How Cold is My NYC Apartment? [OC]

Well without being in the boiler room and seeing what the settings on the control, this is a difficult thing to diagnose. I'd take a guess that the outdoor shutoff temperatures settings are set at the minimum (55F day, 40F night). Not much you can do there aside from contacting the super or management.

However, even when the boiler is cycling (sending steam to the system) the office still isn't getting enough heat. Here are some things you can do within your apartment that may help:

Check your air valves (that cylinder or cone looking thing that should be sticking out of the radiator towards the top). If these are painted over, clogged, or damaged they could be restricting steam from getting to your radiators in a timely manner.

Check the radiator valve (the thing with the knob on it, hopefully). Make sure it's open.

If you are pretty handy and don't mind taking things into your own hands look into possibly replacing your air valves with VariValves. These will allow you to manually control, more or less, how quickly steam gets to your radiator. Even though your radiators are getting steam, they may be getting it further into the cycle, meaning that you aren't getting a full cycle's worth of steam to your radiator. Keep in mind that you're dealing with old fittings and threads and it's possible that something may shear or break, which is a completely different problem at that point.

The problems you've shown could be from any number of things. The risers could potentially not be properly vented at the top, the boiler controls could need adjustment, or the entire system could be out of balance. Ultimately management should hire someone to come in and fix the system holistically.

I'd suggest reading Dan Holohan's "We Got Steam Heat". It's a great quick read for anyone who enjoys these sorta topics.

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