Blackout

We had another set of power failures last night due to the cold weather. The building isn't very well insulated, and on really cold/windy nights the hot water heat simply can't keep up. To keep from freezing, people turn on the electric heaters in the window A/C units.

The problem is that the building was not wired for electric heat. So everyone turns on their A/C heaters, the transformer in the hallway overheats, and the breaker for the floor trips. After half an hour or so, the transformer has cooled off and they can reset the breaker.

This really wouldn't bother me a whole lot but for two things: 1) Rebooting my computers sucks - a lot. And 2) I never use the electric heat because I actually took the time to insulate my apartment, so I'm being unfairly penalized by those who do.

Really though, what needs to happen is to redo all the windows and A/C unit junctions so they don't leak cold air. Ideally, I'd like:

- all double pane windows
- fix the seals on the sliding doors (and fix the sliding doors)
- change the window separators from solid, thermally conductive aluminum to something that at least stands a chance of being insulated
- reseal and/or rework the A/C units so that they don't bleed cold air into the apartment

Honestly though, they probably won't bother even fixing up these apartments, as we're on the lower floors and there's less money involved. Basically, the rabble live down here where I live, and I gather there's not much incentive for them to improve things.