Hacker News Reader

Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

Extremely common in the UK too - you just have a 7.2kW feed going into your shower cabin, while regulations prohibit you from having any electrical sockets anywhere in the bathroom lol.

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.

View on HN

The UK doesn’t allow any receptacle circuits in a bathroom? Not even if they’re protected with an RCD? That’s a GFCI for Americans.

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.

>>The UK doesn’t allow any receptacle circuits in a bathroom? Not even if they’re protected with an RCD? That’s a GFCI for Americans.

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.

Splashes and wet hands are much riskier for receptacles than for a permanent and/or hidden connection. Not to mention hairdriers, space heaters, TVs etc falling into the bath. Pretty much everything smaller than a washing machine is bound to end up in there if the flex is long enough

Sure, but it's not like continental Europe has a higher rate of electrical accidents in bathrooms just because you can dry your hair in the bathroom - RCDs are a thing everywhere.

UK regs don't disallow hairdriers in the bathroom though. On the other hand, if EU regs do nothing to prevent plugging a socket from the bath, what are they even for?

Sounds like a instantaneous electric hot water heater. Quite common, in places like Philippines, that do not have cool/cold air temperatures, and less developed electricity supply.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com