Qui Pus Info

₹7.34. That is what one 50-litre hot bath costs on an LPG geyser in Delhi this October, and every gas vs electric geyser argument should start there. Buy a 5-star, 15-litre electric storage geyser instead, unless your winter power tops ₹6 a unit. Your slab decides, not the heater.

Gas vs electric geyser: which is cheaper per bath?

A gas geyser is cheaper only when each extra unit of electricity costs more than about ₹5.68; below that, a 5-star electric storage geyser heats the same bath for less.

Start with the water, because it does not care what heats it. Lifting 50 litres from 20 °C to 40 °C takes 1.163 kWh. An electric storage geyser, allowing 10% for heat leaking from the tank, bills about 1.29 units per bath; whether extra stars cut that enough to pay depends on tariff, as our 5-star refrigerator payback showed.

Gas follows the same sum. LPG releases 47.3 MJ per kilo, the net calorific value in the IPCC 2006 Guidelines, which fixes the gas a bath burns: 0.11 kg at an assumed 80% efficiency.

Here the usual advice goes wrong. Retailer guides weigh features and skip the rupee, yet the tariff is nearly the whole answer. DERC's tariff schedule sets Delhi's base slabs at ₹3, ₹4.50, ₹6.50, ₹7 and ₹8 a unit, unchanged since FY 2020-21, so one electric bath costs ₹3.88 at the bottom and ₹10.34 at the top. Slabs settled our oil heater vs fan heater comparison too.

Four numbers decide whether that holds for you. Indane's Delhi cylinder rose ₹29 on 7 June 2026, its second rise this year, ETV Bharat reported. DERC then let BSES Rajdhani bill a higher May fuel surcharge, Business Today reported on 13 July 2026. The other two cards are our derivations.

The surcharge is the card buyers never see coming. DERC applies it to fixed and energy charges together and resets it monthly, so January's rate may differ from May's.

Worked example: a Delhi family of four, one 50-litre bath each a day, water heated from 20 °C to 40 °C, a ₹6.5 top slab before surcharge, and the ₹942 cylinder. Electric: 1.163 kWh ÷ 0.9 = 1.29 units, × ₹6.5 = ₹8.40 a bath. Gas: 1.163 × 3.6 ÷ 0.8 ÷ 47.3 = 0.11 kg, at ₹942 ÷ 14.2 = ₹66.34 a kilo, so ₹7.34. Over 120 baths a month: ₹1,008 electric, ₹881 gas, a ₹127 gap. Divide ₹7.34 by 1.29 units and the line sits at ₹5.68. Your own check takes a minute: take the top slab on your December bill, add its surcharge, compare.

Add the surcharge and an electric bath reaches ₹9.91, putting gas ₹308 a month ahead. Two facts tilt back. Delhi's 2026-27 budget kept zero bills to 200 units and half bills, capped at ₹800, to 400, Energetica India reported. And geysers work hardest in December, with the AC off. Our view: judge a geyser on a winter bill, never a June one.

Where the two heaters differ, row by row

The two heaters differ less in efficiency than in what their fuel costs, how that price moves, which safety mark they carry and where on the wall they are allowed to hang.

The money rows point opposite ways, which is the honest result. At last year's ₹853 cylinder the line would sit at ₹5.14, so the 2026 hikes widened gas's band. No tariff argues down the fitting row.

Is a gas geyser safe inside a bathroom?

A gas geyser is safe only when it hangs outside the bathroom or vents through a flue to open air, because a burner in a closed room builds up odourless carbon monoxide.

The warning is current. A 27-year-old Bengaluru employee was found unconscious in a small, poorly ventilated homestay bathroom in Kodagu, and police suspected carbon monoxide from the gas geyser, the Deccan Herald reported on 8 June 2026, post-mortem awaited. Booking a homestay this winter? Look above the shower first.

A seven-year gas-geyser user on an Indian home-tech forum wrote in February 2010: "keep cylinder and unit outside (free space) as much as possible". The grey area is a sealed, balanced-flue unit mounted indoors; we would still keep the burner outside, because that flue is easy to get wrong.

Ujjwala households face a harsher sum. Subsidised refills fell from nine to four a year, IANS reported on 8 June 2026, at ₹642 each in Delhi: gas bathwater at ₹5.00 and a ₹3.87 line, but only about four months of baths. Buying in a sale? Check the price-history low first with our fake festive discount check.

• A gas unit or cylinder in a closed bathroom without an exhaust fan.
• No ISI mark on the heater: BIS lists certification as mandatory.
• A cracked or stiff rubber hose.
• A homestay where nobody mentioned the gas unit.

Our call: a 15-litre, 5-star electric storage geyser, unless your winter rate clears ₹6 a unit and gas can live outside the bathroom. This week, pull out last December's bill, find its top slab, add the surcharge, and buy on that number.

Up to ₹21,300 over five years. That is where RO purifier maintenance cost lands on this site's model, with top-of-market parts and a technician twice a year, all spent after the box is paid for. The cheaper buy, if your tap water tests below 500 mg/L of dissolved solids, is a UV+UF purifier, which has no membrane to replace.

What makes up RO purifier maintenance cost?

Four lines make up the bill: filters, the membrane, the UV lamp and the service visits, and on a five-year model built from June 2026 Indian part prices, the visits outweigh any single part.

Most advice fixes on the membrane, the dearest part. Wrong fear, in our view: on our assumptions it is changed twice in five years, while the doorbell rings ten times. The prices below are reported ranges from RO Care India's 4 June 2026 Kolkata price guide; it is a service network, not a brand.

Worked example: an RO+UV purifier on hard city water, top-of-range parts, a service visit every six months. Our assumptions, not the guide's: filters yearly, the membrane twice in five years, the UV lamp once.

• Sediment filter (₹150-400) plus carbon filter (₹200-500), one set a year: ₹900 x 5 = ₹4,500.
• RO membrane (₹1,200-3,500), twice: ₹3,500 x 2 = ₹7,000.
• UV lamp (₹800-1,800 with installation), once: ₹1,800.
• General service visit (₹400-800), twice a year: ₹800 x 10 = ₹8,000.

That totals ₹21,300, about ₹355 a month. At the bottom of every range it falls to ₹8,950, and since the guide ties membrane prices to quality and brand compatibility, much of that gap is the part you accept. Your own version takes under a minute: last service bill times ten, plus five years of filter sets at your technician's price. That is your floor before any membrane.

It is the same ownership sum as the payback for 3-star and 5-star refrigerators, and it belongs before the festive sale, when a list price dressed up as a discount flatters the box.

Four more numbers decide whether your bill stays near that floor. Two come from the same guide, the others from BIS's IS 10500:2012 standard and the National Green Tribunal's May 2019 order, which the environment ministry reported to the Lok Sabha on 13 March 2020.

The overhaul is the figure to plan around. Skip visits to save money and the saving can return as that one bill, bigger at either end of the price range than a year of routine upkeep.

RO or UV: which costs less to keep?

UV+UF costs less to keep because it has no RO membrane to replace, though the saving only counts if your tap water already sits under 500 mg/L of dissolved solids, BIS's acceptable limit.

Find your row, then read across at your technician's price. The UV+UF row drops the membrane but omits the UF cartridge, which the guide does not price, so read it as a floor. The last row is an RO with four years of parts and service included, leaving only year five to pay.

The tinted cell is the worked example. Midpoint prices take ₹6,175 off it; UV+UF at the same prices removes the ₹7,000 membrane line.

That last row describes a real product. Eureka Forbes's product page listed the Aquaguard Aspire Glow 4X, an RO+UV model, at ₹18,999 as of 22 October 2026, promising "zero filter cost, zero spare cost, and zero service cost for full 4 years". If both membrane changes and the lamp fall inside those years, the cover absorbs ₹18,800 of our high-end bill, about the purifier's price. That is the company's claim, not a tested result. Our call: where an RO is needed, an all-in warranty beats a separate AMC, if the card agrees.

What TDS level actually needs an RO?

Above 500 mg/L, the acceptable limit in BIS's IS 10500:2012 drinking water standard, an RO earns its upkeep; below it, a meter reading alone cannot clear the water, because it measures dissolved solids, not germs or trace arsenic.

Regulators have drawn the same line. The National Green Tribunal's 20 May 2019 order directed the environment ministry to prohibit RO below 500 mg/L, the ministry told the Lok Sabha. The Supreme Court stayed the key directions of a tougher NGT order of 1 December 2021 "until further orders" on 1 March 2022, Verdictum reported, and we found no report of the stay lifting by October 2026. No ban binds you.

Here is the grey area, and it is opinion, not rule. Water under the limit that tastes salty passes BIS and can still taste poor; an RO to fix that is defensible, just not a safety purchase. Most homes need the test, not the machine. Or rather, most homes on a municipal line do.

• Borewell or tanker water: a meter cannot see arsenic or bacteria, so get a lab test against the IS 10500 drinking water limits first.
• The MRP gap: that Eureka Forbes page shows a ₹31,000 MRP; read what India's 2026 e-commerce rules make sellers show about prior prices before calling the gap a saving.
• Reject water: on low-TDS water, an RO drains water for no safety gain.
• AMC quotes: price any contract against two single visits and one filter set a year.

This week, buy or borrow a TDS meter and test the kitchen tap. Under 500 mg/L on a municipal line, buy a UV+UF and keep the membrane money. Over it, buy the RO, and sign no AMC until you have set it against the ₹21,300 high case.

Free apps never send you a bill, so you pay in permissions. A flashlight app that wants your location, a game that wants your microphone, a shopping app that wants to draw over everything else: each request looks harmless when you tap Allow, and most of us never look again. An app permissions cleanup is the fastest way to stop paying, and most of it takes minutes.

Do Apps Ask for More Than They Need?

In July 2025 a UK consumer test of 20 popular smartphone apps flagged the permissions it considers risky, and precise location, microphone and draw-over-apps stood out as the three to question first. The full study is on Which?'s own site.

Precise location matters most because it is more than a city. Once an app holds it, the app can tell which shop you walked into and which car park you left from. Most of the tested apps asked for it, which tells you the request is routine, not rare. Shopping apps play the same game on prices, as our fake festive discounts piece shows.

Draw-over-apps is the sleeper. It lets an app sit above the screen you are using, and nothing visible happens when you grant it, so nobody notices. Revoke it from any app that has no floating tool job, such as a chat head or a screen magnifier you actually use.

Microphone access needs the least thought. Or, more precisely, it needs the least argument. A recipe app has no reason to listen, yet it can ask. Ask one question per app: would it miss the microphone if it went quiet tomorrow? If the answer is no, revoke it. Pick your five most used apps and run that check on each, which takes under a minute apiece.

These four numbers come from Which?'s July 2025 study of 20 popular smartphone apps, and each one maps to a setting you can check yourself.

The first card is the one to act on. Precise location turns a grant into a running record of where you go, and one revoke ends it without uninstalling anything. Keep it only where a feature stops working without it, like turn-by-turn directions. A ride-booking app needs it while you book, not all day.

Which Grant Do You Cut in an App Permissions Cleanup?

Revoke a grant when the app's main job never needs it, and keep it only where a feature you actually use stops working without it, since the table below sorts the common cases so you can decide each one in seconds.

Read the table left to right: find your situation, then take the action in the middle. The right-hand column tells you what you give up, which is usually nothing you were using.

Decide which grant to check first on your own phone. The bars show how many of the 20 apps Which? tested asked for each grant in July 2025.

Can Revoking a Grant Break an App?

Revoking a grant does not uninstall the app, but it can stop one feature you rely on, such as maps or call alerts, so test before you move on. Change one grant at a time, open the feature, and only then revoke the next.

Some apps degrade quietly. A map might show a location dot that never moves, and a messaging app might refuse to send photos without storage access. Those failures look like bugs, so people blame the app and re-grant everything. The fix is patience, not an all-or-nothing switch. If you want the background to the consent prompts many apps now show, our piece on India's consent manager deadline explains where those prompts come from. The policy side of AI-made content is in our piece on India's AI labelling rules, which shows how slowly the rules move from paper to practice.

• Map and ride apps: keep location on While using the app.
• Call and voice apps: keep the microphone for the days you call through them.
• Shopping and game apps: revoke camera, microphone and draw-over-apps first.

This week, open your permissions list and revoke location and microphone from any app you have not used in the last month. Then check the list again on Sunday to confirm the changes stuck.