Hot showers are a luxury that I don't want to do without unless there's a good reason. Carlos, who serves as the boss of those living in this apartment will not allow me to run the electric water heater for more 10 minutes, which is enough to create about 30 seconds worth of lukewarm water. After that the water is icy cold. Once, when Carlos wasn't home, I ran the water heater for an hour. I was able to take a hot shower for a full 7 minutes! Carlos claims that running the water heater for longer than 10 minutes at a time (how frequently he doesn't specify) would be very expensive– resulting in an energy bill of as much as $500,000 COP ($284.25 USD.) But I don't think that's possible. Also, he runs two separate refrigerators 24 hours a day– so I would think if he's concerned about energy costs, that would be the first thing to consider. When I try to talk to him about this, he speaks so quickly that I can't understand everything he says– but the gist is that I should be grateful that he has put a roof over my head and how dare I ask for anything else. According to his rhetoric, if I don't understand each and every word he says, then I must not understand electricity or the way it's billed in Colombia.
For the time being I've accepted that trying to talk to Carlos about this is much less pleasant than resigning myself to taking cold showers. But I felt compelled to investigate the issue and show my findings to the internet.
This is the badge I found on the water heater. I think the important information is that it uses 800 Watts. Assuming I run it for an hour each day (realistically I would run it less) I did the following math:
I'm not sure how much they charge for electricity in Colombia (Carlos hasn't shown me any previous bills), but Wikipedia has a list of how much they charge in other countries. In order for 24.8kWh to cost $500,000 COP, the utility company would have to charge $20,161.29 COP per kilowatt hour. That's 20 times more than the country Wikipedia lists as charging the highest rate for electricity, which is Tonga.
but I still don't think that's a good reason to do without hot showers.
Can you boil water to repurpose as a shower? I recently learned (I am having a cold shower problem too, but it's not as bad) that if I go for a few days without showering, I actually turn into a cat and recoil at the touch of water.
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