Heating and water

Unlike electricity, heating and water are usually handled by your landlord and paid through your monthly service charges. You do not sign a contract — but you do get an annual statement, and it can go either way.

Who arranges it

Your landlord, normally

You pay via

Monthly Nebenkosten

Settled

Once a year

Watch for

Damp and mould

How you pay for it

Heating and water sit inside the Nebenkosten, the service charges bundled into your monthly rent. You pay an estimated amount each month along with the rent itself.

Once a year your landlord produces a Betriebskostenabrechnung — an itemised statement setting real costs against what you paid. If you used less than estimated, you are refunded. If you used more, you pay the difference as a single sum.

German law requires most heating costs to be billed by actual consumption rather than split evenly, which is why flats have individual heat meters or radiator devices. Turning your heating down genuinely reduces your bill.

Reading the annual statement

It is worth actually reading. Statements contain mistakes, and you have a limited window to query one.

• Check the meter readings against your own, if you noted them.
• Check that the period covered is right, particularly in your first year.
• Check that costs are split by a sensible measure — floor area or consumption, not by nothing in particular.
• Only certain costs may be passed on. Repairs and management fees generally may not.

If a statement looks wrong, say so in writing promptly. There is a deadline for objecting, and a statement left unchallenged is treated as accepted.

Heating a German flat

Radiator valves are numbered rather than marked in degrees. The numbers set a target temperature, not a rate of heating — turning a cold room to 5 does not warm it faster, it simply overheats it and costs more.

Never let a room drop below about 15 °C in winter, even an unused one. Cold walls attract condensation, and condensation causes mould.

Mould, and why it becomes your problem

German flats are well sealed, which keeps heat in and moisture in with it. Cooking, showering and drying laundry indoors all release water into the air, and with nowhere to go it condenses on the coldest surface in the room.

The expected remedy is Stoßlüften: open windows fully for five to ten minutes, two or three times a day, and close them again. Brief and complete beats a window left permanently ajar, which cools the walls without clearing the air.

This matters beyond comfort. If mould appears and the landlord can show you did not air the flat properly, the cost of putting it right can fall to you. Airing daily in winter is not fussiness — it is how these buildings are meant to be lived in.

When something breaks

Heating failures are the landlord's responsibility. Report them in writing, keep a copy, and give a reasonable deadline. If heating is out for a prolonged period in winter you may be entitled to reduce your rent — but tell the landlord first and put it in writing, rather than simply paying less.