Central heating: heat cost allocators and the end of "everyone pays the same"

If your building has central heating, this affects you directly — and you are probably already late.

The obligation

Royal Decree 736/2020 required (with deadlines already passed) the installation of individual meters or heat cost allocators on radiators in buildings with central heating, wherever it is technically feasible and proportionate. The aim: pay for actual consumption, not by share.

How the individual split works

• Allocators on each radiator (small devices, €25–40 per radiator) plus thermostatic valves.
• The bill is divided: a fixed or common portion (losses, common areas: 20–40%) by share, and the rest by individual reading.
• Typical outcome: savings of 15–25% of overall consumption (people turn off radiators they used to ignore) and redistribution — the "cold" flats that were overheating stop subsidising the ones that opened the windows.

In practice at the meeting

The installation is a legal obligation: the resolution is about carrying it out (quotes, energy services company or installer) rather than about whether to do it. The sensitive point is the new split: explaining it BEFOREHAND with simulations avoids the shock of the first statement ("why am I paying more now?" — because you consume more, and previously your neighbour was paying for it).

If it still has not been done

Besides the risk of a fine, every winter without allocators is money burned collectively. And efficiency grants usually cover part of it. Putting it on the agenda of the next meeting with two quotes is one of the best effort-to-benefit tasks there is.

The neighbourly nuance

The first months generate comparisons and itches ("the third floor barely pays anything"). Transparency about the criteria plus patience: by the second winter, nobody wants to go back to everyone paying the same.