Electricity at Home.
Since 1900 the American householder, as well as the American business man, has fairly awakened to what the telephone can do for him. It is estimated that in 1905 the telephone in the United States earned four times as much as the telegraph. The day is at hand when every household but the poorest will enjoy the wonderful gift of Professor Bell. In somewhat the same fashion it is dawning upon the public that electricity stands ready to perform other services, each minor, but all, in the aggregate, going far to promote health and comfort at home.
At Schenectady, New York, Mr. H. W. Hillman, apart from heating in winter, has adopted electricity for many household tasks, with results described and illustrated in the Technical World, Chicago, July, 1906. His kitchen outfit for a family of five persons comprises an electric table, oven, griddle-cake cooker, meat broiler, cereal cooker, water heater, egg boiler, potato steamer, frying pan, coffee percolator, and a stove for ordinary cooking utensils. A three pound nickel plated electric iron is provided for the laundry. In the dining-room is an electric chafing dish and a percolator. On the verandah and in the den are electric cigar lighters. In the sewing-room the machine is driven by an electric motor. The bathroom has an electric mug which heats water for shaving in less than a minute; in chilly weather the luminous radiator yields just the slight heat which ensures comfort instead of discomfort. Of course, throughout the house electric lamps furnish light with the maximum of convenience and wholesomeness, the minimum of risk.
How does this service compare in cost with the employment of coal and gas? With coal at $6.50 a ton, and gas at $1.30 per thousand cubic feet, the average monthly expense was formerly $6.00; with electricity the bills are but 69 cents more per month, a mere trifle in comparison with the gain in comfort, the saving of drudgery, the promotion of cleanliness. The rate for electricity used for lighting is 10 cents per kilowatt hour, for heating only half that rate.
Mr. Hillman does not use electric heat for ordinary warming: it would cost him too much. A good many people are puzzled by the fact that an electric current, which yields a perfect light at a reasonable price, should in the sister task of heating fail in rivalry with a common stove or furnace. To solve this puzzle let us place our hands above a cluster of 15 Edison incandescent lamps, each of 16 candle power, representing one horse power, yet emitting no more heat than if three ounces of coal were slowly burning away in the course of an hour. This electricity may cost us ten cents an hour, the coal costs but the fifteenth part of one cent. In producing mechanical motion at a power-house, the engines waste at least ninety per cent. of the applied heat. To this heavy tax must be added the expenses of distribution, administration and maintenance. Until, therefore, the electrician reaches a mode of creating his current from heat without the enormous losses of present practice, we cannot look to him for a system of general heating. A word has already been said in this book about methods of district heating by steam. Another plan is worthy of mention. In Brooklyn the Morris Building Company supplies from a central plant fifty-two dwellings with hot water which serves not only for heating, but for cooking and washing also. The water is heated in part by live steam, in part by exhausts from steam engines.