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this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
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I think the issue has s largely been explored and solved but I'd like to add something to the mix.
Complexes have hot water pipes running from the water heaters on the lowest floor up to all the suites. Usually they are stationed somewhere around the center of the main building, sandwiched between a commons hallway wall and an apartment wall.
The amount of heat that these can radiate is insane, especially if there's a hot water circulation system in the building.
The floor is also a normal temperature.
Sounds like floor heating. Heated Floors don't really feel warm. They just don't feel cold. From the temperature experience you are having, this sounds like the most likely case
Interesting! I had no idea. Thanks!
I had heated floors in a Chicago apartment. I would lay tomorrow’s clothes on the floor at night and they were toasty warm when I put them on in the morning. Then, I’d put my blanket on the floor when I left for work and it would be nice and warm when I was ready to jump into bed at night.
This. I have the same in my apartment. I think a large majority of apartments in my country has floor heating.
Exactly, properly set up underfloor heating in a well insulated room is not hot as it should be regulated on the return, ideally it’s only slightly warmer than the room temperature you’re trying to achieve.
Underfloor heating definitely makes a floor warm to the touch. Source: have it throughout the downstairs of my house and it comes on for an hour each morning.
It depends on how you use the under floor heating. Some people use them like regular heating, where you turn it off and only turn it on when you want it to get warmer. In this use case the floor is warmer than the room and you will feel the floor getting warm. This is however not the most efficient way to use underfloor heating for rooms that are in use most of the time.
For rooms where people are most of the time, the most efficient use of underfloor heating is to have the water at the desired temperature all the time. That way it's very easy to heat up the water, since if only needs to be a bit over ambient and only the heat lost in the system needs to be replaced. In this case the floor and the room become the exact same temperature and won't feel warm. It just won't feel cold, like the floor would without the heating.
There might have been advances to that tech, maybe it's better thermally regulated now. My parents house had it in the kitchen and I think it was relatively new concept when house was built, I found the heat to be a bit uneven, a bit uncomfortable in some spots.
It was installed 3 years ago, so it's pretty up to date. An hour in the morning warms the floor pretty uniformly, and keeps it at around 21 degrees C for quite some time.
Ah yes, for comparison my parents was built year 2000. 22 year difference in quality!
In the UK? I doubt it very much. It isn't beyond possibility but under floor heating really isn't very prevalent here.
This is wrong. Under floor heating absolutely get warm to the touch.
I would have to guess that your apartment is being heated by radiating heat from other apartments (probably below you) as well as insulated by good quality walls and windows, and then this is supplemented by radiators when deemed necessary by some kind of sensor.
It's also possible you have underfloor heating if you live in a newer apartment in a country where that's common. But it wouldn't be my first assumption.
There is one radiator in the apartment's living room, at the front and down the hall from the bedrooms, and one radiator in the bathroom.
Depending how big is two bedrooms (In an era were there is cramped 40 m^2 3 bedroom, and huge 200 m^2 one bedroom loft) it's more than enough to heat-it.
The water in a floor heating system is around 30 degrees celcius so it's not warm enough for you to necessarily be able to tell by feel. However bathroom would be the first room I'd imagine them including it on and the fact that there's a normal radiator there leads me to believe it's probably not floor heating. Ceiling heating is a thing too but quite uncommon.
It can be heat from surrounding units, especially those below you. Heat rises. There is a 15 degree difference between my upstairs and downstairs sometimes.
Maybe still floor heating? If the apartment is well insulated, the floor is only slightly warmer than the air, since the large area allows for heating with a small temperature difference.
Are you in a house or an apartment?
I'm on the fifth floor and pretty much never have to run my heat.
Apartment. First floor (second floor for Americans). Heat does rise, so maybe that's it?
Yeah; rising heat, plus the extra insulation of neighbours sharing walls. It's uniform enough that the walls/floor doesn't feel any warmer than usual, but it makes a difference.
This is certainly helpful. I am in an apartment that I'm certain has no floor heating. I hardly ever have to turn on the heater (gets as low as about 13-15 degrees sometimes). During the warmer days, I have to open my windows or else it gets extremely humid.
Maybe an infrared heater somewhere? They can look like a painting or whatnot, while actually serving as a heater first and foremost.
You are in the UK now so the chance of it being underfloor heating is very slim indeed unless you are in a new build from the last 5 - 10 years or so, even then I would doubt it though.
It is probably a combination of the amount of insulation we put in walls, floors and roof spaces along with the fact you downstairs neighbour or neighbours if there is a basement will be using theirs and obviously heat rises.
I know many people here that live in flats above other people that will never switch their heating on and live comfortably.
It is likely that those radiators are your only heat sources coupled with presumably a gas boiler to serve both the radiators and your hot water taps. There will be some kind of controls for it somewhere though, not all systems with have a thermostat in place. My current house has 3 radiators with no thermostat. It is either on or off or you can set time intervals for it to switch on and off by itself but there is no temperature based control.
It sounds like my old place. So long as you don't have a corner unit you're not being heated. You're being sheltered from the cold by the surrounding units. The baseboard heaters are only there to touch up if you crack a window or something.
Are you sure it is?
I'm not sure how else it stays that warm when it is below freezing outside.
i don't think it is heated.
i leave the heater in my bedroom of all year. when i leave the door open it is just a bit colder that the rest of the flat.
So it's just really good insulation?
It's probably just good insulation
Perhaps adjacent/lower apartments are heated and are leaking enough heat to you.
Would the walls and floor still be cold if they were doing that? I honestly have no idea how that would work.
Actually yes, because "warm air" and "warm solid surface" are at two different temperatures to us due to unequal heat transfer.
The walls just have to be slightly above the air temperature to heat it up, and they may feel a bit cold anyway.
British magic, specifically.
Good insulation in walls and ceiling
Are you on the ground floor? If not then maybe whatever is below you is really warm and the heat is coming up through the floor. But I guess in that case the floor would feel warmer.
I am not on the ground floor, and I thought maybe it would be some under-floor heating thing like you are saying, but I have walked all over the room in bare feet and felt no heat in the floor.
I have floor heating, and have set it to very low (almost off). It's freezing outside, but in here I can walk around in t-shirt and barefoot. The floor does not feel warm, it just doesn't feel really cold.
Maybe that's the the same case for your apartment. Though I don't know why there would also be radiators in the living room and bathroom. Maybe the heat from below is just warm enough to have the same effect.
If everything is already warm enough, there's no need to add additional heat.
Checked the temperature of the ceiling?
The ceilings here are super high. I wouldn't be able to reach it. Would a heated ceiling be all that efficient?
Something, somewhere, is on fire. The heat energy from that fire is variously converted, stored, transported all the way to your apartment. Once it arrives, it is converted back into heat energy. This is commonly accomplished by forcing electrical energy through a conductive filament.
The air in your apartment absorbs that energy, becoming "hot". When that air contacts your skin, transferring some heat energy to it, nerves inside your skin activate, sending a tiny electrochemical pulse to your brain.
That tiny pulse of energy bounces around patterns of interconnected neurons in your brain, forming a sensation of warmth, which is experienced consciously.
The nature of consciousness is left as an exercise for the reader.