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Old 10-21-2007, 06:31 AM   #1
TheWills
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Default electric showers

ok this is for those of you heading off to S.E.A. or Africa, maybe even S.A.
Electric fucing showers, I have such a beef with them. Like they are awesome cause they give you warm water when normaly there is no warm water to be found, but damn!! Ok so I got a couple tips!
1. IF you find a place where you can crank the heat on full blast and it stays warm well, thats awesome I would stay there!

2. Most of the time though your gonna have to turn it just a teensy bit so water just starts trickling out becuase if you blast it, the water moves to fast through the head for it to be heated and its gonna be cold. So shitty!

3. Keep you head away from the shower head, there has been several times I got a jolt cause my hair touched a shady electric shower head and the current went right down through my hair and into my brain, it made me look like this in the shower

4. same goes for touching it with your hands, oh and dont touch the wires sticking out everywhere eaither, dont even go close with wet hands....I know most of your are like well duhh, but it happens, trust!

ok other then that, love them and hate them as much as I do.
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Old 10-21-2007, 07:32 AM   #2
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Love the "suicide showers", good times. :D
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Old 10-21-2007, 09:54 AM   #3
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wow that sounds pretty safe! anywhere that can send an electric jolt through your head is safe in my book... electricity, wires, and water... excelent combination.
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Old 10-21-2007, 11:42 AM   #4
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wow that sounds pretty safe! anywhere that can send an electric jolt through your head is safe in my book... electricity, wires, and water... excelent combination.

I took this in Peru earlier this year. Mainly to show to my dad, who's an architect, and ask "is this up to code?"





At least they use a circuit breaker

But they really do suck overall, you can only let it give the slightest trickle to get it luke warm, and if your hotel isn't heated and its cold the freezing air plus luke warm water spitting on you is like torture. I don't need much, but I barely function as a human without a warm shower in the morning.
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Old 10-21-2007, 02:58 PM   #5
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yeah, those things usually don't work too well . . . in fact I gave up after a while. Plus, it was so damn hot when I was there that a cold shower was nice anyways.
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Old 10-21-2007, 04:15 PM   #6
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hey at least there's a dish for your soap!
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Old 10-21-2007, 04:21 PM   #7
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So what was the answer to your question? IS it up to code?
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Old 10-21-2007, 04:41 PM   #8
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That is really awesome I didn't even know those excisted. I don't know how i would feel about taking a shower with the possabilty of glowing in th edark afterward
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Old 10-21-2007, 04:41 PM   #9
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yeah right, there's probably a hundred things wrong with that picture, I'd be surprised if no ones been killed yet.

just for general knowledge circuit breakers only trip on dead shorts or more than the breaker is rated for, your body wont do that, so you get shocked until you can let go of the wires or draw more than the breaker is rated at which is usually 15-30amps, when it only takes milliamp to kill you. thats a scary picture.
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Old 10-21-2007, 04:59 PM   #10
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heh, well I meant to show it to him as a joke...you can always count on an architect be in some perfectly normal place and say "hmm, this railing appears to be violating section 403-b subsection 12 of the building code which CLEARLY states that blah blah blah"

So that hideous picture might give them nightmares :D

Anyway, my guess is that the breaker is there so that they can cut the power to safely remove any bodies that pile up. This kind of rig is actually pretty common down there, the guidebooks even all mention it and say that you might get a brief shock but it usually doesn't kill people

Between the risk of electrocution death and not having a shower, I will choose the shower.
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Old 10-21-2007, 05:07 PM   #11
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Ah yes, I got electrocuted by many of those in Central and South America. Damn they hurt.
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Old 10-21-2007, 05:31 PM   #12
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guess I got luck, never got shocked
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Old 10-21-2007, 05:46 PM   #13
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Me neither. But I never ever touched the shower heads.
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Old 10-21-2007, 07:19 PM   #14
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^That is quite relevant. H2O doesn't conduct electricity. Now I know what you are thinking... but if we had pure H2O (deionized free of impurties) you could drop a toaster into your bathtub and be fine.

If you touch the showerhead, you can end up the providing a path to ground. As Kevin said, that won't trip the breaker necessarily (they call it a "high impedance fault")

Fortunately our skin is quite resistive

All that electrical theory aside, I would be nervous about showering there.

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Old 10-21-2007, 08:48 PM   #15
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All that electrical theory aside, I would be nervous about showering there.

--Joey
Oh, that's all part of the fun! Who couldn't use an extra boost anyways?
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Old 10-22-2007, 01:27 AM   #16
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Quote:
3. Keep you head away from the shower head, there has been several times I got a jolt cause my hair touched a shady electric shower head and the current went right down through my hair and into my brain, it made me look like this in the shower
It gets you going in the morning though. Nothing like a good hair raiser to get rid of the sleepy head.

Electric showers are quite common in Ireland (I have had them in all my last rentals) but they look nothing like that one in the picture. I've had ones that are either Extremely hot or extremely cold with no inbetween. My current one's working fine though.
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Old 10-22-2007, 07:18 AM   #17
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Electric showers are quite common in Ireland...
I was going to say... I've never seen anything that ghetto, but I spent about a week in Northern Ireland and all the showers were electric. Of course I never saw any hanging wires or got shocked by it, but that was still a first.
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Old 10-22-2007, 07:54 AM   #18
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I had never actually heard of this! Are you guy just goofing around or is the probability of feeling the electricity go through you an actual fact? Casue i can tolerate a lot of things, but I would be soooo scared of taking a shower there! I' rather clean up with a garden hose!!
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Old 10-22-2007, 08:29 AM   #19
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^ I think being a girl it wouldnt be as bad because we're usually much shorter than guys so the chances of out hair hitting the showerhead wre much less likely. See? Being short has it's benefits....

Of course I'm assuming you're not 6ft from your pics...if you are...well, good luck
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Old 10-22-2007, 04:40 PM   #20
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Quote:
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I had never actually heard of this! Are you guy just goofing around or is the probability of feeling the electricity go through you an actual fact? Casue i can tolerate a lot of things, but I would be soooo scared of taking a shower there! I' rather clean up with a garden hose!!
No, no goofing around here, you can (and probably will) actually get electrocuted by these things. Some of them have metal levers on the actual shower head to turn them on. As metal conducts electricity they wrap the levers in electrical tape to avoid electrocution. Unfortunately, sometimes they miss a little bit of lever here and there. So, when you go to turn the shower off with your wet hands - ZAP. Sure does wake you up in the morning.

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^ I think being a girl it wouldnt be as bad because we're usually much shorter than guys so the chances of out hair hitting the showerhead wre much less likely. See? Being short has it's benefits....
Unfortunately, this doesn't help. I'm only 5'6" and I definately had my fair share of electrical moments.
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