What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? California
My husband and I have been renting a home since January of this year. The contract is only a month to month, but we dont have the funds to move out yet. The issue is, first of all, the home was built in 1986 and has the original Air conditioning/furnace unit. Our electric bill doubled when we started using the AC back in april (we live in Bakersfield so it gets hot fast). Our bill is now over $800 for a 1500sqft home. We have contacted the landlord about this issue a few times already because not only does the AC stay on all day long without shutting off, but it cant even pull the temperature down past 78 degrees and during the day the temperature actually goes up while the AC still runs constantly. We have it set to 76, but it only brings it down to that around 10pm. We were finally able to get him to send out an AC repairman who inspected the unit and dismissed it as just being hot outside..An efficient AC unit will bring the temperature down where this one will not. Upon sending a letter explaining the issue further and how it is extremely effecting our financial and physical habitability, we were contacted by the landlord, who then, gave us 2 options. A: He has someone come out and do a more thorough inspection and check all the ducting for leaks or blockages, or B: He puts in a new AC unit and charges us $50 a month extra for the unit. Is this even legal??? As far as I'm concerned he should be responsible for our horrific electric bills since he did nothing to fix the AC for the past 2 months we've been asking him to do anything about it. How is the inefficient, old unit our fault or responsibility? The other thing is when we saw the advertisement, he had it for $1350/mo for a 2000sqft home, but when I looked up the home on the internet to find the specs, it is only 1557sqft and the garage is 468sqft which would bring a grand total of 2025sqft. I'm not a professional, but from what I've read you do not include the garage as part of the square footage because it is not actual living space, so this guy pretty much cheated us out of over 400sqft....Another issue was he never notified us that the indoor laundry room addon was actually a part of the garage which took away from the garage square footage and we couldnt even fit our vehicle in it because of that, which we didnt find out until we tried parking it in the garage after a few days of moving in. I need to know what we can do mainly about the AC situation because I dont want to be screwed by this guy any more, but we also dont have the funds to just move, especially since I am pregnant and due this month with our first child. Any help would be much appreciated.....
My husband and I have been renting a home since January of this year. The contract is only a month to month, but we dont have the funds to move out yet. The issue is, first of all, the home was built in 1986 and has the original Air conditioning/furnace unit. Our electric bill doubled when we started using the AC back in april (we live in Bakersfield so it gets hot fast). Our bill is now over $800 for a 1500sqft home. We have contacted the landlord about this issue a few times already because not only does the AC stay on all day long without shutting off, but it cant even pull the temperature down past 78 degrees and during the day the temperature actually goes up while the AC still runs constantly. We have it set to 76, but it only brings it down to that around 10pm. We were finally able to get him to send out an AC repairman who inspected the unit and dismissed it as just being hot outside..An efficient AC unit will bring the temperature down where this one will not. Upon sending a letter explaining the issue further and how it is extremely effecting our financial and physical habitability, we were contacted by the landlord, who then, gave us 2 options. A: He has someone come out and do a more thorough inspection and check all the ducting for leaks or blockages, or B: He puts in a new AC unit and charges us $50 a month extra for the unit. Is this even legal??? As far as I'm concerned he should be responsible for our horrific electric bills since he did nothing to fix the AC for the past 2 months we've been asking him to do anything about it. How is the inefficient, old unit our fault or responsibility? The other thing is when we saw the advertisement, he had it for $1350/mo for a 2000sqft home, but when I looked up the home on the internet to find the specs, it is only 1557sqft and the garage is 468sqft which would bring a grand total of 2025sqft. I'm not a professional, but from what I've read you do not include the garage as part of the square footage because it is not actual living space, so this guy pretty much cheated us out of over 400sqft....Another issue was he never notified us that the indoor laundry room addon was actually a part of the garage which took away from the garage square footage and we couldnt even fit our vehicle in it because of that, which we didnt find out until we tried parking it in the garage after a few days of moving in. I need to know what we can do mainly about the AC situation because I dont want to be screwed by this guy any more, but we also dont have the funds to just move, especially since I am pregnant and due this month with our first child. Any help would be much appreciated.....
It just gets so frustrating sometimes.