Unheated Apartment in Winter: Leaving Stove Off, Ground Floor Insulation & Preventing Freezing

Could someone tell me if you can leave the stove turned off in the apartment in the block of flats for the winter? The flat is on the ground floor, with a basement and a garage at the bottom. all insulated with polystyrene on the bottom and outside. A simple boiler without a tray. Unfortunately, I do not use this apartment and I have to leave it as it is. I would not just want to leave an empty apartment with the stove on and the gas valve turned on, but I am afraid that it may freeze in severe frosts. normal neighbors heat up, so it's warm in the block. on the cage too. I was there recently at about 2 degrees outside in the apartment and cage normally and I did not feel cold at all. you could stay without jackets, so it is relatively warm. Once - a few years ago - I left the stove on the minimum temperature, but the stove never turned on, from what I remember, only the candle took gas. And so all winter. There is now a turbo oven. The apartment is in Szczecin, so the temperature there rarely drops below 6 degrees Celsius at night, but I don't know how much it can drop inside then. I'm a little scared after all. I tried to drain the water in October, but something didn't come off me much, and it seems that only one radiator did it. I don't know anything about it, and I didn't want to mess with the stove. The pressure is now at 0 on the furnace. The manufacturer prohibits pouring anti-freeze fluid. All in all, I could leave it at the minimum, but again I would have to drive a few hundred km just to turn it on. What do you advise?

Drain the water from the radiators and the stove, if you do not know how to take someone who knows with you and the matter will be settled

Based on your description of the apartment and the block of flats, I believe that the temperature of -10 ° C outside in the apartment should be at least + 5 ° C. My own experience is based on my own experience, when in an unheated apartment in an insulated block of large panels the temperature did not drop below + 8 ° C with frosts lasting a week - -10 ° C during the day and -15 ° C at night.

Thanks ... Well, that's what I thought it would be hard to go down to zero. Licho, however, is awake and at the next visit, I will drain the water, although it shouldn't be done anyway. As I wrote - a few years ago I already had my apartment left for the period January - March with the stove on seems to be 3-4 degrees and apart from the candle consumption, I did not notice on the meter that this stove was working at all. The wear was the same at regular intervals. Now the stove is replaced with another one.
When I was last time, I unscrewed the valve on the radiator in the bathroom and drained the water, but it probably only flew from this radiator because it was about 10L of water at the most, and indeed - I did not know how to do it and I did not want to mess with it anymore.
Anyway, if the temperatures stay longer around -8, I will rather intervene. It is a pity that I did not take the temperature the last time I was, but I was struck by the fact that the cage was really warm compared to the vestibule, not to mention the backyard.
It would be worse if it was a house, but in my house, despite the leaky gate, nothing has ever frozen in the garage and it is placed against the residential part with only one wall + no insulation from the top (only the ceiling)
Suma sumarum - thanks for the tips. Possibly if someone else said how to drain the water. The stove is a cgb series wolf - dual-function because normally the water goes to the radiators and the tap.

It's best to get rid of the water with a compressor. He often uses this method and always with positive results.

Nothing should happen. An unheated apartment in a multi-family building is different when the apartments next door are heated, and the whole house is unheated. In the latter case, there is a risk of freezing. It would be even better if this apartment was on the 1st floor (underneath it, heated on the ground floor, also on the 2nd floor) - then there would be no risk of freezing.

Unfortunately, it's the ground floor. Nothing freezes in the basement of the bank, because some time ago there were preserves left from the previous tenant and all the jars remained intact for several years. Was it edible? I did not try to consume it anymore. This is an ordinary block from 93r - a mix of a large slab with a brick. As for the temperature, maybe I would be calm, because it will not fall below zero in the whole apartment, but it still tires me if it will not catch me somewhere near the wall or it will not be pulled from the garage somewhere, but in total, as once nothing happened (and it was already unheated in winter), and probably nothing will happen this time.
Unfortunately, I don't have a compressor.

Hello, buddy, I would put a detector in your place, which at the temperature in the apartment +2 degrees would turn on the circulation pump, which I greet.

I also use washer fluid for siphons and a toilet.

I would be afraid of one thing - moisture. It is common in cold rooms.

It occurs in cold (underheated) and inhabited places, where you breathe, wash and dry laundry.
In unused rooms, it is enough when the temperature inside the room is constantly 3-4 degrees higher than the outside one and there is no humidity, provided that it does not stretch from the foundations and the roof does not leak.

Thanks. I look at the map of current live temperatures and where I live I have -3 ° and in the estate it shows me +0.6

vodiczka wrote:

It occurs in cold (underheated) and inhabited places, where you breathe, wash and dry laundry.
In unused rooms, it is enough when the temperature inside the room is constantly 3-4 degrees higher than the outside one and there is no humidity, provided that it does not stretch from the foundations and the roof does not leak.

Not necessarily. Example of a gazebo on the plot. It comes in the winter after a week, it hasn't been heated by any farel during that time. If the frost is not high, nothing will freeze (e.g. water in bottles), but there is a lot of moisture inside (only heating with a blower dries the gazebo). Yes, in case of greater frosts, the water in bottles freezes, but the gazebo certainly has a much worse thermal insulation than an apartment in a tenement house - surrounded by heated apartments.

Zbigniew Rusek wrote:

but there is a lot of humidity inside (only heating with a blower dries the gazebo).

Probably two days earlier there was high air humidity and the frost was too short to dry the gazebo. Or poor ventilation of the gazebo.

I have a cinder block house on my plot and there is moisture only when it warms up slightly outside, it rains and the temperature inside the frozen house is lower than the outside temperature. When the frost comes, everything dries up beautifully.

I will heat up the topic for a moment and make a short report - maybe someone in a similar situation will be interested in it. A wave of severe frosts passed - I did the stress test. It is true that with my soul on my shoulder, but I left it without the stove turned on. Yesterday - after 4 days of frost within -8 ° -2 ° I got to my apartment and expected Armageddon inside. It turned out that during these frosts it was about 10-12 degrees Celsius, which is more or less the same as in the staircase. I turned on the stove and the heating turned on at about this temperature. Nevertheless, I prefer not to carry out the next such test in frosts -8 and sleep soundly. Now I have a bite if nothing breaks down and the gas will not evaporate somewhere, but I turned the valve on the stove, the candle turns on only when the pumps are turned on, gas inspection of the stove and installation done, so nothing should happen. I have to rent this apartment because the neighbors complain that they are cold, but the cramps of these tenants are hell sometimes you can get.
Anyway - it is indeed difficult to cool down an apartment in a block of flats, but it is probably at the expense of the neighbors. as I have an extreme apartment, the ground floor and I am practically not warmed up by anything except one wall in the room and the ceiling from above, I feel relieved of responsibility
Well, but if this apartment was somewhere in the east and there were frosts around -20 °, I wouldn't leave it without a stove. Probably, in these areas, such experiments should not be recommended - probably from the apartment on the first floor and we are not afraid of flooding our neighbors with water from the radiator. Suma sumarum - colleagues, you were right. Nothing happened, but the risk is always that one of the neighbors will leave and then in these frosts it will be close to zero inside.
I only have one question about this stove. I noticed - as I wrote earlier - that the candle is only turned on when the circuit is started - that is, when the stove starts to work, but I do not know if I am right and if there is anything else pulling the gas. I had little time to check, but from what I noticed there was silence on the meter. The stove is Wolf, but I don't remember the type. The point is whether there will be no gas from me by any other process. I left the temperature set to 5 ° so that in the event of an extraordinary case it would turn on and heat up, so the gas meter should theoretically not show anything more than what it was when I left the apartment. The previous stove was able to stretch the candle 1m a day, but it did not turn on the circuit itself in a similar situation during the winter - so many frosts have never happened.
Oh - one more thing. This is how I saw the central heating installation and it is probably impossible to drain all the water from the radiators there. There is a ball valve at the bottom of the radiator in the bathroom - the closest radiator to the boiler - and that's it. when the water is drained through this valve, the water probably only drains from the stove and from this bathroom radiator. I did not notice any valves in the other radiators. I imagined that the bathroom is at the lowest level and the entire content of the system should flow from it, but maybe I did something wrong and maybe a dozen liters of water fell to 4 radiators and a boiler, so I did something wrong myself, or something wrong with the installation.

frigo wrote:

Yesterday - after 4 days of frost within -8 ° -2 ° I got to my apartment and expected Armageddon inside. It turned out that it was about 10-12 degrees Celsius in the middle of these frosts

Approximately according to what I wrote in post # 3. It was warmer outside and warmer inside than mine.

frigo wrote:

Nevertheless, I prefer not to carry out the next such test in frosts -8 and sleep soundly.

Caution is a positive feature, but you can not warm up to -10, nothing will happen.

Zbigniew Rusek wrote:

another thing is the whole house is unheated. In the latter case, there is a risk of freezing.

Risk bordering on it.

Zbigniew Rusek wrote:

Example of a gazebo on the plot. It comes in the winter after a week, it hasn't been heated by any farel during that time. If the frost is not severe, nothing will freeze (e.g. bottled water),

Zbigniew Rusek wrote:

Yes, in case of greater frosts, the water in bottles freezes, but the gazebo certainly has a much worse thermal insulation than an apartment in a tenement house - surrounded by heated apartments.

Of course it freezes.
It's only a matter of time how long minus temperatures last.
For many years, in a brick house in the forest, I have been draining the water from the electric boiler, cistern, etc.
I didn't do it once and it had to be replaced a lot.

In an unheated apartment in a multi-family building, the temperature (controlled by GSM) never dropped below 8 ° C, although most of the apartments were unheated.
Well, there are no severe frosts in those areas.

The neighbor has a garage - I just don't remember if one wall is adjacent to his house because it flew out of my head, but there is no door to the house from this garage. Lightly insulated with polystyrene - no plaster yet. A few days ago he said that after those frosts in his garage there was still no negative temperature. Frost around -10 ° at night and -5 ° during the day. Gusts down to -1.5 ° for an hour. Another 2-3 days and he suspects that he would already have frost inside. In the house in which I live, the garage is adjacent to the wall of the residential part and there is a wicket door to it. A bedroom above the garage. In the most severe frosts that we have ever experienced -18 ° with the gate that is not too tight, there was already frost and ice at the bottom of this gate because it simply blew up, but the temperature was around 3-4 °
After all, you have to be careful because why pay for the renovation of the installation afterwards. In my apartment, I suspect that it would be enough for a downstairs neighbor to leave the garage gate open for a few hours on a frosty night and the radiator is right above the gate. warming is what it is. It almost hangs from the garage ceiling and gives little. gaps in the records, and here I would be afraid of failure, but this is an exceptional situation. She's not malicious

frigo wrote:

I have to rent this apartment because the neighbors complain that they are cold, but the cramps of these tenants are hell sometimes you can get.

So only an occasional lease.
But when you come across "tough players" you have a problem, the more that you live a few hundred km away.

frigo wrote:

All in all, I could leave it at the minimum, but again I would have to drive a few hundred km just to turn it on.

I recommend remote control and activation via GSM.

Quote:

But when you come across "tough players" you have a problem, the more that you live a few hundred km away.

Exactly ... I had it once ... There was a guy with problems, but it was so good that he was recommended by one of the neighbors, so he took care of 'moving out'. And distance is also a problem. Once with every crap you have to go and open the door and you actually do everything on the phone. Imagine that the tenant that I found would be able to use 11m of water per month on his own. They calculated the rent for me at PLN 400 for a two-room flat. I stretched the gas so much that if I continued to pay the projected bills, I would have 800 PLN / 2 months for the whole year. He started brawling with the neighbors ... Simply a nightmare. He did not pick up the Telfons, I had to take care of everything, arrange it, make inspections, arrange a cooperative, which he did not open the door, anyway ... Well, he was paying. In the end I couldn't stand it and thanked for such cooperation. Never again. Then my neighbor flooded my flat, some eternal claims that I want to sell it too loud or too cold. The apartment is nice, but you need to do a bit of renovation, but if someone wants to buy and rent it is ok, but I live far away and I have no control over it, unfortunately, so it's a damn d .. break it. The income from renting is also poor because the tax, repairs, nerves, commuting and then it comes out that there are several hundred zlotys left in the pocket and the apartment wears out. After all, the stove has to be replaced over time, and it is several thousand nice ones. They already got one for me.
As for the lease contract, it is difficult to find a customer who will sign the contract with a notary public. The exception is families from MOPS because they know that no one will rent them without such a whistle. If you come across a smart, you won't move out. There is a woman in Toruń who has been paying rent to unpaid tenants for several years. Guy in a detective story, wife with a child. The commune does not have a substitute accommodation and the circle is closing. In Germany, most people rent flats and there are no such problems and for us it is treading on thin ice.