The last thing I did before going to sleep last night was..
switching the heating off!
And I only regret not having done it on the night before, and the night before that.
One of the things that sort of messed my financial planning up was a huge heating surcharge. In September, I just got paid for a big assignment, took a mini-vacation and invested something in my personal comfort at home, and then there was it. The paper bearing "techem caloribel" sign in the top left corner, travelling from my concierge to my landlord to my post box, and resulting in me having to reimburse extra central heating costs incurred during first three quarters of 2008 - the amount exceeding two my months' rent. Can you believe it? And I wasn't even heated that much - travelled a lot for work in the first half of the year, and then there was summer.
Ah well, nobody is safe from human error - I could have gone away for a week or two and forget to switch heating off. Still, this doesn't explain the monstrous amount I had to pay and makes no sense in terms of consumption patterns - I had no surcharge for 2004-2005, a tolerably big one for 2006 (fuel oil prices increased then, and it was a summary for the whole 3-year period), then a token sum for 2007 and then this... just for the first three bloody quarters!
I must admit that madame concierge was really sympathetic; she took time to explain me how to read the heating counters, and how her family kept their bills within limits. She even made me measure the windows and sent them to some companies so my landlord could get a quote for double-glazing (by the way, you can get a tax rebate for that in Belgium); haven't heard from them since but OK, at least we tried.
You see, many of my centrally-heated faced the same problem - but of much milder proportions. That is, I was doing something really wrong and had to make a change, but what should I be doing exactly? Well, here's the plan:
- dress for the weather, even at home. I've been feeling much warmer and happier having found those two pairs of woolen socks I once brought home "just in case". The blue-and-green ones actually even look nice. Right now I'm wearing cotton jazz pants and a very nice long-sleeved t-shirt, with a really warm fleece that came with those cat-and-mice pyjamas I never admit to own :) - and feeling fine, but the socks make all the difference;
- always remember to switch the heating off when you are away from home, even for the week-end. The key word is "remember". Make it as much a reflex and checking whether you left your iron on. However, on its website techem, the company responsible for our heating bills, recommends lowering the temperature but not to the point when the radiators would freeze;
- think how much heat do you really need - madame concierge, for example, uses only two radiators out of five, with the one in the kitchen and the lobby permanently off. Me, I don't like cold kitchens, so I'm just trying not to spend time there unless cooking or cleaning. Techem recommends to lower temperature in all rooms you're not using;
- if you switch the kitchen/lobby heating off, your other radiators will still continue to heat those places, so keep all doors closed. This should improve your feng-shui situation too, if you are into this sort of things;
- ok this one is without any academic reference, but i trust the source: a friend told me that if the temperature at your place is even one degree higher than at your neighbour's, then you'd be heating your neighbour's place too. The young lady downstairs, by the way, had very little surcharges, so I might have been heating her place! Try to keep temperature a bit lower than you would if someone else paid for it, and put those socks on!
- Belgians are very fussy about not opening the windows when radiators on. In fact, this was the first thing madame concierge asked about when she saw my bill. Apparently, even five-minute-long airing of your place with heating at max messes something up;
- techem says never cover the radiators. I took all furniture away from them, although I must admit to drying my bedlinen on radiators occasionally - which is a big no-no;
- In 2004-2005 I had my bed positioned in a way that I could switch one radiator on and off out of bed. Always switched it off at night, not for the costs but for some strange assumption that it's healthier not to have your bedroom heated. As long as I put my bed somewhere else, bills soared. 7-8 per day of unheated bedroom goes a long way! So I'm doing this again. The key is a good blanket, maybe a woolen throw over it, and keeping your bathrobe, old cardigan or whatever takes you from bed to bathroom, close to you - otherwise you'll never get out of bed!
- A word for windows - I grew up in a cold climate, where my parents would put some special tape around the windows during the winter. Me, I like to air my place frequently, so paper is not the solution - I saw monsieur concierge hanging out of his window doing something with the window joints - must find the way to have it done to my windows! When you do air your room, have the window wide open for a few minutes rather than half-open it for a long time. Techem recommends to keep your curtains down when it's dark, but I haven't really seen Belgians do so. Yeah, and getting a quote for double-glazing might be a good idea, especially if you still have enough income to look for the ways to optimise your taxes;
- Sometimes, life is just not fair and there is nothing you can do about it. The heat loss can occur through your floorboards and through your roof. Apparently it's just better to live on the middle floor and have nice fluffy carpets; otherwise hot tea and going out should help.
http://www.techem.be/French/Info/Info-Plus/d-=C3=A9conomie_d-=C3=A9nergie/index.
And yes, my consumption seems to be reasonable according to the electronic meters at home. If you want to know if my plan actually resulted in less surcharges, you have to check back when the next bill arrives. I promise to blog about it.
That's all for now. Check back tomorrow!
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