Dear house, I love you, but...

[foolish_m0rtal]

After years of deliberately refusing to attach myself emotionally to the various places I have lived, I really like my house. I feel ownership over it, and it still enchants me that I am lucky enough to live here. We have hardwood floors and a lot of open sunlit space. We have many features that renters in the city prioritise: offstreet parking, a yard, a porch, free in-house laundry, gas heating, a dishwasher, plenty of storage space, close walking distance to the train station. We live in a 2-family house and rent out the 2nd floor, so I'm finally living in a space that is so much more personable than an apartment complex.

However, our walls are incredibly thin, and I can hear conversations of people walking around on the sidewalk outside. That's fine, got used to it. But at the moment I keep ascending/descending thump-thump sound, like someone is walking up the stairs, so I keep mentally preparing to make smalltalk with my roommates, who are due back today, and no one is there. It's kind of annoying to have this surge of anxious expectation that suddenly dissipates over and over.
later solution: I'm listening to a new album on my laptop, which distracts me sufficiently.

Also, no one but me has been in this house since Wednesday night, and I haven't had the need to do laundry or run the dishwasher, and the shower continues to be lukewarm/cold. Not sure what I can do about it, since our landlord is responsible, but at least I know it's not to do with our usage. Sometimes the cool water poses a problem if I have to wash my hair and need to stay in the shower for a prolongued time, but usually I just take really fast showers. Haven't had a hot bath since the summer, might take soap and a towel up to the gym in the New Hampshire office, if I get really desperate, but it's generally tolerable. However, the mystery of why this is happening continues to irritate me.

Comments

[lil-1337.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a nice place. Have you talked to your landlord about the water issue? Might be something simple like turning up the heat on the hot water heater.

[foolish-m0rtal.livejournal.com]

I'll bring up the subject delicately. He's a nice landlord, don't want to seem like I'm complaining about it, exactly. :)

[lil-1337.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the sensible way to approach it.

[foolish-m0rtal.livejournal.com]

So, here was the issue: the boiler is usually kept to 120 degrees to save on gas bills, which is fine in the summer when the water that goes into the house is relatively lukewarm. However, in the winter, because it takes longer to heat up relatively cold water, it is considerably cooler when it reaches us in the bath - so I turned the maximum temperature of the water up to the next setting, 130, and our showers are a LOT warmer now, sometimes even steaming hot. We are content. :)

I didn't know, before this, that you could regulate the temperature on the boiler. In India when we want to take a bath, we turn on the hot water tank for an interval of time.

Wiki says about hot water heaters "In tropical countries, like Singapore and India, a storage water heater may vary from 10 L to 35 L. Smaller water heaters are sufficient, as ambient weather temperatures and incoming water temperature are moderate."

This makes sense.

[lil-1337.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it was an easy fix.

[foolish-m0rtal.livejournal.com]

Whoops, false solution! I told my dad, who used to work in heating, and he was like "130?? are you kidding me??" and then I went down and read on the tank that above 125 has potential for burns, so apparently the regulator is not calibrated properly, because 120F should in fact be more than adequate.

[lil-1337.livejournal.com]

Is there a way to calibrate it?