Rental Property Investor · Member since 2020 · 71 posts · 9 votes
Hello! My husband and I just bought a property. It was a large single family home and at some point 40 or so years ago was split up into 6 units. One unit houses the thermostat for the furnace which heats the whole building. The tenant living there frequently turns it way down and then all the other tenants complain because it drops to 55 degrees in their units. The tenant has repeatedly been told not to touch the thermostat. The tenant can’t be removed right now. So I have several questions. 1- is there some way I could control the thermostat without having to have wifi at the property? Like some kind of system that works off cell towers to allow me to set it from my phone? 2- how can I enforce this without evicting? Send a certified letter so they know I mean business? It’s really getting cold to constantly deal with complaints from other tenants, and then to spend hours trying to get ahold of the tenant responsible. How would you proceed? Thanks!
I would avoid a legal battle right now, even in our landlord friendly area, it's not easy or quick to process an eviction in the Covid era. If your location has any kind of moritorums the legal approach will likely get you a tenant that stops paying, you can't evict and your other tenants are still complaining.
I think you are on the right track put controls on the thermostat. Google "HC7176 Residential Thermostat" It's a landlord tamper proof thermostat. Set it and forget it, the tenant can't control it.
Or, put a locked enclosure around the current one. Again, google should help you locate suitable versions.
I would avoid a legal battle right now, even in our landlord friendly area, it's not easy or quick to process an eviction in the Covid era. If your location has any kind of moritorums the legal approach will likely get you a tenant that stops paying, you can't evict and your other tenants are still complaining.
I think you are on the right track put controls on the thermostat. Google "HC7176 Residential Thermostat" It's a landlord tamper proof thermostat. Set it and forget it, the tenant can't control it.
Or, put a locked enclosure around the current one. Again, google should help you locate suitable versions.
I was also going to suggest moving the thermostat or you could swap it out for a nest one (never used those) that allows you to control it remotely and therefore lock out control from that tenant.
Another option is to install an electric baseboard heater in the living room of each of the units-ideally under a window to allow better circulation.
Investor · NJ · Member since 2018 · 869 posts · 921 votes
5y
Have encountered this issue numerous times in my line of work, Honeywell makes a system called the Redlink.
It doesnt need wifi. You have remote temperature sensors in each of the units. Then put a tstat in the furnace room next to the redlink and set it up to average the temps from the sensors in the apartments. The con to this system is that the wireless sensors run on battery but you dont have to tear up a whole house to run tstat wires.
Alternatively depending on what type of system you have and how well it's designed you can do a control with out door temperature reset and no t-stats at all. Most hvac guys would have trouble figuring that out though.