'Enjoy your spa evening': Landlord swoops in to settle a neighbor dispute after the downstairs tenant tampers with the shared hot water heater

Advertisement
  • Tenant shakes the landlord's hand after he helps him with a neighborly dispute.
  • My downstairs neighbor keeps turning off my water heater from the shared utility closet because he thinks I am "wasting hot water"

    I live in an older duplex where the upstairs unit is mine and the downstairs unit is rented by a guy who moved in late last fall.
  • The building has one weird shared utility closet off the back hallway. Inside it, there are two clearly labeled breakers, two clearly labeled water heater shutoffs, and a bunch of pipes that look confusing if you stare at them too long.
  • I only mention that because my neighbor has decided he is now some kind of volunteer building efficiency manager.
  • It started with comments in passing. He told me he could "hear" when I showered too long.
  • Then he asked why my bathroom fan ran after 10 p.m. Then he started sending me these stiff little texts about "resource mindfulness" any time I ran laundry on a weekend.
  • I mostly ignored him because I figured he was just one of those exhausting people who need to monitor something to feel calm.
  • Then in January I came home after work and had no hot water. I assumed the heater had failed, called maintenance, and while waiting I checked the closet and found my shutoff valve turned perpendicular.
  • Two men discussing a problem in their shared building complex.
  • Maintenance turned it back, looked at me like I was nuts, and left. Three days later it happened again.
  • Then again. Same valve, same position, never his. I finally put a tiny piece of blue painters tape on the handle to see if it had been moved and two nights later it was peeled off and stuck to the wall.
  • I knocked on his door and asked directly if he had been touching my side of the closet.
  • He did not even deny it. He said I was "using a shocking amount of heated water for one person" and that the landlord should have explained seasonal conservation better.
  • I told him he is not the landlord and he does not get to decide whether I take a bath after cleaning my apartmant at 9 p.m.
  • He said hot water in a duplex is a shared burden even if the tanks are separate, which makes zero sense, but he said it with the confidence of a man reading from invisible bylaws.
  • I emailed the landlord with dates, photos, and screenshots. The landlord sent one group message saying nobody is allowed to touch anything assigned to the other unit.
  • Since then my neighbor has not turned it off again, but now every time we cross paths he gives me this tight smile and says "enjoy your spa evening." So congrats to him, I guess.
  • He cured the water issue and replaced it with the exact kind of hallway tension that makes you rehearse taking out your trash.
  • excitablegibben I'd be walking through the halls in a dressing gown looking like I'm off to a luxury spa. Why do people need to be bellends?
  • Mediocre-Try-9381 I would have turned on the shower and then got downstairs and hid in the closet waiting for him to open the door
  • Marmenoire If you're a woman it's really all about control. He feels entitled as a man to dictate how you function. You exposing it to the landlord has made him look ridiculous and took away his imagined authority. S ks to be him......
  • bstrauss3 The two owners need to have a conversation. Then the landlord needs to tell the downstairs tenant to behave or be evicted.
  • lindalou1987 Smile and say thanks I will and move on.
  • handsheal Time to kick the tension up enough so he stops talking to you "Yes Grandpa I do enjoy cleaning myself" Sorry your rent doesn't cover controlling me Not sure why you give a f what I do with my time and money Thinking of having a few friends over and making it a spa night event, are you coming? Get a water machine and hook it up to a speaker and make it sound like you are running the water all day while you are gone Leave a cane or something walker by their door and let them know you are
  • DemovBones I wouldnt look or respond to him. This guy needs to get a life and hes filling his time by making drama
  • Ingrown Toenails Hurt As you're handing him a plastic garbage bag, tell him since he's "using a shocking amount of oxygen for one person" he needs to put this garbage bag on his head to conserve oxygen since its a shared resource.
  • Cormophyte He lives downstairs, which means his ceiling is your floor, which means you should start wearing hard soled shoes inside.

Tags

Scroll Down For The Next Article