heater.
My whole heating system is messed up: the boiler leaks and the house is freezing in the back and hot in the front. Last year when the thermostat broke for a few days and we had no heat at all, I turned the oven on and worked at the kitchen table to try and stay warm. I remembered that the other day as I was washing dishes and shivering — it must have been 55 in the kitchen. So I cranked the oven on and opened the door, then went into the warm office to do some work. 20 minutes later I came back and the kitchen was warmer than the office! I looked at the thermostat, set at 68 — it read 71.
I have a whole house-wide central heating system and the thing that heats my apartment up the quickest is my oven. Lame.
Anyone else have ghetto rig stories and photos they want to share from their Bushwick apartment? Email me from the contact link on the left.
December 21st, 2007 at 1:07 pm
For the first two years that we lived in our old loft the heating would come on about once every couple days during the winter. We used to boil water on the stove in the biggest pots we had as our own version of “steam heat” to keep warm
December 21st, 2007 at 1:40 pm
boil a couple of big pots of water. it puts out more BTU’s of heat than the oven per amount of gas used and the heat feels warmer due to the added humidity the water puts out.
December 21st, 2007 at 4:18 pm
The first really cold night of Winter 2006, we came home to discover our apartment was a balmy 60 degrees. We turned up the thermostat (which is in our bedroom and controls the heat for the whole house). Nothing. We called our landlords, they couldn’t get anyone out to fix the heat that night, so we piled every blanket, quilt and comforter we owned onto the bed, bundled up in layers, and huddled in bed with the cats to sleep that night. At its lowest, the temp was about 58.
Someone came out the next day to look at the heater and fixed it, but we had sporadic issues with it all winter. My parents sent us a small electric space heater which is great but noisy, and it’s not something I like to keep running for long periods of time.
The landlords replaced the thermostat at one point and then replaced the boiler in the Spring, and we figured we’d have no problems.
Winter 2007. First cold night of the year. We adjust the thermostat and the heat never kicks on. Here we go again. We put in a call, they say they’re going to send someone to check things out, we pull out our little space heater, bundle up and wait.
We go out and sit on the stoop for a nightcap, and a man approaches with a toolbox.
“You (address)?”
“Yeah.”
“Furnace repair.”
It’s just after 11 p.m.
He gets things working that night, but then we have a stretch of warm days which led us to turn the thermostat down, and of course, the next time it got cold and we turned the heat back up, the furnace never kicked on.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
December 21st, 2007 at 4:35 pm
I’ll try the pot thing.
Jen, your landlord is so WEIRD.
December 22nd, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Jeremy,
If you are looking for a good heating/boiler contractor, call Ed Kelly at Central Plumbing and Heating at 718-366-5325. He has done a great job with my building.
December 26th, 2007 at 1:09 am
When I lived on the corner of Willoughby and Wyckoff in the early ’80s, our landlord was a sick Albanian mother Fucker. He wouldn’t pay the oil company so that meant no heat in the winter. When it got really bad, he would actually burn scrap wood in the oil furnace. How cold would it get? The water in the toilet bowl froze.
December 27th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
I recently tried to convince a young woman on a date that open-stove heating was quirky and romantic. My landlord held off turning on the heat until mid-December. Yes, we had to sic the city on him, but results were not instantaneous. Boo slumlord.