(PA) Landlord cranked the heat up while I was away and didn't tell me
So I was out of town for the Christmas + New Year's holidays visiting family and traveling with friends for a bit. I recently returned to find the heat absolutely blasting in my apartment. It legitimately felt like it was 85 degrees and everything in my apartment felt warm to the touch. I did leave one of the baseboards on low, which in the days before I left was enough to keep the apartment cool but certainly warm enough for me to live in. I came back to find another heating unit on full blast.
After I left, I was notified that the management would stop by to conduct "heat checks", but I never consented to them turning up my heat, and in fact they never even notified me that they turned on the second heater. A huge spike in electric usage of course lines up from the day of the "heat check", and the usage/bill is about 5x as much as last month. Of course, being a shitty college apartment, it also doesn't have an actual thermometer so I can't even know if I'm at their 60F minimum.
Do I have any actual options here? My lease only requires me to keep the place at 60F (with no actual thermometer to tell of course...) but doesn't mention anything about the landlord being permitted to change the heat, especially excessively so. My bill went from $60 to $230 this month.
Posted Jan 11, 2026, 8:08 PM UTC