Heating season checklist for housing associations

The first cold week of autumn is the busiest of the year for repair requests. A top-floor flat with cold radiators, a ground-floor flat that's too hot, a ticking noise in the pipes at night. Most of it can be prevented with an afternoon's work in September, before the heating is fully on and while the caretaker still has time.

The list below assumes a building on district heating, which covers most multi-storey buildings in Sweden, Finland and Estonia. Adapt it if you have your own boiler or a heat pump.

Why September, not October

Problems found once the heating is running are expensive problems. Contractors are booked, residents are cold, and nobody wants to drain the system to change a valve when it means cooling the whole building. In September you can still test, adjust and order parts at a normal pace, and a service visit costs what it should rather than the emergency rate.

The checklist

• Substation and controls. Have the heat exchanger, pumps and controls serviced. Clean strainers and look for leaks or corrosion at the connections.
• Heating curve. Check the curve that sets the supply temperature against outdoor temperature. If last winter brought complaints from the whole building, the curve is a more likely cause than individual radiators.
• Outdoor sensor. Make sure the outdoor temperature sensor sits on a shaded wall, away from direct sun and exhaust vents. A sensor in the sun tells the system it is warmer than it is.
• System pressure. Check the pressure and the expansion vessel. Low pressure is a common cause of air in top-floor radiators.
• Bleeding. Bleed radiators on the top floors, or ask residents to, with clear instructions. Top up the pressure afterwards.
• Radiator valves. Thermostatic valves that haven't moved all summer can stick closed. Turning each one fully open and back usually frees it.
• Balancing. If some flats are always cold and others always hot, the system probably needs balancing. It is a job for a specialist, and often one of the cheapest energy savings available.
• Ventilation. Check fans, filters and supply air vents. Too much extract air wastes heat. Too little causes damp.
• Building envelope. Check door closers, stairwell windows, and basement and attic hatches. A basement door propped open all winter costs real money.
• Starting reading. Note the building's heat meter reading at the start of the season so you have something to compare against.

Tell residents what you need from them

Residents control half the heating system without knowing it. Send a short notice before the season starts: don't cover radiators with furniture or long curtains, keep thermostatic valves free, air rooms briefly with the window wide open rather than leaving it tilted for hours, and report cold radiators early. Say how to report a problem and what you need to know: which room, which radiator, and whether it is cold at the top or all over.

Set expectations about temperature too. Most Nordic health guidance puts a comfortable indoor temperature at roughly 20 to 22°C, with lower limits that differ by country. Check your national guidance before promising residents a number, and be clear about what counts as too cold. Then repeat the practical advice in the first cold week, when people actually need it.

Handling cold-flat complaints

When the complaints start, resist turning up the supply temperature for the whole building. It fixes one flat and overheats twenty. Ask first: is the radiator cold at the top (air), cold everywhere (a valve or flow problem), or warm while the room stays cold (draughts, windows, ventilation)? Measure in the middle of the room at about a metre's height, not next to the window. A thermometer left for two days tells you more than an argument does.

Log complaints by flat and by riser. Three cold flats on the same riser in the same week point to one problem in that riser, not three separate ones. Older buildings with one-pipe heating systems, common in Estonia, behave differently, and a specialist may be needed to explain why one end of the building lags behind.

After the first month

Look at the heat meter after four weeks and compare it with the same period last year, adjusting for how cold it was. Many energy companies publish degree-day figures for exactly this. If consumption is well up without colder weather, something changed: a setting, a door, a stuck valve. If the complaints have stopped and consumption is down, write down what you did, so whoever does the job next September can repeat it. Share a short summary with residents too: what was adjusted and how many cold-radiator reports came in compared with last year. It shows their reports led somewhere, and next year they report earlier.

With Kelvo Nest, residents report a cold radiator with photos and can follow its status and see who is coming, so the caretaker gets the details in one place. See how repair requests work.