Guests & Heating Issues

21

As far as I understood, Zoe is not trying to figure out the way to make her house even warmer - she thinks it is already warm enough. She is trying to figure out the way how to respond to people for whom 28 degrees Celsius is too cold and who expect the house to be a tropical paradise in the middle of the winter.

I never have complaints about heating in the winter (although I do not host extensively in the winter), but I do get some in fall and spring. People have really different ideas about the temperature. What to do when one of your guests wants to heat and the other one wants to cool down the room? :smiley:

In general, when I travel, I do not expect things to be exactly as they are at home. If the temperature is not bellow room temperature (cca 21 degrees) I’ll suck it up and wear a pajama. Or ask for an extra blanket.

1 Like
22

When I have guests from warmer climates I usually inform them that per building codes , residential buildings around here are designed and built to be heated about 18-21 degrees Celsius in winter. I have small posters hung on the wall near each radiator with the same information.

Many guests could not care less and heat to the max (to the point that the first thing I do after checkout is to open the windows to get some cold air), but at least I never had a complaint.

In the summer I inform the same guests that around here, A/C is uncommon in residential buildings, which are designed to stay below 26 degrees in the summer.

Actually 28 degrees indoors would be considered dangerous around here and one could sue a builder if a new home gets that hot in the summer. :smiley:

2 Likes
23

I am printing this out to study further and the husband (ex-physicist, now laundryman) thinks you should get at leasr 20 likes!

5 Likes
24

One of the reasons we only host in Summer is because people from Northern Europe (i.e. most of our guests) think Spain is warm and sunny all the time. That is actually true, but you have to be outside, not in a house surrounded by pine trees that block the sun and with minimal heating and one of the hosts who has that typical British thing of if you’re cold, put another sweater on …

In fact even in June two years ago our first guests had a miserably rainy week, when I was very glad that we had just put wall panel heaters in the apartment.

2 Likes
25

My post is actually about making her house less warm / waste less energy and keep her guests happier :wink: so she doesn’t get any bad review anymore about the temperature of her house :wink:.
I admit, it’s not an easy subject :sunglasses:.

2 Likes
26

Maybe just greet the guests more warmly?
Just kidding.

4 Likes
27

@GutHend Unfortunately not every complaint by a guest can be solved by improving your listing (although your post is superhelpful and I’m really grateful that you posted it). I also think that we as hosts have to learn how to deal with guests unreasonable requests. No amount of insulation can help me in dealing with request to turn on the heating in mid May, when temperatures are well above 20 degrees during the day. I’m still learning how to deal with these kinds of requests in a professional manner. I would like to brush off the request while in the same time make it seem like I’m genuinely suportive and do my best to hide disbelief on my face. :smiley:

@Astaire :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

2 Likes
28

I’m giving it a Like going by your word @Malagachica, I’ll read it later lol

29

Thanks for the vote of confidence :wink:.

1 Like
30

Think I’ll read it if I ever catch the trans-Siberian rail! Return journey: War and Peace.

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

1 Like
31

People are weird about temperature- I’ve only had one review posted complaining that it was too hot, and also complaining about my air conditioning and that I don’t have central air when I specifically state in my listing that I don’t (this was in April in the mountains, by the way. It wasn’t hot). I figure a review like that will dissuade the kind of guests I don’t want from staying, and won’t bother the types of guests I do want so I am not too worried about it.

I did recently have a guest who complained to me in person that, in late July when it was quite hot out, that they couldn’t make the heated floors go hotter. And I find that most of my summer guests have the AC blasting and the floor heat in the bathroom at the max temperature at the same time. It’s really strange!

1 Like
32

Remember that temperature, like incest, is RELATIVE!!! One person’s “comfortable 78 F” is another person’s ‘freezing’, and vice versa

We live in SW Florida, where it’s 85-90F for the next month, and we’re going on holiday to Iceland (3 days) and Scotland where daytime highs will be mid-50s F. We’ve been around the block a time or two, and are packing (for us) winter clothing. WE also know that locals who are being “frugal” are going to have their houses not heated much if at all.

That being said, most Americans aren’t as well traveled as we are, and they are going to expect American standards of heat and cold – the house should be warmer than 20 Centigrade during the day, down to 20 C at night.

No one really cares how expensive heating or cooling is in your country – US or elsewhere – they do expect to be warm or cool by their own standards, not yours. And that is a cost of doing business as an AirBnb.

Just because you’re an Eskimo doesn’t mean that you guests from Fiji want to be that cold. Likewise, an AirBnb on Fiji had better have a darn good airconditioner for when Icelanders come to visit!

4 Likes
33

You get my heartfelt admiration and gratitude, @GutHend!

@zoe You solution might not lie in the heating you provide, but rather in setting the expectations. I would make it clear there is no central heating. Since Air’s UI emphasizes the rules and little less, you could even say, You acknowledge that our home does not have central heating. Although that might be a little extreme.

3 Likes
34

OK, I’m finally going to have to show my ignorance and ask - what is a heat pump? If Zoe has a heat pump, why doesn’t this mean she has central heating?

@GutHend, please be gentle with me - words of not more than two syllables, please … but I am interested to know the answer …

1 Like
35

I’m late to this party, but my thoughts on heat/cool (and other issues that deal with technology)

  1. If temperature is outside the norm of say 68=72 Fahrenheit, it should be noted in your house rules

  2. If temperature is adjustable, instructions should be in the house manual

  3. If setting heat/cool/in between takes more than one step, you need to think first how to teach people about your 'setup, and/or change it. Travelers are not supposed to be technicians and certainly do not need to know about heat pumps / oil burners/ etc they just need to know how to make it comfortable. They will NOT know that certain doors should remain open and that this window closed etc unless you make it part of the house info, and every step more that the need to take to do a simple thing will earn you poor reviews.

  4. If more than two guests comment about obtuse instructions or difficult procedures when all they need to do is change the temperature, you need to rethink your concept of ‘easy’.

  5. If you want to limit temps, make sure your thermostat can do this by pre setting. Nobody knows what your values or need are and complaining that your needs should be known by mind reading or by magical thinking will get you a deserved bad review.

for lighting, substitute ‘lights’ etc for ‘temps’ above. For entry procedures, ditto: if you want the door closed when people leave, use a door closer etc. Nobody messes with you on purpose but will be happy to ‘do the right thing’ if it is simple and explained well.

1 Like
36

Sorry for any confusion. I wrote my initial post when I was a little tired, and so perhaps it wasn’t as clear as I intended. The guest who said their room was “icy cold” at 28 degrees and the guest who left a review stating that the house took days to warm up are not the same. I wanted to start off with a humorous anecdote but possibly failed in the execution.

As others have noted, guests can sometimes be a little strange, and whether it’s requesting heating in the middle of summer (which has happened to me, too!), or thinking that the heating needs to be turned up to 30 degrees at minimum, we all have a story that has left us perplexed. I’m fortunate that this is my first review noting an issue with the heating, and my concern was how to reply to it. However, I’ve received 3 new bookings since it was posted, and so I think my worries may have been unfounded.

I’ve definitely had a few guests who have expressed an issue with the heating during their stay. Generally, it’s something that falls into the category of unreasonable or uninformed. I just hosted a guest who requested a “portable fan heater” for one of the bedrooms. I discovered they didn’t know that there were temperature and output settings on the heater they could adjust. @GutHend’s advice was very informative (thank you - if I could give you a badge for effort, I would). However, as @Inna has noted not all complaints raised can be addressed by making improvements to your listing, or tactful hosting.

I completely agree that my expectations of what is warm may not be the same as that of my guest, that I need to try to accommodate their level comfort (where reasonable), and that any instructions on how to use the heating need to be easy to understand. As I’m certain they are, I’ll try to think of ways to make this information more prominent than it already is. Guests don’t comment on the difficulty of the instructions, they just tend not to look at them at all.

I think this may be my last post, however please do feel free to keep the discussion going. Stories about how guests would like to sleep in a furnace are always comforting to read (and amusing). :sweat_smile:

Thank you again to everyone who contributed!

(A lot of people don’t seem to know what a heat pump is, which was a surprise. To offer some clarity, it’s this! The remote control is exactly like ours.)

2 Likes
37

Well, I guess you’re right, but whatever happened to the days when people travelled to Greenland and expected to shiver, and knew they had to wear light clothing and solar topees in the Sahara?

Are we approaching the time when we all have to “standardise” our temperatures, decor, food and amenities to some universally agreed standard? Sorry, @Rolf, not meaning to get at you personally but all these expectations we have now of finding everything within our comfort zone will make travelling, which used to be exciting bland and boring …

4 Likes
38

It’s always good to ask questions and no shame whatsoever should be involved :slightly_smiling_face: ! There must be more people who haven’t got a clue of what a heat pump is, but you’re the most courageous to just ask the question. :+1:

Now let me try and explain without earning another badge for the longest post ever :sweat_smile:.

You can think of a heat pump as a refrigerator. The inside of your fridge will be cold, but on the outside at the back you will find a radiator-like thing that feels warm. This is because of a system that extracts warmth/energy from the inside of your fridge and moves it to the outside.
A heat pump will do the exact opposite while heating your house. It will extract warmth/energy from an outside source (air / water / other) and release this energy inside your house through an air or water based system.
Some heat pumps can also be inverted, so they can be used to cool your home down in summer. In that case they will extract energy from inside the house and move it outside.
It’s called a pump, because all these systems run on electrical pumps.

There are different kinds of heat pump:

  • AIR-AIR (central or decentral heating, mostly for renovations)
    The energy is extracted from the outside air and released by an air system inside. Needless to say that not a lot of energy can be extracted from ice-cold air, so in winter a lot of electric energy has to be invested to extract any warmth, making the actual energy efficiency go down the drain in winter.

  • AIR-WATER (central heating, mostly new builds)
    Same as AIR-AIR but energy is released through a water system, e.a. large radiators or underfloor heating (tubes with water in them).

  • WATER-WATER (central heating, mostly new builds)
    The energy is extracted from the ground through a vertical or horizontal water pipe system. The vertical system extracts heat from deep in the ground, where you have a relatively high and stable temperature. Inside it’s best to use underfloor heating (water variant). This is a highly energy efficient system. Add this system to a perfectly insulated house together with a few electricity producing solar panels and your energy bill will be close to zero.
    Chose an inverter heat pump and you can literally store your summer heat in the ground to use it in winter.

  • WATER-AIR (central heating, mostly new builds)
    The same as WATER-WATER but inside the energy is released through an air system. This setup, to my knowledge, is rather uncommon.

In theory the last 3 could also be decentralized but that would make it all even more expensive than it already is.

Feel free to ask more questions !

3 Likes
39

I agree ! When traveling people should expect to having to adapt to other temperatures, unless they are willing to pay luxury hotel prices. And even then, sometimes air-conditioning or heating are just not available. Think of luxury jungle lodges where you pay more than $US 300,00 a night for a hut. That hut won’t have air-conditioning, because your money is paying for other things!

So sorry @Rolf and @KenH, but I don’t agree with the two of you. Travelers should have realistic expectations and should educate themselves (or ask someone) about certain things like expected temperature before traveling. Here in Lima, Peru almost no one has heating and few have air-conditioning. In summer the inside temperature will be higher than 72°F and in winter lower than 68°F. In this part of the world we don’t consider any norm for a “comfortable” temperature and I will certainly not start mentioning it in our house rules.
If someone wants everything to be like home, they should just stay home. If they want to experience my home as it is they are welcome.

5 Likes
40

You are right, I just wanted to point out that a better use of your heating system will probably lead to less complaints. Of course a host can never cater to every oddball.

4 Likes