Had to laugh at your comment about Scotland because people in Maine do the same thing.
Heat is either blasting or turned off. Very poor insulation.
Heat is either blasting or turned off. Very poor insulation.
In theory each radiator has a regulator valve that allows you to moderate the amount of steam flowing through it. In reality these valves are all painted over/corroded/never worked in the first place, and all radiators run at full blast. It was not uncommon to see apartments with open windows in January to help regulate the heat produced by the radiator. Tenants didn't care because they didn't pay for the gas directly, although it was obviously built into the rents, and the land lords never wanted to spend the money to upgrade these old buildings, since the excessive usage of gas was built into everyone's rent and the upgrades were not.
Then again, given the age of those windows there probably was very little difference between them being open and closed anyways.
This problem was fixed when I moved into a new construction apartment which had a minisplit to heat/cool the living space. Until I found out that mini-splits have the same issue heating as ACs occasionally have in very hot summers; they can't provide any heat once the ambient temperature gets colder than the exterior coils (since it's literally an AC running backwards). That was a bad surprise.
Known as the Brooklyn Thermostat.
Found it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/the-curio...
My 1980s home went through 99 therms of gas last month in Idaho, and that’s with us hand washing dishes (broken dishwasher) using gas hot water. After fixing the dishwasher and replacing some caulk that had failed, I think we’ll probably go through 75-80 therms per month, fewer if I went with tankless hot water. You would be very hard pressed to go through that few therms in an older apartment, especially when you’re literally heating the outside.
Newer apartment buildings absolutely crush that figure though, for all the reasons you listed. The only advantage that individual homes have over taller apartment buildings energy wise is that you can pack more solar panels on top of shorter buildings.