AIBU to expect the tenants to turn the heating up?

[LadyMaine]

I've owned my 3 bed Victorian house for 7 years. There was a little bit of damp in the downstairs bay window but nothing serious.

I moved for work at end of August this year and rented it out. Within a few weeks the tenants (3 adults & dog) started complaining of damp and mould. When I went to inspect the house was very cold.
They said they are worried about high heating bills. I do understand this but have told them they really need to turn the heating up.

The boiler is in full working order as are the extractor fans in the kitchen and bathroom.
I installed new double glazed windows throughout when I bought the house. It also has a damp course installed.

Now they are complaining that there is black mould and that one of the tenants' asthma is getting worse.
What can I do to get them to turn the heating up?

She isn't BU.

Owned
Private rental
Council House
Housing association

Not heating will have the same outcome in however you pay for it.

None of the above pay your bills.

Nearly 600 replies in she's received ample replies to the thread question, but hasn't since returned.

Well I guess that a quarter of the country wouldnt be ok for that house either with the present cost of living crisis....do you think the landlords should go through prospective renters bank accounts first and check how much they are willing to heat a house? Truth is you have no control at all over how much your tenants are willing or able to spend on heating a house. Op has admitted there was a small amount of damp in the house prior to renting out...maybe sort out any damp to begin with? then provide the renters with dehumidifiers which cost a few pence an hour, remove damp and condensation and push out warmth. Also very good at drying clothes on an airer.

Yes...absolutely. No one in ordinary jobs is safe at the moment in terms of coping with bills. You rent out a property...you dont get to dictate what they spend on heating.

I know of the same sort of problem, a bedsit for one person with kitchen and shower room. One person rented it, then he and his girlfriend, then their baby. In a block of community heated flats not very old, perfectly good for one person but too small for three who didn’t air the place, especially after using the shower. Mould everywhere until they moved out. I had the place redecorated and have since rented out with never a problem.

I also think you will find that if there is a tragedy, like the recent death of a child due to black mould.....that Op will have a much bigger problem than getting the trenants to turn on the heating.

Two showers a day instead of one and washing and bathing the baby will create more moisture.

What a lot of people don't realize is that with double glazing your house is basically sealed, keeping in all the moisture, including the water vapour we breathe out. If the house can't be ventilated because it's cold outside, ie, no open windows, then the moisture settles everywhere, particularly in already damp places like the bathroom. Then the mould starts.
The only way to prevent this is to run a dehumidifer. They don't cost much to buy or run, but will make a huge difference. They also make the property feel a bit warmer because the air is not damp/cold.
Your tenants are responsible for keeping the place in good order, that includes turning on the heating (even if they don't want to) to prevent damp. Maybe meet them halfway by buying the dehumidifier, but insist that they run it regularly and check that the mould is diminishing. Also - tell them under no circumstances to dry clothes inside the flat - major cause of damp. If three adults can't afford to heat a flat they might need to move somewhere else - that's pretty ridiculous.

Yup, sell up. This landlording side biz isn't for you.

Let's blame immigrants again why not? They get the blame for everything else. We need immigrants our NHS would collapse without them. Look at the issues we've had with lorry drivers entering and leaving the UK since Brexit. Getting enough farm workers, carer's and hospitality staff has also been an issue. People are homeless because greedy landlords can get more money from air BnB's. Why not blame the government who milk the system for expenses and cut public sector services and jobs to the bone. It is rascist to blame immigrants stop ignoring the fact it's not. They honestly can't do right for doing wrong. I don't think Mohamed the peadiatrician is taking a job off some rascist layabout who's never worked a day in they're life.

You're wasting your time here, I'm afraid (and risk being deleted for describing @Xenia as racist, which seems a nonsense in the circumstances).

Few anti-immigrant types come from a place of of logic and understanding. It's usually about personal inadequacy and wanting to stick the boot into someone they perceive as weaker than them.

we are apparenlty happy as tax payers to pay £7m a day to house asylum seekers in luxury hotels many of us could never afford

Could it possibly be - bear with me here, as it might be a controversial suggestion - could it possibly be that the owners of the luxury hotels are also donors to the Conservative and Unionist Party?

In other words, a win win if you look at it from one specific angle.

Hardly luxury hotels I know the grand metropol in Blackpool was one housing asylum seekers. I've stayed there myself one night was enough. The place is an absolute dump.

This! A number of people seem to have missed that
There was already some mould
New windows went in, reducing natural draughts (ventilation)

OP, this is a you problem. The mould you left there needs treating, then consider ventilation bricks or similar options. THEN instruct tenants on how to keep the problem from re occuring. This is there home, it's not a game

English is not my first language but I would have thought that damp and mould are two different things.
The amount of people on here saying "there was already mould" when OP stated there was small patch of damp made me question quality of Oxford dictionary...

In this climate, with period construction plus modern insulation and windows (problematic) 9 months of the year damp will lead to mould. Decreased ventilation, more bodies will speed up that process. I hope my language is clear and that explains why the two are used interchangeably

You are absolutely correct that they are two different things!

-I have mould on my bathroom ceiling. It could have been prevented by keeping my bathroom warmer and better ventilated. The remedy has been to clean it (scrubbed off with bleach) and we’ll repaint with anti-mould instead of regular paint
-I have damp on an internal wall (1940s coal board built) in a living room, which is almost impossible to address, but it’s not too bad. It’s coming up the brickwork. I’m guessing most houses on the street have the same. But there’s no mould. It’s a low humidity (never dry clothes in there, open windows often), well heated room. I might chop the plaster out soon and use damp block paint when I redecorate

Same @CrampMcBastard . I have small damp patch in chimney breast. No one can figure out where it is coming from. It's just there. No mould at all on or around it.
Tried special paint in there and nothing😂 it's infuriating but causes no issue bar some salt deposits or whatever that is

Condensation causes the moisture and mould on your bathroom ceiling.
Damp patches IN walls can have a million causes. All can be a good breeding ground for black mould, in the right conditions.

We don't know exactly what's causing the OPs tenants mould, but the original damp problem AND the new windows (poor ventilation) are prime suspects, before tenant's behaviour.

If you have lived in a old house where the balance between insulation and ventilation isn't struck right in the structure and set up, you know it can be very difficult to live in. It's legally on the landlord to ensure thermal insulation AND good ventilation to avoid this issue, in the first instance. No house with any sign of damp is in lettable condition (that's why some LLs try to hide damp and wise tenants follow their nose).

When I have encountered this it has been because of moist cool air in the chimney breast cavity causing condensation on the inside which makes the wall wet. Fixed with an air brick. Yours could be something entirely different, this was an unused bricked up chimney

No advice for right now but in future you can put something in the contract saying the rooms need to be a certain temperature. Our contract has it and we are also in an older building, I think the rooms need to be 17/18 degrees according to our contract. An hour of heatings in the morning and an hour in the evenings keeps our rooms between 17-19.

You are not being unreasonable. Granted there was some dampness, and ideally, you should have photographed and recorded this prior to the rental so you can tell if the problem has increased.

If the new mould and dampness can be put down to the tenants not using the heating then yes, your tenants haven't maintained and looked after your property very well.

It is not unreasonable to expect your tenant to look after the property and this includes using the heating over winter to prevent additional dampness and mould growth.

You may have missed a trick when you rented the house out and not made a provision in the contract for the tenants to keep the house heated at a constant temperature between September and March.

Prior to purchasing my first home I rented, and if from a rental agency there was often a condition in the tenancy agreement that the inside temperature of the house had to be kept at 16C minimum between September and March exactly to prevent damage to the property through any new dampness or mould growth etc.

Yes, heating is expensive now, and yes people are struggling, but there as to be some responsibility on people renting to maintain the property in a reasonable manner, and this does include preventing new mould and dampness through using heating correctly.

OPs difficulties there will be around enforceability and proving that this hasn't been done, particularly in a property that had some unresolved damp for years when she lived there and has now deteriorated.

OP has long since abandoned this baiting thread. She was only engaging with positive people, at the very beginning, anyway, she said.

It would be very difficult to chuck out a tenant when the cost of heating has risen exponentially like this... no one could have foreseen this and what would have been a reasonable size house to heat is no longer reasonable. Hate to remind you but these are human beings....Ive friends who have rental houses who havent put the cost of rental up for six years because of the state of the country....at the very least ask if you buy them two or four dehumidifiers if they would run them for at last six hours a day....most of them cost 6 - 12p an hour to run.