Flat woe #1

I do like my flat, especially the location. Can't complain having at least 5 pubs within a 3 minute walk. But it is in a rather old house (well, old by my Californian standards). It does have it's charm but somewhere either as they originally built it or at some point when they remodeled it a bit, to divy each floor up into it's own flat, someone decided to install radiator heating. This by itself is fine but rather than the rectangular compact ribbed box-shaped radiators you sometimes see in older apartments and dorms, someone chose to use these long floor integrated ones that span the length of wall floors. They basically line the perimeter of the flat. Their presense makes it so that you cannot put anything flush up against their respective walls. It greatly eliminates the number of places that I can put bookcases, desks, and whatnot and it means the little area that doesn't have the floor heaters is artificially valuable apartment real-estate.

I just recently had to contend with this because I (finally) bought a new computer. This time I got a monster kickin desktop machine. I also had to get a new desk to accomodate it; the old one was fine for my laptop but not this thing and I wanted a hutch as well. Once I got the computer desk home, I realised that I couldn't put it where my old desk was because of these floor heaters. No way am I having my new souped up machine (as well as the power strip and cables and such) sitting on the floor next to a heater. Curses! I had depopulate, disconnect, clear, move, and restock a wall of bookcases to accomodate my new acquisitions.

The thing is, I cannot understand why they did this in the first place. I don't think it's that much more efficient heating-wise. It makes carpeting or installing flooring a pain. They're hard to maintain. They're easier to bang up and rust. It's more to clean. They're hard to clean under. More things are prone to touch them (e.g. long curtains, bedding, plugs, chords, power strips, dresser and cabinet legs) and they can get quite hot. And as an added insult, a single thermostat controls the entire flat, which means I cannot just heat one room... something you can do with the other type of radiator because they usually have knobs to control the hot water piping through them.

I'm sure someone thought these things are less unsightly than the box radiators but I don't think the tradeoff is justified one bit.