Tenants not turning on heat

You could offer to reduce their rent by a hundred euros a month for the winter period in order to allow them to afford to heat the place.

Tough one to call. A house is a living thing, it needs fresh air in every day with the windows opened and and the heating turned on. there has to be some compromise like a dehumidifier.

Yeah unless you have your own house with wood fired stoved and source of fuel, Fuel is expensive. Its the same price per BTU for coal, gas or electricity. I am not against the Uddies and blankets but the damp air has to be cleared every day. They will get black mould. I lived in an apartment and had to open every day but I was over a chipper and had free heating. I still had to air the house every day and wipe condensation from the windows in the morning.

Saving money for a deposit perhaps?

Its a tough position to be in, I had something similar. Tenant wouldnt use the central heating and there was also a small leak under the sink in the kitchen that she didnt tell me about ( even though I had sent a plumber twice for other small issues ).

Net result was an extremely damp house and mould, its not good for the long term health of your property.

If they are good tenants otherwise maybe put some money into their ESB account for Christmas and ask them to heat the house. It might be more beneficial to you in the long run.

Are the ESB bills in your name ? If so you need to change that asap to the tenants name,

An interesting proposal is to simply include electricity in the rental, up to a fair usage of say 75-100 quid a month on average, assuming the tenants are somewhat trustworthy. That way, there's an incentive for them to heat the place but not take the mick, like having the heating on and the windows open as you often see in places where heating is included! Btw, 2-3 units of electricity a day is incredibly low usage!

That terrace house is over 100 years old, built long before there were planning/building regulations. Those edrooms are painfully small. OP said his apartment is new, so it needs to be a better standard than Georgian tenements.

No 2-beds in the last 30 years should be anything close to 40sqm. Only studio apartment's should be that small.
Min size for a 2bed for the last 10 years or so was 73sqm. (was updated this year).

Those modular built "granny flats" are 40m2 with two small bedrooms and electric heating.

Could be something similar, I've worked in a few and heat up quickly, but you do need a level of heat constantly

Yeah, unless they're a heat pump based system 1kWh of electricity in = 1kWh of heat out.

Night storage heaters just save a significant % as the price per kWh is usually around 50% less at on night rate.

Unless it's a technological break through defying the laws of physics, any electric heater claiming to be 'energy efficient' is mostly working on marketing hype and lies.

A house shouldn't "need" heat to prevent it from going mouldy. If it is designed & constructed correctly, with adequate ventilation, mould should not be an issue. The choice for a tenant to put the heat on or not should be theirs and not to prevent the inadequate or shortcomings of the design and construction.

Is this apartment a log cabin type/garden room type of construction ?

I own my own home and still cautiously use the heating due to the expense to run it. I rather wear another layer than wfh all day with the heating on. It's not really for you to observe what clothes are lying around to judge if that is why they have not used the heating.

Lastly, a good few years ago now I rented a converted garage which was insulated very well to the owners opinion. It was a freezer once the electric heating went off!

something doesn’t compute here: newly built, less than 40 sq m and requiring significant heating. Doesn’t sound like it meets any modern building standards, is this just a converted shed?

In all fairness, it looks like the OP has put some effort into the apartment and finished it nicely. I can also see what looks like a vent above the window in the kitchen.

In my experience, an unheated home generally doesn't suffer from mould unless there's a lot of cooking or clothes-drying being done. These activities result in condensation forming on cold surfaces and the mould sets in then. Similarly, it can actually be the case sometimes that intermittently heating a room such as a bedroom overnight can result in mould forming due to the air becoming warm and humid as a result of the combination of the heating and the moisture breathed out by the occupant.

A simple 'fix' if necessary for the owner is to get a dehumidifier and wall-mount it in the main living space with collected water piped outside. This dehumidifier could be programmed to only run when the humidity level gets too high etc. Of course, who foots the bill for this is another matter!

That's a very tidy job op, it looks very well and a great use of space

Taking the 5th on the planning permission. It was charity from within the family.