Apartment from hell OR we can't breathe!

[Cookie]

We've had a bad run of luck with apartments. When we first moved to this city, we moved into a fancy high rise. A year later at lease renewal time, they tried to tell us we got the place on sale and jack the rent by $400 and then give us a discount of $200. Nope. We moved out.

We landed in a gorgeous condo with the most incredible landlord ever. I wish we could have stayed. He eventually had to sell the place because of his financial situation and we moved out because the condo association changed the rules so he couldn't sell to anyone who would rent it out. Damn.

We're now in a beautiful, HUGE apartment with the management company from hell. We had to call emergency maintenance to get the heat on after it was 50 degrees F in here. We were without hot water in our bathroom for two days and had to heat water on the stove to bathe because they turned the wrong valve in the basement. The mailman couldn't deliver mail for the longest because they wouldn't fix the buzzer that let him in. That's just a few of the awful things going on around here.

Now, every time the heat runs, we start coughing and wheezing, nose running, eyes itching, headaches, we think my husband might have had a fever last night, he's experienced nausea. We just bought mold test kits and we're going to see what this tells us. If it's positive, by law they have 14 days to fix it. In the meantime, we're making masks and it's already making a huge difference. Seriously. I didn't realize how bad it was until I put this thing on. I finally feel like I'm getting enough air!

Part of me is going "Nooooo!" and the other part of me is wondering if this would make the lease invalid and they'd have to pay for movers. We've been looking at tenant code and there's a strong possibility for the latter depending on how things turn out.

[rvdammit]

I suggest get a carbopn monoxide alarm, no know what else is or isn't working...

[Pixilated]

Wow, definitely look into possible legal redress -- sounds to me like there's something really wrong there. My last apartment had a serious problem with black mold but the super/owner kept telling me I was the one who was supposed to "keep on top of it." However, it wasn't affecting my breathing!

[MournBlade]

I was living in a house I rented and had similar symptoms.
Turns out not only was there black mold under the wallpaper, there was also a gas leak.
I was sick all the time and developed asthma, a few months after I moved out it all got better.

[MoonCat]

If it's gas heat, call the gas company and ask them to come over and test for a gas leak and carbon monoxide. They will usually do that for free. This sounds like a dangerous situation to me, and I wouldn't wait 14 days for the management company to fix it.

[Seshat]

A carbon monoxide leak can be fatal, very quickly.

Contact the gas company now now now and discuss the situation with them.

Legionnaire's disease is another possibility, as are molds. Contact the rental/tenant's association, and whoever's responsible for 'building health' in your part of the world.

[Brojekk]

A carbon monoxide leak can be fatal, very quickly.

Contact the gas company now now now and discuss the situation with them.

I strongly second this. Carbon Monoxide is a scary thing to deal with.

[Cookie]

It's not gas heat. It's steam heat. The management company literally just told my husband it's not them, he's got a flu virus. Never mind this only happens when the heat comes on and it gets better when we leave the apartment.

The symptoms we're experiencing are not carbon monoxide symptoms, but much more like mold symptoms.

[cindybubbles]

When my parents and I moved out and my sister and her husband were fixing the apartment to make it fit for sale, they were surprised at how much mold there was in the unit. They were even more surprised that we (my parents and I) had survived it!

[BlaqueKatt]

Legionnaire's disease is another possibility

The Legionella bacteria lives in A.C. units, and hot tubs, to contract it you have to inhale the contaminated water as a mist(steam heat would be contained, and too hot for Legionella to survive-boiling to create steam causes lysis), and the symptoms are constant after 12-14 days post exposure as it causes pneumonia(I've grown it in a petri dish, it's kind of pretty). Mold, dust, animal dander, or something like that(particulate matter) would likely be the culprit.

I'd recommend a swiffer type dust cloth over the vents as well as the masks to keep the air a bit cleaner until you get the results/problem fixed.

[Shalom]

Steam heat is not contained. The radiators are open to the air.

The way it works (assuming the one-pipe system in common use), the radiators and pipes are vented to the atmosphere. When the system kicks on for the first time, the radiators and pipes are full of air. This is displaced by incoming steam, the air goes out the vent (that's the hissing noise you hear when it starts up) until the steam reaches the vent, which then shuts off ("toink!") to keep the steam in. As the steam gives up its heat to the air around the radiator, it condenses back to water, which then runs back down the same pipe the steam came up, and is replaced by more steam from the boiler. Once the system shuts down (either because the Pressuretrol® cuts out on pressure, or the thermostat is satisfied and stops calling for heat) the water and steam drain back down, leaving a vacuum, and the air comes back in through the vent to replace it.

Assuming the radiator gets hot all the way across, there's nothing living in there, but if there's anything other than water in the boiler, especially something volatile, say cleaning chemicals or what not, then that's going to come up with the steam and out into your air. (For one example, I remember when my grandfather decided to replace the wet return line in our old house by himself, rather than shell out the $3K in '80s money that it would have cost for a plumber. He did it all right, except that he forgot (or never knew) that they grease the pipes when they cut them, and the grease wound up in the boiler water when he fired it back up. The whole house smelled like an armpit for 3 days and we had to live elsewhere until it cleared up.)

One thing steam heat does is dry the air out considerably. This being the case, maybe a humidifier would help you breathe, but mold likes humidity as well. (Although there's not likely to be mold if the air's that dry either.)

It's also theoretically possible, if the heat shuts down before a particular radiator heats all the way across, that there might still be contamination inside. Steam is lighter than air, remember, so as it enters the radiator, it first rises through the first few columns, then rushes across to the other end. Once there, it starts expanding downward as the air leaves the vent, but if the boiler shuts off before the air is fully displaced, there might be the bottom halves of several columns that never see steam. There will still be hot water dripping downward in those columns, but I don't know if that's enough to sterilize them. I suppose you could unscrew the vent and spritz some Lysol or something in there, but remember anything you put in there is eventually going to find its way back to the boiler.

[BookstoreEscapee]

If they won't do anything, you might consider a report to the city/county housing authority or whoever is responsible for building inspections and that sort of thing.

[Seshat]

The management company literally just told my husband it's not them, he's got a flu virus.

Make a call to the authority responsible for checking 'building health'.

Don't take the chance it's something minor - let the experts check.

[Dreamstalker]

Seconded. Don't rely on the management at all (they seem to be disinterested at best), go to the experts.

[Sapphire Silk]

Document all contacts with the management company. Check your tenant agree ment and local codes carefully and insist on everything the code entitles you to before calling the code or housing authority in your area. A trail of documentation will back you up later.

See if there is a local housing advocate in your area; they may be able to advise you on the best way to handle this and get results.

Mold certainly needs to be ruled out. The symptoms are consistent.