Hot water heater.

[skodajag]

Do you think this would pass health and safety?

[turretslug]

Eek! I wonder how long that lasted on the market? Point 5 in the blurb seems like a sort of decidedly incidental concern for earth continuity. It would be interesting to see one for real, if only as an illustration of why decades of safety regulations are a Good Thing. There may not be many left around though, possibly a substantial number of owners either got a bad belt, or an electrically savvy relative blanched with horror and binned it.

An interesting historical find, nonetheless.

[skodajag]

Yes, I wasn't too sure of just how dodgy it was but did think it seemed the next best thing to an electric stove on the side of the bath....

[Boater Sam]

There is a current Shower heater common in the far east which is oh too similar to this heater!
Its common to find a shower heater with single insulated wires from a socket ( if you are lucky ) in the shower room. Usually no earth, in the Philippines there is no earth anywhere unless you drive a spike in the ground. RCD is a rarity. Isolation switches never.
Strangely many of the heaters are made in England, models you never see here though.

[G6Tanuki]

Central America still has a horrifying range of ~~electric shower-heads~~ as searching "suicide shower" images on the likes of Google will show.

As a sensible "Gringo" I always avoided these - even if it meant washing outside with a bucket-full of water. I'm still alive to tell the tale.

[TonyDuell]

Around 1980 I remember seeing a small (travel?) steam iron in a department store in England. You filled it with water and added one 'measure' of common salt. Yes, inside the plastic housing were 2 electrodes connected to the mains. That was it.

If fed from an isolating transformer I would think such heaters were reasonably safe. And they can't overheat if they boil dry (if the water evaporates, the circuit is opened). But fed from the mains (one side earthed)? No thanks.

[60 oldjohn]

Originally Posted by skodajag

Do you think this would pass health and safety?

Wow! I want one, but only as an ornament.


John.

[Hartley118]

When visiting our daughter who was living in Mexico City, she complained of 'tingles' from the electric shower in her apartment. I found that the live and neutral were reversed, rendering the water live as it exited the shower head.

I corrected the wiring, but remained suspicious of the whole electrical installation in that building.

Martin

[Heatercathodeshort]

Unbelievable! There were huge current water heaters installed in blocks of 1930s 'Mansion Flats' to supply communal hot water. I have some pictures somewhere, they look like Bessemer converters! John.

[Refugee]

The "posh" version of that shower head has an earth wire trailing in the water as it flows to the spray part of the head.

[Oliver35]

Where can I get one? As regards the modern Eastern shower heads,there's a Scotsman on YouTube who did a strip down video on one of them. As Refugee commented, the live water is 'earthed' at a couple of points ( I wouldn't care to say how effectively) by a bare copper wire poking into the stream. What happens when it oxidises, however, is another matter..

Oliver

[McMurdo]

the little boiler appears to earth its water through the chain that goes around the tap. But no thankyou!

[OscarFoxtrot]

"use on power points only"

because running electrode heaters through a bayonet adapter in the bathroom might be even more dodgy than ... having a power point in the bathroom?

[Dai Corner]

Originally Posted by Oliver35

As regards the modern Eastern shower heads,there's a Scotsman on YouTube who did a strip down video on one of them.

The Scotsman you have in mind is probably Big Clive who describes them as 'suicide showers'
https://youtu.be/cNjA0aee07k

[Herald1360]

Originally Posted by OscarFoxtrot

"use on power points only"

because running electrode heaters through a bayonet adapter in the bathroom might be even more dodgy than ... having a power point in the bathroom?

More likely the heater would blow a lighting circuit fuse.

The whole shebang would be safe enough in a modern house- it would simply trip the RCD.

[Radio Wrangler]

I was less than charmed when I found out that the heating element in some UK electric showers wasn't insulated!

Three times the power of a normal immersion heater in a small box.....

David

[Phil G4SPZ]

What a fascinating device, and probably perfectly safe if you kept your skin out of the water stream! I wonder if there's one in a museum somewhere? About as safe as the well-known Flueless Gas Bath.

[Brigham]

Is anyone interested in how this device works? I'm more inclined towards that aspect of early electrical technology, than in the fact that it is now obsolete.
My first girlfriend thought Laurel and Hardy films hilarious, because of the 'funny old cars'.

[ms660]

The advert claims no elements to go wrong.

Lawrence.

[Lloyd 1985]

It's probably just a coil of thick copper wire inside it connected across the mains!

Things haven't really changed much, the average electric shower is pretty much one of these in a box with a few safety features (that work when they want to!). I don't trust electric showers much now, I've had 3 blow up in spectacular fashion whilst I was using them, and only 1 actually made the circuit breaker trip! One unit had a heater element fail on a way that firstly made the water coming out of it smell really strongly of rotten egg shortly before a loud pop inside it which tripped the breaker. I did an autopsy on it to find the element had actually split open, and the live internal coil was exposed to the water! Our old house didn't have an RCD, so the shower continued to operate until it shorted out enough to trip the breaker.

It would be good to find one of these water heaters still in existence! I could do with something like it for the sink in my workshop...

Regards,
Lloyd