Hello,
I have a tenant renting a home in my park in Minnesota. He reported to my manager having issues with the furnace not working properly and shutting off at times. In Minnesota you can imagine it can get cold quick in the house. We called out a repairman three times in the span of 4-5 days. Each time the repair man left with the unit working and heating the house only to have the furnace stop working again. Sometimes the tenant would stay with a friend and sometimes he would just stay with little or no heat. After the 3rd repair man visit and the unit still having issues I put him up in a hotel for a night. The next day I had a different company come to inspect. They said the heat exchanger looked like it was about to burn through and I should just get a new furnace. At this time I also remembered the furnace was only 5 years old so I checked the warranty and I’m still covered. I called the company who installed it to order a new new heat exchanger and I purchased three good quality indoor space heaters for the home. At this time the furnace was limping along but with the space heaters seemed to keep the home around 64 degrees. The tenant and his brother did not find this warm enough and purchased another cheap space heater and blew the breakers. Electrician came out and got everything going again but tenant was told not to use his heater anymore and not to touch anything. Tenant then claimed he didn’t believe the temperature was 65 in the house and that he was too cold and got a extended stay hotel room with his own money for 10 days until the new heat exchanger arrived and was installed today. Tenant is told the house is good to go again and he tells me he only has $90 left to pay for February rent should he send it now or with March rent. What should I do? What is fair?
Thank you,
Jason