What you can do is work it out. There should be a plate on it, or the info stamped into the plastic. This tells you the elecrtical rating. It will either be in watts (w) eg 500w, of will be in Kilowatts (kw), eg 2kw. All electrical items are rated like this, eg a 100w bulb uses 100 w of energy in an hour. There is 1000w on 1kw.
You can use the method below to work out the cost for any electrical item.
So if you left on your light bulb for 10 hours it would use 1kw. It should tell you on your electricity bill how much 1kw of electricity costs. So you will therefore know how much it cost to run the bulb for 10 hours. Divide the pence amount you have for the 10 hours by 10, (to work out what it costs per hour).
To work out how much you pay for your salon opening hours (9am to 6pm) then multiply by 9 (the number of hours you are open)
Now, your electric light is draining the power for all 9 hours you have it on (otherwise it would be dark!). However, your wax heater won't be on for all that time. I'm sure it must have some kind of thermostat to click it on and off, otherwise the wax would overheat. You will have to work out how long it is on for by listening to it click on and off (or there may be a light to show it is currenty heating.)
It will (probably- because I don' t have one and I don't know) be on all the time until the wax gets to the correct temperature. Let's say this takes an hour, but you will know better. Work out the cost for this hour (or if it is on for less than an hour divide it by 60 because there are 60 minutes in an hour and then times it by the length of time it is on fully. You can also do this if it takes longer than an hour to heat up. Just add the cost for an hour onto the extra minutes).
Then you have to work out how many minutes per hour it is on for the rest of the time, and you can work out the cost for the time it is on as above, ie divide by 60 and them mulitiply be the minutes.
Now I am plucking these figures out of my head. They probably bear no relation to what you michine uses, or the actual cost of electricity!
Here's how to work it out. Just substuture the real figures and timings.
400w machine which takes 45 minutes to heat up and is on for 20 minutes per hour for the rest of the time and electricity costs 5p per kw.
400w x 2.5 = 1kw
1kw = 5p
so it costs 5 p to run the machine for 2 and a half hours
5p divided by 2.5 hours = 2.5p per hour to run it.
However, it only takes 45 mins to heat up
2.5p divided by 60 and then times by 45 = 1.875p (get the calculator out!)
so it costs 1.875 to heat it up at first
for the other 8 hours 20 mins it is on, you have to work out by the clicks as above how much it is on per hour. Using my example it is on 20mins per hour.
2.5p divided by 60 times 20 = 0.84p per hour for it to click on and off during the day
so 0.84 x 8 hours= 6.72p for the full 8 hours
and the extra 20 minutes is 0.84 divided by 60 times 20= 0.28p
Now we can work out the total amount
1.875 + 6.72 + 0.28 = 8.875p to run it for a day
So it costs about 9p (with my fairy tale figures!) to run it per day
Hope this helps. If I've made it too complex, give me the figures and I'll work it out for you.
Marion x
