WAIT'S WHAT Sra,—I don't particularly want to keep breaking into
your columns with the hard facts of life, for there may well be many of your readers who wish to preserve their illusions, and anyway it makes me feel I belong to the 5 per cent. or less of crackpots in this country who 'write to the paper.
I feel sure your readers will sleep better if they know that in electric heating (as heating) there is no such thing as relative efficiency. It's all tied up with an old legal system known as Ohm's Law. Electric heat is produced by the resistance offered to the passage of electric current. It is positive, definite and invariable for all time no matter what Complainers' Association reports on it. The heat produced is directly proportional to the watts consumed and the heat will be the same if the watts consumed are in a radiator, convector, fan heater or a string of fairy lights. Like life, you get out what you put in, Unlike the burning of raw fuel, where various factors of combustion enter, electric heating is solely a matter of the amount of watts consumed. You get as hot as your pocket allows, you neither save nor gain by fooling around with ideas of efficient appliances.
Some heaters may get the heat moving round the room quicker, as a fan heater does, or some may make you warm in the middle of a chilly room as a bowl fire does, but the total heat produced in any room does not depend on shape, construction, description, 'Institute' labels or any other claptrap. It depends completely on the watts consumed.
Any of your readers who want to warm a room electrically can put all the 'advice' sheets in the dust- bin and apply this simple rule. Measure the cubic footage of the room. For a sitting-room multiply the number obtained by one and a half, for a bedroom take the number as it is. This number is the minimum watts necessary to heat the chosen room. It will be affected by large areas of window, bad floorboards, chimney openings and the frequency of door open- ings. Armed with the number of watts all any of your readers have to do is to buy any electric heater to provide these watts. Watts keep them warm, not convectors, radiators, and the rest of the jargon.
It is regrettable that genuine advice in Britain from real engineers is rarely had, and so we get the flannel of the bumbling amateurs largely suffering from the high cost of wanting. Let your readers console themselves. Any 1,000-watt electric fire for
gives precisely the same amount of heat as a 'Which?-recommended,' super-duper, convector- radiator, infra-red item at £20. Their only worry should be safety. Watts are watts the world over for all time. No Complainers' Association will ever alter this basic physical law. You get what you pay for! 'Consumers' are those who don't want to pay, 'Customers' enjoy life!
8. DUNCAN
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