When living in a shared home, people often have to compromise on various things to keep everyone happy.

What happens when there is a language barrier and you can’t talk things through to come to an agreement?

That’s the situation in this story, let’s read it and see how it plays out.

Roommates set the thermostat to 50°F when it’s 35°F outside

For context, I share a 5-bedroom home with 4 other small families.

My “neighbors” are from a Spanish-speaking country and don’t know English very well; the language barrier is large between us.

I’m sure that can be frustrating.

The way this house was built (in 2015) does not allow for very good ventilation between rooms or floors.

Additionally, the HVAC system does not have thermometers in each room.

Instead, it’s combined with a thermostat, one of which is located in the hall I share with my neighbors.

It reads 68°F (20°C) on average, but that’s with both bedroom doors closed.

Thus, the temperature in either one of our rooms can vary drastically. Since we share a thermostat… You can see where this is going.

Ok, that seems like a good idea.

The landlord has expressed his wish to keep the thermostat above 60°F (16°C) as long as it’s colder than that outside.

Easy enough, open the window when it’s hot and close it when it’s cold.

My desk is next to both of our windows, so that’s primarily been my responsibility.

Both parties tend to avoid conflict so we haven’t discussed this face-to-face, or even through text.

Every so often, my roommate and I will notice that it’s uncomfortably hot or cold.

Why would they set it to those extreme temps?

Every time we’ve checked the thermostat, it’s been set to either 80°F (27°C) or 50°F (10°C).

Naturally, we set it back to heat to ~64°F (18°C) and cool to ~70°F.

Apparently, this does not suffice for our neighbors.

They have been, over the past month, continuously setting the thermostat back to 50°F (10°C) even when it’s been below 40°F (5°C) outside.

But, here’s the kicker: The A/C wasn’t even running until yesterday!

The air coming out of the vents has been cold because most of our HVAC system is in an uninsulated garage.

This knowledge was gifted to us by the landlord, who also doesn’t speak Spanish, and he assumed we would pass the information to our neighbors.

Yet again, as predicted, they set the thermostat to 50°F (10°C).

But this time, we let it run like that all night, making sure to grab all the blankets from the shared laundry room.

Oh, it’s going to get cold in those bedrooms!

Remember, when the temperature in a room changes while the door is closed, the thermometer can’t tell until the door opens.

They sleep with their door locked.

So, all night, the HVAC system was blowing frigid air into their room.

We woke up the next morning with the thermostat set to “66° — 70°”. Sweet sweet victory!

I know this is petty, but man oh man is it nice to have a comfortable temperature to SLEEP in.

Well, I guess that is one way to get past a language barrier.

Let’s see if the commenters had any better ideas or solutions.

Yup, nobody is going to be comfortable in the current living situation.

This guy knows the temperatures he is comfortable with.

It is definitely unusual.

Now here is a simple solution.

It isn’t rocket science!

These people need to find a way to communicate.

You can’t blame the language thing forever!

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.