so, installing the furnace meant putting in a cold air return that is basically an open hole in the floor.

1) noise. i'm a respectable tenant, i don't blast music or make any more noise than would be considered reasonable, but i'm often awake off hours and there's not any chance i'm going to modify that. that's a big part of what i consider to be freedom. so, he's going to hear me watching youtube or making spaghetti at 4:00 am. *shrug*. there wasn't a problem until they drilled a hole in the floor...

2) air conditioning. i like to acclimatize myself. he seems to like the air on full blast. i'm not going to freeze down here, i'm going to open the window and let the heat in. and, the hot air is going to rise, meaning his air isn't going to work the way he wants it to. *shrug*.

3) i don't have any plans to move anywhere, but if they get pissy about the noise or the windows? good luck renting this to somebody else with a hole in the floor and pipes moving out every which way. i don't care, myself, i'm interested in the amount of space down here and not what it looks like, but what they're doing is irreversibly aesthetically damaging to the property. this was a nice unit, but we're talking about open furnace ducts on the ceilings (like you'd see in an unfinished basement) and a condensation pipe running open through the bathroom and drilled through the tiles into the concrete. it's actually a good thing for them that i don't care, that i've lived in half-finished basements most of my life, because just about anybody else would immediately move out. it makes it more like i'm renting somebody's basement than living in an apartment complex, which i think is how the landlord is more or less interpreting the arrangement.

again: i don't have any plans to move anywhere. i'm just going to make the adjustments i need, and the other tenants will have to deal with it. this simply isn't likely to work out well for the tenant upstairs, who happens to be the landlord's brother. and i'm not sure what their next step is, or if they even have one. i mean, they can't curfew me or tell me to close the windows...

i should point out that the furnace came in as plan b. the initial plan was to put a heat pump in.

but, over a very long email exchange, i was eventually able to explain to him that heat pumps don't work in canadian winters - that, in canada, a heat pump is functionally an air conditioner with an electric coil attached to it, and he'd just be wasting thousands of dollars. but, if i wasn't vigilant about it...

on the one hand, he's a good landlord. he's attentive. and he gives a fuck.

but i'm slowly concluding that he's just not that sharp.

and, you know, i wish i had done some research on this, or they had run their plans by me, because, looking at it, i'm more or less convinced that the way they've got it installed is basically just going to send the hot air back up through the return. when you add the cost of gas to the cost of electricity, it's going to cost him more than it would have if he didn't do anything at all. and, that's plus the cost of installing the thing....

again: there's no malice. and the idea of trying to reduce cost is reasonable.

but everything about the way it's being done is flat out stupid.

i mean, the first obviously dumb thing about this is that they put the furnace at ground level. who does that? the (unstated but obvious) reason is he wanted his brother to control the thermostat. but it doesn't make any sense to think you can heat a basement from the floor above it. the cold air returns on the furnace are going to pick the hot air up, which is likely going to affect the thermostat reading - because it's going to think it's warmer upstairs than it actually is, due to all the hot air coming up. meanwhile, i'm going to continue using electric heat (because the hot air won't distribute well down here from the ceiling), and that's *also* going to heat the cold air return, further reducing the efficiency.

my best guess is that he'll probably react by turning it up higher, correctly realizing it doesn't work but thinking the solution is to set the thermostat to 30. but, it's not going to make a difference, because the hotter it blows out through the ceiling down here, the hotter it comes in to the return. turning it up is going to actually turn it OFF.

i'd like to laugh, but it's more sad than funny.

i took physics beyond grade 13, but it was only required up to grade 10. the only thermodynamics they bothered with was the conservation laws. they didn't even introduce newton's laws until grade 12 - an elective course. i don't know how i remember that....

i guess this is what happens when your education system sucks.

you want to put the returns as low as possible, ideally on the floor of the basement. if you must put the furnace on the second floor, and want to heat the basement, the last thing you want to do is cut a hole in the floor for a return. you want that heat pumping downwards to have as difficult a time as is possible getting back up. it would consequently make more sense to INSULATE the floor...

i can't imagine the guys that installed it don't know that. well, maybe they don't....because who puts a furnace at ground level?

but, i'm sort of wondering if the installers are maybe stabbing him in the back for some reason.

again: i'm not the one that's going to suffer. i should just get some popcorn and relax...