The function of the A/C unit *itself* is to pump out air that's about
15F to 20F colder than the air that comes in (or actually, whatever temperature difference is in its specifications). If it's doing that, then *it* is working.
Now, in a larger context, the purpose of the A/C unit within your actual apartment unit is to achieve a comfortable indoor temperature. It is possible that the A/C unit is working perfectly according to its specs but can't do that. In that case, the problem might be that the A/C unit is simply undersized for the load it's having to handle. That doesn't mean the A/C unit is broken. It means that you have the wrong A/C unit. *If* this is the case, it cannot be fixed by tinkering with the A/C unit.
To make a car analogy, if I try to tow a large trailer up a mountain with a Toyota Corolla and I fail, does this mean the Toyota Corolla is broken? No, and if I start looking in the engine compartment to see what's "wrong" with the Toyota's engine, I am looking in the wrong place.
The point is, perhaps the problem is that whoever designed the apartment complex failed to choose appropriate A/C units given the size of the apartments, the amount of insulation (which may be NONE), and variables like that. And maybe they chose A/C units which are really energy- inefficient. I don't know how common this type of bad engineering is, but it seems like a plausible explanation for your situation.
I hear you can do that in Illinois, or that use to be the case - maybe other places. The contract says no tenant repairs or improvements will be deducted from the rent. Of course that wouldn't matter if the contract was in IL because the law overrules it, but I don't believe that's the case here.
I've been here for over a year and a half, and never had an electric bill like that, the A/C has never ran continously like it is, and I never had any problems getting the temp down to 76 deg.
The unit couldn't get the temperature below 83 the other day, when the temperature outside was ONLY 90 deg with 37% humidity.
But you hold that FedEx, a 24!, and, most importantly, TV Guide are somehow kept under glass at the National Bureau of Standards as exemplars of institutional knowledge?
Your observations are, however, excellent! I blame the school systems. Heck, in my state 60% of high school biology teachers (according to a recent survey) believed that humans and dinosaurs were contemporaries!
Science and standards are not subject to majority vote (except in the case of global warming), so whatever "votes" you discover are meaningless. Well, there is obviously a nuggest of truth in the numbers, but that nugget has nothing to do with the subject matter.
Your searches (12:00AM noon, et al) were wrong. There is no such thing in the real world as "12:00AM noon." 12:00 a.m and noon are contradictory - they cannot both exist at the same time. Likewise "12:00 p.m. and noon" are also mutually exclusive.
But because something cannot exist does not mean you won't find Google references. Heck "living+dead" resulted in almost 90 million hits, "black+white" yields almost 400 million events, "catholic+atheist" shows over 2 million instances!
An appeal to Google as an arbiter of physical standards is not the epitome of scientific rigor.
Ignorance can be fixed. It's knowing something that's wrong that's a shame.
It could be that when she steps into the apartment, that something generating more heat than the A/C unit can counter also simultaneously appears in the living area?
Whining about it on here won't get it fixed, calling your local housing authority might, and keep jumping on the landlord about his handyman doesn't know shit about HVAC, get a pro out there, will. Just flat tell the SOB, that he can send out a pro, and get it done right, or you will worry the stew out of him. There is nothing that says you can't call him on the phone dozens of times a day, or show up on his door step, and camp out until he does something. How many other tenents are having issues?? Maybe a call to your local TV station news room??
Boy, this adversarial relationship between tenant and landlord (neighbor and neighbor, boss and employee, contractor and homeowner, etc. ad infinitum) that keeps getting advocated really irritates the shit out of me. I'm a tenant and a landlord, and I have fantastic, cooperative, sane, mutually beneficial relationships with the other party in both circumstances. Luck? No. Intention.
No, I'm not being sarcastic. It certainly wasn't working the night before. It may not have worked 10 minutes earlier, and it may not be working ten minutes later, but if there was an 18 degree differential, it was working then.
I didn't say he fixed it. I said it was working then.
It's very hard to fix something when it is working. That's why Click and Clack, or anyone, tell customers to leave their cars at the shop the night before, when people have cars that work badly when first started, but work ok later. Some people will go to a service station and tell them it's hard to start in the morning, can you fix it? But they very often can't, because it's either not morning anymore or the person drove 3 miles to the service station and the engine is warm now, and it's working fine.
But even things that don't require warming up can have intermittent problems. (Long story snipped before it was completed. Just take my word.)
Even if the spec sheet says it should be 20, it's stilll working pretty well, and if were able to stay that way, it would still cool your apartment to the temp you want.
He may well have been incompetent, but your relationship is with your landlord and not with this guy or the AC company.
You can make notes and calmly tell the landlord that he was ready to leave after making two measurements with the voltmeter, but always be polite.
I've lived in several apartments and one in Brooklyn NY for 11 years. Actually one year in 4C and 10 years in 5A. The building was a nice building, and the old woman landlady sold it after I had been there 3 or 4 years, to a European immigrant. I already had a policy of doing my own repairs, and the aparment needed little anyhow. But I couldn't do plaster and when there was a leak or something in the bathroom above mine, I let him send his guy to repair the plaster, and it looked like the icing on a cake, with all the hills and swirls. Pitiful. He also thought he was a plumber and tried to fix the big oil burner/boiler (6 stories, 49 units, steam heat) but he really didn't know how. (There was a bucket in the furance room half full of oil where he seemed unable to stop an oil drip in one of the pipes related to the furnace. And other things.)
He also tried to evict me illegally. I was 2 weeks late on the rent and he thought or said he thought I was 6 weeks late. He also only gave me 48 hours notice, on a FRiday morning when I was going away for the weekend, instead of starting with the required 30-days notice, which he just skipped altoghether. So Monday morning, I didnt' go to work, and I was inside the aparment with the door locked and chained, and I wouldn't open the door for the city marshall, who had come to evict me. I insisted on talking to the landlord first and he wasn't at his office (before cell phones) but they called him and he called me, and I convinced him I he had proceeded illegally as I say above, and that if he did get me out, I was going to win in court for moving charges, storage charges, plus the illegal eviction. (You can do this with a good chance of success in NYC where tenants have rights. But in almost all small cities and most big cities, tenants have fewer rights than in NYC. So check before doing anything.)
I ended up agreeing to leave the apartment and go with his guy Friday to my bank where I would get the money to pay that months's rent, and to pay 3 or 4 hundred dollars to the marshall who also had to pay the moving van for showing up even though they didn't move my stuff.
Did I yell at the landlord or curse him? Did I ever do that? No, because those things would have not helped me.
I did however, withhold my rent on two occasions that we didn't have heat, and of the three times he took me to court, once I broke even, once I was awarded 100 dollars iirc, and once 200 dollars for the electricity I used to make up for the heat he didn't give me.
If you don't live in New York City, it is very dangerous to withhold rent. In most places you will get evicted for this, no matter how valid your claim might be. You may win money later but your claim will not stop your eviction, which will go much quicker than in NY as well. This is true even for heat, but for air conditioning, people have almost no rights, partly because very few people will die without AC, but many die without heat, and partly because AC is relatively new, and didn't exist or wasn't very common when most tenants rights laws were written, several decades ago.
Well, finally, I was ready to move, and I told him I would move if he gave me 1000 dollars (part to make up for what I shouldn't have had to pay the marshall, and part for the interest on my secuity deposit for
11 years, which he was obliged by NYS law to give me but I was pretty sure he woudln't, and part for aggravation.
And he agreed. And his lawyer told him not to give me the money until after I moved out. And I told them I wouldn't move out until I had the money. (I must admit. I didn't tell them I had bought a house already in Baltimore, and accepted a job, and was leaving for sure. I told him I had found an apartment in Queens, so he would think I might not move after all.)
And Alex, the landlord, told the lawyer and his guy Friday (who told me this story), "You can trust Michael".
He trusted me because I had never lied to him, I had never cursed him, I had never yelled at him or insulted him, I had never called him at home (even though neighbors had, some in the middle of the night, and they had given me his home number)
Even when we didn't have heat in the middle of the night, I used my electric heater, and didn't call him at home. I also treated him and anyone who answered the phone with politeness and respect, no matter what I was actually thinking about him.
What about today? It was working for a little while. It would be good to know about how long it was working, and what the temp is in the apartment today. And what the temp is outside.
You should keep at least a daily record, but maybe an every 12 or 6 or
4 hour record when you are not sleeping. This will be valuable in convincing the landlord it's still a real problem, in discussing things with a city agency or in court if it ever gets to either of those places, and might even turn out to help the repairmnan fix the problem, if the problem is intermittent, which it seems to be.
Do you have a thermometer? You must have a thermometer, and frankly it has to be more than 3 or 4 inches long to convince anyone it's ok. I'm sure you can get one for a dollar at a dollar store, and a good, prettier one for no more than 5. I'm still using a thermmeter I bought 35 years ago, and one I bought 29 years ago. They are white plastic so that it's gently backlit during the day time as the sun goes through the white plastic. I had to reglue the glass tube into place about 10 years ago (there's a small mark filed on the side that should be next to 32 when it is glued, or you can tell where it was sitting becuase there's a little dirt). I also bought a second identical thermometer when I didn't have eneough heat (see other post that may appear below this one) to keep a record of the indoor temp. So now I have one on the second floor outside and one on the frist floor outside.
Keep a record of the temp in the room you spend most of your time in, and of your bedroom, and measure the temp of the air coming out of the AC, and the air going in, probably where the ac guy did that, and keep a record of everything. You will get far more respect from everyone concerned than just saying it was 83 most days. Keep a record of which of your vents are open and which are closed, and anything unusual.
While your at it, even though it is the AC that is the big cause, look for anything else that might be cause heat loss. If you can cure anything yourself, your ll will respectd that. If you can't fix it, just list it calmly (although maybe not unless he asks or until the AC is fixed. If he's a bad landlord, he might decide to spend a week or two on some small air leak, rather than pay for a high-rate repair during the very hot weather.
Im assuming there is more than one rate. Do, or how many do, AC repairmen charge more during July and August. Or do they charge the same and you just have to wait at the bottom of the list?
These groups usually work slowly, I am under the impression. How could it be otherwise? First they call on the phone. The secretary says, He'll get back to you. He calls back the next day, and says he sent a repairman, but it doesn't seem to be fixed. They say, when do you think you will be able to fix it. He says, The AC company says tehgy'll be out the day after tomorrow. They call the tenant in a week to see if it is fixed. She's at work and calls back the next day, and so on.
It doesn't matter how much he knows. The point is that it isn't fixed yet. (assuming it is still hot inside today.)
Yes there is. At some point LESS than dozens of time a day, it is harrassment, and besides the potential liablitity for that, no court of agency will look kindly on someone who does that.
That too.
This is also a mistake, especially when dealing with someone who had it fixed a month ago (and as far as we know, it worked for the past month until it broke sometime within the last week) and who has sent a repairman, no matter how incompetnent. I'm sure the AC charged the LL for a service call, and when he finds out it still doesn't work, the LL will want to know what he's paying for. The AC company will say, as they should, that it had 18 degrees differential when they were there, and that is why the tenant has to keep a record like I say above.
Even if perchance the kind of repeated complaining you are recommending were to get her AC fixed, do you think she will get any cooperation on anything in the future. At most given the reaction of most people to being annoyed, she'll get the minimum the lease requires and she'll have to wait for that.
And when the lease expires, he may well refuse to renew it. AFAIK, in most places there is no recourse when a landlord refuses to renew a lease. Even in places with rent control or rent stabilization, unless you are in an aparment covered by one of those laws, there is afaik no recourse. Even in NYC maybe but for sure in most or all other places.
She's been there a year and ahalf. Her lease might be up in 6 months. It might have been up 6 months ago. She might be month-to-month now, or soon. 30 days notice and she's got to be out, or in some places she would have to the end of the month.
I mentioned a moving van above, now snipped. Don't expect a moving van. In NYC, LLs are required when evicting someone to put their stuff in a moving van and take it to a storage location, where they can redeem it, by paying the moving and storage, I think.
IN most places in the US and elsewhere, all they do is take your stuff and put it on the sidewalk. Where it may be rained on, or people can take it.
I was in Westminster Md, a town of maybe 5,000 near here, and someone's stuff was in the corner of a parking lot of an apartment building with 3 long police sawhorses around it, and a poster stapled to each one that said something like, Police property, or Do not remove. This was meant to keep other people than the tenant from stealing the stuff, and that's better than most places, but I wouldn't count on it.
I don't want to give the impression that tenants have rights. IN some places there are tenants rights laws, but in most places afaik, there are none. And they only have the rights that are in the lease, and in general contract law or common law. Plus even those rights can be trampelled, especially if the landlord is wicked or if you tick off the landlord.
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