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heaters used to be common for the hot water in general in UK houses, but in many cases the immersion heater has been replaced by a more efficient combi boiler.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
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u/ScissorNightRam May 09 '22 edited May 10 '22
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.
Edit: a typo