family feud

I think this email exchange between my sister and my father epitomizes my family. Note that the space heaters were being used in the first place because the "house" (i.e. living room) was heated with a single woodstove. The joke about two people sitting in front of the heater refers to my dad calculating driving time both ways, i.e. going to Hornell, which is 20 minutes away, takes "an hour" because you have to go there and back. Eh, there's no point in explaining it, it's completely illogical.

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So Dad tried to brainwash us into thinking electric space heaters are really expensive, when in reality they cost 15 cents or less per HOUR! Read on to see how you can actually calculate the cost of your own personal space heater based on its wattage and your cost of electricity.

-A

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Andrea,

15 cents per hour sounds cheap, but there are 164 hours in the week. If the heater were to run 50% of the time it would cost about 25$ per week or $100 per month, and a 1500 watt heater would only heat a single small room if it were the only sources of heat. Your apartment would run about $400-500 per month, which doesn't sound so cheap after all.

Dad

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Dad, I am not suggesting that I heat my entire apartment with an electric space heater! What I'm objecting to is you yelling at us for using a heater in the bathroom for 1 hour a day growing up or for maybe 2 hours a night in the computer room! That's a total of 45 cents per day, which rounds to ZERO. The way you acted about space heaters, I would have guessed they cost at least 45 cents per minute!

P.S. Check your math. There are 168 hours in a week. And if it was on 50% of the time it would cost $12.60 per week or $50.40 per month. Oh, but wait, maybe you're figuring that two people are sitting in front of it which would make it twice as expensive, right? Faulty Dad logic revealed!!!

-A