This past week has been a cold one. Most days the temperature has been hovering between 0 and 15 degrees (with and without the wind-chill). My apartment has been without heat for a little over 3 weeks. This is the first week where it has become mildly annoying.
My current apartment has all wood floors. I have always loved this, as I prefer hard flooring to carpeting. That is, until tonight. Since getting home this afternoon I have had to twice hop into a steaming bath simply to regain some warmth. It is the oddest thing to have hot water at all of my taps but to have no hot water running to my hvac unit … sigh.
Architecturally it is one of the oddest things to think about all of this. My apartment is loft style in a historic wood-structured building located in Philadelphia’s China Town. With ceilings nearing 14 feet, I imagine that the volume would be rather welcome should the air-conditioning unit ever break and be unable to cool the apartment during one of Philadelphia’s indian summers. Something to think about … poles.
In the summer, a condition (no hvac) can become a minor nuisance and perhaps a blessing as the electric bill will be less; this same condition (no hvac) in the winter months becomes more than a minor nuisance … of course, only after weeks of freezing weather.
So, is it better to have a smaller apartment or larger should the same problem occur?