A TENANT whose landlord refused to let the heating go past 16C managed to get their revenge with a hack to heat the flat without the owner knowing.
Alin Oiste,33, devised the hack after his landlord locked the system to only kick in when the house dropped below 16 degrees.
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Alin decided to remove the thermostat from the wall and put it inside the fridge.
This hack tricked the thermostat into putting the temperature at around eight degrees.
Another hack involved leaving the device outside until it read zero degrees, and then putting it back inside the fridge.
He claims the hack would start up their heating in minutes and then he’d remove the device in the morning when he was warm again.
Alin posted the footage on TikTok, which has racked up half a million views on the social media channel.
Alin, originally from Orastie, Romania, said: “The first half of the winter was the old thermostat so it was working fine and then in the second half we were all so cold.
“The whole house was freezing and you couldn’t have a shower or a bath because you would get out and you’d be freezing.
“No matter what I would set it to, the temperature just wouldn’t go above 16 degrees so I thought ‘I’m not accepting this’.
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“He was doing it to save money on his heating bill so he was just being tight.
“By putting the thermostat in the fridge we’d tricked the landlord and the thermostat into thinking that the house was a lot colder than it was.
“My roommate thought it wouldn’t work but it did. The thermostat wouldn’t detect how long it had been in there so it was still working until I took it out
“During the day the landlord had a business nearby so he could pop in and see why the house was so cold so it was just at night when I would get home from work.
“I knew he wouldn’t be checking at night. I’d thought about everything.
“I would have it on from 10pm all the way through the night until the morning and we did this for a couple of months until summer started and there was no need for heating.
“I wanted to share it because I thought it was funny.”
Alin, who left the flat in September and has since moved to Scotland where his landlord lets him control his own heating.
The hospitality worker believes landlords should allow their tenants to control their own thermostat.
Alin said: “I think landlords should trust the tenants more and let them change it.
“If nobody’s at the house there’s no point in having it on so you could turn it off but it’s a fine line because lots of people forget about it.
“I’d tell anyone struggling with their landlord controlling their thermostat to give putting it in the fridge a try.”
The viral video was captioned ‘when the landlord overrides your thermostat but you can override that easily’ and has more than 300 comments.
One read : “16 degrees? Absolute misery.” A second said: “Nice work!”
A third added: “Oh you won.”
Alin replied: “The joke’s on him [laughing emojis].”
Landlords are able to control thermostats if they pay the bills but The Housing Act 2004 says councils can intervene if a tenant is not free from ‘hazards’, which includes excess cold.
Recently, a DIY terracotta heater has gone viral online for producing enough heat to warm a house without using electricity or gas.
Read more on The Sun
The terracotta pot is placed upside down over lit candles and the heat blasts through.
But the popular hack can pose some serious danger to safety, warns a heating expert.
