I was sick on Friday and was furiously trying to turn on my heat. Our apartment is a pre-war building. Neither my realtor nor I really knew what that meant, but it’s apparently a fact. What this means terms of our heat is that we’ve ended up with floorboard heaters, some of which have knobs like the steam radiators in our old apartment, and no thermostat whatsoever.

Now I’m no heating expert, but I would expect all of out heaters to work the same way. They all look alike, and have flaps that lift up at either end. The catch is that some of the flaps reveal what appear to be controls, some flaps reveal piping, and yet others reveal a continuation of the metal heater. Those last kind of flaps are what I can best describe as lost hope.

On my sick day, I tore my living room apart trying to turn on the heat, only to be greeted by flaps of the pointless variety. I used the old sweatshirt and blanket method to keep warm while I ate soup and watched Star Wars.

The next day I asked my neighbors how they turn on their heat. They have regular old radiators, but by “old” I actually mean brand new. Their apartment was recently renovated, and they have heating control to show for it. All in all, it appears that the pointless-flapped floorboard heaters will come on automatically. I can only hope that the powers that control our heating like it a reasonable temperature!