Chrysler will save you from the high price of gas!!!

That's what their most recent commercial screams at the viewer.....playing on the masses' fears. A nice marketing ploy to tell you the truth, but here comes the numbers!!!!

It's good for 3 years.
Each year it covers the first 12,000 miles.
It allows you to buy gas for $2.99 a gallon.

Now some assumptions:

1) Gas will stick at about $3.75 a gallon on average. Currently it's a little higher, but all indications are that it will go much lower later in the year. So let's just take this as an average. You'll see that it basically becomes irrelevant.

2) The average Chrysler will get you 25 mpg with a mix of city and highway driving.

So 12,000 miles/25 mpg= 480 gallons of gas a year. Big number yes??
Average saving per gallon: $3.75-$2.99=$.76 per gallon.
Average dollar savings per year for each year: 480 gallons x $.76= $365 per year.

Now, if I'm spending $25,000+ on a car, $365 per year for three years is NOT going to sway my decision making. You're barely even getting $1,000 cash back and it's paid over three years not up front. BTW, I'm not discounting the savings into present day dollars which makes the deal even worse. This just goes to show you that people will take advantage of you if you're not careful and don't do the math!!!

Math Part Deux

As some of you know, I've had trouble with my lower level getting flooded when it rains about 4" in an hour (which has happened two of the last three years). Due to the frustration of tearing up my carpet and replacing the padding, I have not replaced it and will not until a few things are accomplished to help prevent the flooding. We need to reroute the down spout from the roof into the yard instead of the main sewer line and I need to build some sort of barrier outside one of my doors....like a big step. One of those things is took place yesterday. We routed the downspout from the roof out of the main sewer line of the building and out into the yard. When it rains really hard, this will move a lot of water out of our catch basin. How much water? Here comes the math again!!!

My building roof is approximately 45 feet wide by 80 feet long.
4" of rain equals .33 feet of rain.
There are 7.48 gallons in a cubic foot (got this off the web).

So the catchment area of the roof is 45 x 80 = 3,600 sq. ft.
The formula for the number of gallons in my catchment area when it rains 4" is:
3600 sq.ft. x .33 ft x 7.48 gallons/cubic foot= 8,976 gallons of water!! Can you freaking believe it?? No wonder everything floods!!!! I get maybe 20-30 gallons of water downstairs in the worst of flooding conditions....paltry compared to what is trying to move through my sewer line.



Now that's a big pipe! (That's what she said.)













The extension from the metal downspout is a plastic tube which runs further into the yard.












That clay stand pipe on the ground USED to come up from the catch basin to meet the downspout. We took that out because it was just sitting there. They then put a two metal covers over the top of the hole the stand pipe was resting on.