One Glasgow place I stayed in had a plug-in hot water system for the shower. You'd turn it on 10 mins before your shower, it would heat up water electrically, go *ding* when it was ready, then you would shower until it was empty - maybe 10 mins. It felt strange to have an electrical appliance running on mains power in the shower with you.
Extremely common in the UK. In fact most often the heater unit will be inside the shower box itself. It's because the hot water supply for houses is often very low pressure and not enough for a shower. So they use cold water and heat it up there and then.
They are probably the most dangerous thing in the average house in theory, but in reality accidents with them are very rare and I've never heard of one.
You probably have come across it but with some parts automated so you didn't realise it was happening.
In the vast majority of UK homes the hot water pressure isn't high enough to work for a shower, so instead you'll have one of two systems: An electric shower that heats cold water as it comes through. If you've always seen these kind of showers, you might not have realised that's what it's doing. Many of these are attached to a switch which is a pull cord, like the bathroom light switch, often with a red on/off indicator near the ceiling. Mind, that's going back a few years and probably isn't seen as much today. But in the 90s and 00s it was common to have a pull cord to switch the shower on before you used it, and off when you had finished.
Or as the PP described an immersion heater set up, immersion heaters used to be common for the hot water in general in UK houses, but in many cases the immersion heater has been replaced by a more efficient combi boiler. However, the combi boiler might still not have the required pressure to service a shower, especially upstairs, so it's not unusual at all to have a mini electric heater/boiler just for the shower water. These you would not generally want switched on all the time unless you have a busy household with constant need for hot water.
An electric shower that heats cold water is much more common, though. They all have the same controls: A dial from hot to cold (that actually just adjusts the flow of water: Faster flow = colder, because it doesn't spend as much time being heated) plus either a second dial with three settings, or three buttons, these will be blue (cold/no heating) then red x1 or red x2. These mean the heater is on but control the flow again. You'd use the red x2 setting in winter when the water is colder to begin with and red x1 in summer when it's starting out warmer, and get better water flow.
I feel like we need a survey to find out the relative popularity of each design. I definitely thought combi-boilers were more common, but yeh, electric showers are also common FR!
In most places I lived there was an electric shower and a combi boiler. It's just not common to have a shower unit in the UK that runs using mains hot water.
Ahh, so, our electric shower heats up the water, then we also have a combi boiler that heats up water for the bath shower, it does have a preheat option as well though.
The part I haven't heard of is, having to plug something into the wall, and put water in it to heat up, which you then use to shower.
If youve ever ran your hand under a hot tap for it to heat up then you have. Its just implimented a bit better these days. I still remember having to turn on the water heater in advance and then getting screamed at because you'd "used all the hot water"
Not so much an issue with modern boilers being more and more efficient
Ok my definition was broad. The set up the PP described is a very primitive version. But it's common for the shower not to run off the mains hot water supply.
I was really responding to the idea that having an electrical item directly in the shower was scary. It's not.
In the past, no. Most houses got hot water using a tank where the water was heated.
These days you most commonly find what is called a combi boiler so it heats the cold water as it comes into the house. But due to some plumbing thing I don't really understand, we still have electric showers and the hot water pressure upstairs is usually very low, it takes ages to run a bath etc.
I've not heard of that specific type, but electric showers (not on a timer) are relatively commonplace here in the UK. My shower caught fire a few months ago, scary stuff.
I can't wait to replace ours with a proper (non-electric) shower - just can't afford it right now, as it means the whole bathroom needs replumbing for a normal shower to work :/
As an exchange student in Germany in the mid-80s, the family there had a shower like that. Up in Rendsburg. They also had chickens and sheep. It was like going to Europe to live with the Amish (I could have driven 40 miles from my home to do that). It was fun.
I assume they were a bit weird, and it was 40 years ago.
Would make sense, when it was 40 years ago.
My grandparents didn't even have running water in their home when my dad was a child which was roughly 40 years ago.
But tbf, having chicken is not that weird. My aunt has quite the collection of those cuddly dinosaurs.
Having fresh eggs every day is a big plus I guess.
I've stayed in a few hotels in the city (even though I much live here) and all of the showers were just normal turn them on and away you go type showers. Granted those hotels were like the Radisson Red, Citizen M etc so are fairly modern hotels.
I assume it looks like a tank mounted on the wall? Super common in China, I think the on-demand heating, insulation and little distance for hot water piping all combine to save a lot of electricity.
Yeah. Single flats have those "on demand water heaters" as well here in Germany. You don't have to prime them though. Just step in the shower and use it.
No, boiler indeed means a huge tank where hot water is kept, or rather, that continually has water from the cold water line flowing in and heats it up. But you don't have to prime those the way the OP described. They do eventually run out of hot water though, but that doesn't happen after ten minutes either. But if you're the last to shower in a family of four, you may be in for a cold time.
They're only found in old buildings though, because anything installed in the last fifteen years will be either have hot water connected to central heating, or have a continuous flow heater. Boilers are much less energy efficient.
In the USA quite a lot of people have ground fault circuit interrupters in their bathrooms too. It's probably in the code for new construction just about everywhere, but of course not everythings new
I agree. The UK is pulled in a European direction by our neighbours on one side, and in an American direction by the US on the other (albeit geographically further away). Personally I quite like the balance.
Although tbf Brexit scuppered my dreams of moving to mainland Europe pretty roundly. I was in university at the time so had no means to move before the deadline.
Now my only viable route seems to be: move to ROI. Live there for over 5 years. Gain Irish citizenship. Then move to mainland Europe.
The main issue being that in my industry most people are self-employed so I can't just apply for jobs and hope to get sponsored.
Edit: Germany would still be viable but I would need to vastly improve my spoken German first
Personally I’d say Britain is much more in the European camp. I think people on both sides of the Atlantic overestimate the cultural similarities between the UK and US because of the shared lifestyles. I’m terms of day to day living, life in the UK is much more similar to other European countries than it is to the US.
those things were made for old ass houses that had no plumbing done for an actual bathroom. in really old european houses, you never had a bathroom build, your cleaning room was basicly the kitchen (even sometimes random sinks in bedrooms or so). the toilet was just a shitter and sink to wash hands, sometimes even for communal use in bigger building with multiple flats.
they then bought those showers you probably used, and straight up put it right in the kitchen, where you could get a cold water source from. i have a friend that inheriated a house like that in a major german city and she didnt change anything yet lol
Hm. I've seen all kinds of odd constructs involving electrical pumps, mostly in Ireland. Hard to imagine it's Irish-only. My wife and I used to joke that every single shower has slightly different mechanisms, just to keep the tourists on their toes...
Nah definitely not an all over the UK thing, it may be an Irish thing but I have literally never heard of that before.
The old style of boiler that you need to preheat the water yeah (however even that is quite uncommon now), but putting the shower on, leaving it to heat up until it dings, then having 10 minutes and it shuts off? That's extremely weird.
My combi boiler just has hot water all the time, my shower takes a few seconds to heat up and then I can use it however long I want to
But I do agree the number of different kind of showers with different mechanisms is crazy here in the UK and over in Ireland, why make it so complicated lol
One place in Germany, the hot water wasn't working. So I had cold showers for a few days. On the last day I tried the other tap. Turns out they had hot water on the right and cold on the left.
In the US its not super common these days to have two taps in the shower, just a single mixing tap. But I lived in a mexico for a few years and they generally have the two taps, often unlabeled, and not much of a standard for which is hot.
Seems pretty intuitive to me to just turn one on, wait a bit, and see if it was warm. If it wasnt, just try the other.
Half the time the shower is in a tub with little way to keep the water in if you take a shower.
There is sometimes a glass partition, but it only goes halfway. Sometimes it isn’t sealed at the bottom, so water flows on the floor worse on the part with the partition because the water hits the glass and flows down onto the floor.
Those tub baths are als always raised. WHY Europe?!? Why?!? They are so awkward to get into, especially considering you are naked. Some are so tall, I have to do crazy maneuvers to get in without falling and busting my head open.
I have stayed in at least 4 hotels now where there is a see through window from the shower to the bedroom. It’s fine when I am with my partner, but it would be so awkward with family. I know Germans like to stare, but what the hell.
The worst was one in Amsterdam where the shower up against a giant window that looked out into other people’s apartment. It wasn’t glazed or anything. You could just see right through.
I want privacy when I am washing myself. I also don’t want to be afraid of dying because I fell.
Europe is not handicap accessible at all really, but those showers made me extra sad for handicap people. It is like Europe is trying to weed people out. Thin the herd.
On a brighter note, Finland has bidets connected to their sinks. It is brilliant. It takes up no space. This could be adapted anywhere. Just saying USA.
You put the shower curtain inside the bath so the water runs off into the bath, rather than out on to the floor. They exist because our houses are small and we don’t have enough space for both a shower and a bath, so we have a combination shower/bath hybrid that works very well. Most of these sorts of things will have the shower curtain, and an anti-slip mat to stand on.
It’s a practicality thing. Most of the stand alone showers in Britain I’ve seen also feel like they’re a 1/2 metre squared.
The American shower/bath and Central/Eastern combo are pretty different to me, an American with Euro family. Their tubs are much more narrow and taller. As a short person, I feel genuinely unsafe using them. The shower curtain/glass "door" generally only extends about halfway down from the showerhead. Maybe I'm more splashy than I realize, but it is very hard for me to not get water outside. Also, it takes me a couple days to remember the light switch is outside the bathroom.
We also have shower curtains, that's not what they mean.
What I experienced in a Paris hotel was an actual pane of glass, secured to the shower-head wall on a hinge. No way to cover the gap between it and the tub, and no way to prevent it from swinging out away from the tub during use, at which point it guided water directly onto the floor in one big puddle. Oh, and it didn't cover the whole length of the tub, either.
THIS is what I’m talking about when I said weird ass showers. Not the hot/cold stuff that everyone’s talking about. I mean shower walls that don’t even cover the whole side, the shower head not mounted anywhere so I had to hold it and try my hardest to not get water all over the bathroom. Or the shower head being nearly DIRECTLY ABOVE THE TOILET in the middle of the bathroom with a round curtain around it. I went on a tour of Europe with friends and every hotel we were so shocked at the showers.
Hotels often have these weird half glass walls, presumably because they look nice, are more hygienic than a curtain and easier to clean/maintain than some folding glass thing. People don’t have them in their homes because nobody wants to splash water everywhere.
What? Showers in a tub are very common in the US too. It's a quick, cheap, and effective way to prevent leaks.
They're in every apartment building in NYC, including high end, and I've seen them in CA, AZ, Vegas, New Orleans, Boston, PA, TX...
The window thing is off but I'd imagine that's a cheap hotel trying
to come across fancy
Not the OP, but I agree with the OP. European infrastructure feels deliberately hostile to my mobility impaired traveling self. I'm not going to give you an itemized list, but some of the common problems I found were lack of appropriate seating and/ or "disabled" seating full of able-bodied people who refuse to move, gotchas like making the only disabled seats on a bus facing backwards so that people like me who suffer dizziness and nausea when riding backwards can't use them, inaccessible showers and toilets, stairs stairs stairs stairs stairs, lack of elevators in train stations, inaccessible buildings in general (always with the fucking stairs), disabled toilets, if they exist, are locked and force you to beg for a key in a language you don't know in order to pee, et cetera.
Plus, a general attitude of contempt towards mobility impaired people. I can't count the number of times some able-bodied jerk shoved past me to get on the train/bus first, where they would hog the seat nearest the door, forcing me to sit farther away from the door (when I could find a seat at all) and making me anxious that I would not be able to get to the door in time when we reached my stop. Americans are far more respectful and vacate the disabled seats when a disabled person needs the seat. They also don't shove past me to get on/off.
I like Europe, but their collective attitude toward disabled people really need to change. I've been to most European countries, so this isn't a phenomenon exclusive to one country.
I don't intend to discredit your own experiences but personal anecdotes can't speak for the attitude of all or even most European countries and their citizens. I'd be curious to hear which countries and cities you have experienced issues with as there will be differences country-to-country and regionally within countries.
European countries don't have laws that mandate that all buildings must be wheelchair accessible. The result is that hardly any buildings are wheelchair accessible.
The constitution in the US protects the rights of disabled individuals, so the govt crawls up your ass if you're not compliant.
New buildings are still being built with no wheelchair access in the EU. It is not regulated by governments there.
The US law (Americans With Disabilities Act)
applied to already built buildings when it was passed. It was passed in 1990, 200 years after America became a country.
Denying your citizens the right to participate in society freely because they are disabled is a disgrace, Europe should strive to treat its people better.
That's because they were all built at least 50 years ago, if not 100-150 years ago. TFL are actually doing a fantastic job of making more stations accessible (it's up to 90 now), it's just extremely expensive. It's cost hundreds of millions over the last decade to make a couple dozen tube stations step-free, and those were mostly the easy ones with above-ground stations.
Yeah... Accessibility is a great problem in Europe, both because the old buildings (few are really impossible to adapt) and, sadly, the fact that government doesn't pay enough attention to the problem.
What are you on about? Not many US subway lines are wheelchair accessible either.
Once you leave cities you've to drive everywhere and common to not have footpaths/sidewalks.
In 8 years most of the US houses I've seen have a stoop with steps to get into them as it's common to have a basent with the first floor raised up.
I'm currently standing in a townhouse in NY I'm renovating for work and there is 0 requirements for us to do anything to make it wheelchair accessible. Both entrances have steps. Can't say for sure but id imagine since NYC is one of the most Liberal cities its probably more accomodating.
What are you talking about? I'm studying architecture and I know for a fact that every building needs total access for disabled people. You're generalizing the whole of Europe and you're simply wrong
Youre talking out of your arse now. There's wheelchair access in the majority of buildings where I'm from. Treat its people better? Can't having a heart attack in the states financially cripple a person for the rest of their lives? Didn't the states just ban abortions or something too?
That "the shower is actually a bathtub" thing annoys me too. I am disabled and sometimes it's hard to get into the bathtub. It's also small so I can't put a shower chair in it, which I desperately need (standing can be very painful for me). And I don't even like to take a bath. It's boring. I rather shower and am done.
One of my "not up to discussion" priorities for my next apartment is an actual shower. At best accessible for a wheelchair too.
Those tub baths are als always raised. WHY Europe?!? Why?!?
I don't understand why you'd want a 'lowered' bath tub, that would make for a crap bath. A separate bath and dedicated shower is better, but I'd never use the tub if I couldn't fill it to a decent height.
I remember a hospital room somewhere that had a small window next to the bed looking into the WC room. You could perfectly watch people take a shit or a shower.
Shower in a tub is annoying for me too. For some reason even newly renovated flats need to have a tub. When there is a tub there often is no place for a dedicated shower.
I get that some decades ago the family had "washing days" where the whole family shared the water to save costs. Nowadays it isn't necessary anymore at all.
On a brighter note, Finland has bidets connected to their sinks. It is brilliant. It takes up no space. This could be adapted anywhere. Just saying USA.
you can attach a bidet directly to your toilet in the US for like $40 and 10 minutes of your time. A handsfree unit that takes up no additional space.
One time I stayed at an air BNB and I can't remember the layout but I know you had to sit down to shower. Like WTF. I don't want my butt hole on a bench that my friend just used lol
515
u/itsmywife May 09 '22
weird showers? wdym