Not uncommon in Brazil to have an electric water heater installed on a shower head, sometimes with lightly covered wiring. Was gobsmacked when I first saw them. One even gave me a tingle when touching the faucet and I told the owner. :sweat-smile:
The floor of the tub was also at least 10" above the bathroom floor. I literally broke a rib trying to get out of the damn thing
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I had forgotten all about those!
Which leads to an idiotic situation where in Europe it's extremely common to have your washing machine in the bathroom, but in the UK everyone goes "oh no we can't have that it's extremely unsafe" while standing next to an electric shower fused at 32amps.
Tbf the building regulations are meant to make it somewhat safe, but I've personally seen dodgy work done by electricians where they wired a shower using a 16amp wire which obviously subsequently melted after some use.
I am well acquainted with throwing water on resistive heating elements from taking a lot of electric saunas, so electric instant hot water heaters don’t really scare me. The proximity of the current is irrelevant to me when just 30 mA will kill you.
Electric tank water heaters work on the same principle, a high resistance conductor encased in a ceramic insulator which is encased in metal.
So to be fair - until last year(or 2023?) you couldn't have them at all, then they changed the rules to say you can, but they have to be at least 3 metres away from the nearest bath or shower. For reference, my entire bathroom is 2.5m by 2m - and I suspect 99% of British bathrooms aren't much bigger than this. So in theory - you can. In practice....not so much.