EnCalcL description
Calculates the cost of purchasing and running water using appliances

Have you ever wondered whether it is worth investing in dual flush toilets or wanted to work out just how much leaving the tap on while cleaning your teeth is costing you. Do you want to find out how much that dripping tap costs. Or may be you want to help the environment by conserving water. If the answer to any of these is yes then maybe EnCalcL can help you.

EnCalcL calculates the cost of purchasing and running water using appliances, allowing two alternative items to be compared under the same conditions or the true cost of one item to be worked out simply. The results can be saved to a log file for later analysis. EnCalcL is part of the JSutils group of software utilities which have a theme of energy conservation. To find more energy saving ideas click on Energy Saving.

Variables such as water use, number of uses per day and investment cost can be independently varied for two items for specified payback times and water cost to work out the true total cost of items.

For information on using the program click on Using, Details of the formulae used can be found in Formulae. Information on the program data limits can be found in Data Limits. To find out more about errors see Error Messages.

EnCalcL can be used in several ways. It can be used to work out the running cost or total cost of a single item or it can be used to compare two items under identical conditions.

The cost of water is usually made up of two parts: a) the cost of water by volume and the cost of sewerage by volume which is often related directly to the amount of water used. There is often a sewerage volume allowance which reduces the sewerage volume to allow for the fact that not all water used goes down the drain.

Hovering over the various data boxes with the mouse will show the Tool Tips which give information as to what the box is for and what the data limits are if it is for data entry. Entering invalid data will cause an error message to be displayed explaining what data is wrong. These errors must be resolved before the calculate function will work. Use the tab key to move sequentially between data boxes or the mouse pointer to select individual boxes. See Data Limits for the limits used by the program.

To work out just just the running cost of an item without taking into account purchase price, set Cost to 0 (or leave it empty). The program will work with data in either or both of Item 1 and Item 2. Whilst the water volume cost is required, the sewage volume cost and sewage volume allowance are optional and can be set to 0 or left blank if required. If the Sewage volume Charge is set to zero then any Volume Allowance will be ignored. The Notes box is used to add short notes to make sense of saved calculations at a later date and record other useful data. The Payback Period is used to spread the Item Cost over a specified period.