NYC Living Part Four: Radiator Realities

Ah, November. Cooler temperatures mean that folks across the country are sitting in their comfortable homes, drinking hot chocolate and modeling their newest flannel pjs and fuzzy animal slippers. Unfortunately, we do not have that option because it’s now radiator season in New York City and our current apartment temperature is equal to that of Death Valley, California, only with slightly less humidity.

Most older New York apartment buildings like ours still use steam-heat radiators, which were an engineering marvel in the early 20th century. This puts them on about the same technological level as the Titanic, and we all know how that turned out. 

How does this marvel work, you ask? Well, every few hours, a giant boiler in the basement sends pressurized steam coursing through the building’s maze of exposed pipes and into our radiator units. Each radiator unit comes with a nozzle to turn. The nozzle gives you control over your heat level, much the same way as watching Doppler radar gives you control over an impending tornado. 

Let’s discuss the various nozzle settings on the radiator. To begin with, there is “ON”, a setting designed to inflict as much heat as possible, in as short a time as possible, utilizing a process very similar to the way NASA launches a space shuttle. This particular setting allows the radiator to go from ‘Stone Cold Brick’ to ‘Flaming Meteorite of Death’ in approximately 30 seconds, which is why Liz and I prefer the other nozzle setting, called “OFF.” When the nozzle is twisted this way, our apartment still manages to achieve temperatures high enough to imagine we are sunbathing in the Sahara. This is because those exposed metal pipes in every room remain scalding hot as they transport steam throughout the rest of the building. In fact, all of the older apartments here in the city have this same brilliant feature, and as a result, no one has actually turned their radiators on in approximately 37 years. We all just sit around in tank tops and shorts, with the windows wide open, watching the snow fall. 

Now you are probably thinking;  “All that heat escaping out the windows; what a huge waste of energy! Why don’t they lower the boiler temperature or buy a smaller boiler?” Well you see, that goes against NYC apartment regulations; specifically, the Fresh Air Movement; a code which was set in 1918, the year after the Spanish influenza epidemic (I’m not making any of this up!), stating that apartment boilers must be extra large in order to get SUPER hot, thereby encouraging residents to open their windows which will, in turn, allow all the germs to exit the building. Since this law is still on the books until the year 2050, we just open our apartment windows and watch the germs rush toward them, gasping for air.

However, open windows allow for two-way traffic. This is how I learned that New York City still has mosquitoes in November, an issue which worries me slightly, as the only places warm and moist enough for them to breed then are the sewers. But the mosquitos are nothing in comparison to the cockroaches here. Now I’m a Louisiana girl; I’ve grown up with roaches large enough to win a WWE wrestling match and up-end the tables during the obligatory press conference afterwards. However, since moving here, I’ve discovered that Louisiana bugs are too nice. When a Louisiana bug invades your space, it politely crawls toward the darkest, most remote corner it can find. There it stays until you somehow surprise it, in which case the roach proceeds to run —screaming —to the OTHER dark, remote corner, which will also be the same corner to which you have run —screaming— resulting in more screaming from everyone. Shoes will be used as weapons, southern curse words will be employed (Dadgummit, stay still you little son-of-a-biscuit…Dang-it!!!!), and after the dust has cleared, one of you will be dead.

By contrast, New York bugs aren’t big, but they make up for their size with attitude. When a roach crawls through the window here, it heads towards you in a full-on charge. It’s like a game of chicken except there are more legs and antennae involved. This is how the cockroach lets you know that HE is now The Boss and if you don’t like it, you can fuggidaboudit or go swimming with the fishes. Fortunately, we’ve imported enough of our special, semi-legal Louisiana bug spray to ensure that the Godfather’s reign is always a short one.  But until that kicks in, we keep our friends close and our enemies closer, if you know what I mean.  

Wearing flip-flops year-round and getting unintended exercise isn’t the best part of having radiators; they also make excellent insomnia aids. Radiators can emit some of the most thrilling and unusual sound effects since the movie The Exorcist. Do you remember that scene in the holiday classic “Elf”, when Buddy calls his dad at work; convinced that there’s a monster in the apartment? The dad claims it’s just the radiator making noises, but I agree with Buddy on this one. And it’s not just one monster, but several working in tandem, each with a unique speciality. 

Take the monster in our bathroom pipe, for instance. His job is to drop large, irregularly-shaped metal objects down the tube at least twice an hour. The one in our living room radiator unit makes watching tv difficult, because he interrupts important on-screen dialogue with sounds that only a twelve-year old boy could be proud of: “Yes, my dear Watson, that’s how I know the murderer is none other than… PPPSSSSSHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Judging by the sound of it, my bedroom unit is the location of the local video arcade, where the monsters spend hours playing Space Invaders or Battleship. But the radiator monster in Liz’s bedroom is the one we worry about the most. Apparently, he has severe anger management issues and usually lashes out in the wee hours of the morning. Judging by the sound of it, his therapist has suggested that he work out his problems physically, using a crowbar and various lengths of chain. But you know, maybe we’re reading him all wrong. He might be a perfectly nice and well-adjusted monster. He might just have a bug problem. 

At this point, you’re probably asking; “Isn’t this a first-world problem, Alison? A first-world MILLENNIAL problem? You have heat, you shouldn’t be complaining! When I was a youngster, if I wanted to stay warm, I had to build my own fire in the middle of the living room with wood I chopped myself using nothing but the blunt end of a toothbrush.” Okay, I’ll concede to you on that point. But I’ll bet you are enjoying your comfortable, push-button controlled heated environment as you read this right now. Probably while wearing fuzzy animal slippers. So do I need to send somebody over to argue this out in person? I know a guy; his name’s Vito. He just came in through my window.