There are seldom things more frustrating than waking up on a cold winter morning and having your apartment be freezing cold. You KNOW you turned the thermostat up, but your apartment just doesn’t seem to be keeping the heat.
More than likely, you have cold air leaking into your apartment, and the same way the cold is getting in, the heat is sneaking out. Figuring out where the problem areas are is key to keeping your heating costs down and your apartment warm.
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Why is this happening and what can you do about it?
Let’s go through a couple of reasons why your apartment could be colder than normal during the winter months and some simple solutions you can implement to keep your heat in and energy costs down.
The Walls In My Apartment Are Cold
If the walls in your apartment are cool or cold to the touch, that means that cold air is getting in from outside the buildings and traveling up the spaces between the walls of the apartments.
To ultimately fix this problem, you are going to have to show the landlord what the specific issue is so he can get someone in there to replace it. This is now become a structural issue and is something for a builder to come out and see where the draft if getting in.
Cold walls are tell-tale signs that you are getting cold air in your apartment, and not necessarily by the usual suspects such as doors and windows. This would also explain a bunch of confusion when you just can’t seem to get your apartment up to the right temperature, especially at night when nothing is going on.
If it is the OUTSIDE wall, meaning a wall inside your apartment, but that butts up against the outside of the building, this wall may be cold in the wintertime. That is fairly normal. The heat from inside your apartment will more or less counter the cold coming in by conduction from the outside.
If you are feeling an abnormal cold on an INTERIOR wall, then you have a draft issue that originates in a different part of the building and needs your maintenance guy out to look at it right away.
But cold walls and structural problems are not the only ways that cold gets in and the heat gets out. Doors and windows are the common culprits here, but fear not, we have some great solutions that are easy and cheap and you can use them on pretty much any window or door you have in your apartment.
How To Keep Your Apartment Warm In The Winter
The best way to keep your apartment warm in the winter is to make sure your doors and windows are weatherproofed and there is no air coming in the doors or windows.
To fight the cold coming in these common places isn’t hard, all it takes is a bit of weather stripping and you can prevent the cold air from sliding under your door or through the cracks in the seals by your windows.
Let’s look at a couple of products we use ourselves that work as solutions to keeping your apartment warm in the winter.
First off, you want to take a look at some weather stripping foam that you can use on all the windows in your apartment, as well as your sliding door to your patio or balcony.
Yotache has some great products that you can order instantly and have to your apartment within a day or two. The exact product we are highlighting for you is the Foam Tape with 3 Strips that Total 50 feet long and are ¼ in wide and 1/8 in thick. This is perfect for your windows or sliding doors. 50 feet of it only costs $11, and you will MORE than makeup for that cost with the energy savings you see during the winter months.
The second product, made by the same company, makes thicker rolls of this weather stripping that is more appropriate to put under your door jam to keep the cold air from coming into your apartment on cold nights and mornings.
This is the Weather Stripping for Doors by Yotache. Again, for only $12, it is a VERY reasonable price, and you can get the solution shipped straight to your door in a couple of days. Then simply cut to measure and install it.
If you haven’t done this before, I recommend a simple YouTube search on “How to install weather stripping to my doors and windows” and they will give you more in-depth information than I could give you here.
You MAY have doors and windows that may need a slightly different size or weight to them. And they are easy to find HERE, just go through their different products and figure out which one suits the windows and doors in your apartment the best.
Other Tips To Keeping Your Apartment Warm
Cooking – This is one of the things that we discourage tenants to do during the hottest months because the A/C unit is going to have to pump all that extra heat out of your house and put in cold air. The more heat that is in your apartment at any given time, the harder that system has to work, and if it is TOO hot, and you already have a great deal of heat in your walls and ceiling it is difficult to get rid of.
HOWEVER, in the winter, that nuisance of additional heat is a blessing. Running your stove puts more heat into your system. Baking or cooking something in your oven is also going to put more heat into your system. In fact, when you are done using your oven, you are going to want to leave that door cracked a bit to let as much of that hot air into your apartment as possible. This is also going to help keep your apartment warm in the winter.
Space Heater – This simple tool can be your savior during the winter months. Just plug one of these bad boys in and you will almost instantly have heat throughout your apartment.
The TaoTronics Space Heater is a great space heater for your larger apartments. This thing really puts out the heat, has a remote, and a timer so if you just want to run it during the night, or when you are away from the apartment, it has that functionality.
This space heater can be easily moved from room to room and the price is as good as you are going to get anywhere for a space heater of this caliber. Literally, I could not find one to replace one I have personally at Wal-Mart for as cheap as Amazon is selling them here. Seriously, see for yourself!
The other space heater I wanted to point out to you is the AmazonBasics Oscillating Ceramic Heater. This space heater is nice and compact, but still delivers enough heat that it will warm up your apartment quite nicely. And it also has oscillation features and timing features on it so you can set it for however long you want it to run. At $35, you will not be disappointed in the performance of this space heater!
Make Sure Your Doors And Windows Are Shut – I KNOW that sounds like a ridiculously obvious thing to mention, but you would be surprised at the number of apartments I see on a regular basis that complain about the heat or the cold, and yet have their windows and doors wide open with an expression on their face wondering where the cold or hot air could possibly be coming from!
Face Palm.
Anyways, make SURE that your windows are all sealed and that your doors are all shut and not letting any cold or hot air in or out. If the door IS leaking air, then look above at our solutions for weather stripping the door to keep heat where it should be, inside your apartment.
If your apartment is cold in the winter, or you think there is a draft, there very well may BE a draft. The first step is to find it, which means investigating your doors and windows. Get some Weather Stripping to seal your windows and doors, and if your heater still isn’t working well enough, invest in a space heater.
They really aren’t that much money and can provide a TON of extra heat into your apartment when you really need it. Check out the links I mentioned above, they are the products that we recommend for our own apartment complex, and we know they will work well for you.
