Suicide shower head teardown

[ivan747]

How much does power cost in Brasil? 50cents a shower? it adds up fast and dwarfs the cost of those shower heaters.

It seems you are saving on water heaters but you should be saving with Solar?

Power costs have skyrocketed in the last 15 months: in my state (Minas Gerais), the total raise has been about 140% (in the last 15 months!). My electricity bill has become absurdly high, and we don't even turn the AC on anymore, unless in extremely hot nights. The wine cellar has been turned off. Not even the microwave stays constantly plugged to mains. We connect it, use, disconnect. The electric coffee machine has been retired: we're only using the gas stove now. Considering our power consumption in my home, we're consuming about 50% less than Jan/2015, and yet our electricity bill is a lot higher.

I estimate that a 10min shower might cost between .75 to 1 USD.

Alternate energy has seen a hige increase in acceptance since 2014. Until then electricity was really cheap, so nobody even cared about solar panels. Nowadays they are becoming more and more omnipresent, specially in high-income areas.

Low-income areas either have a discount on the bill if they stay below a certain power consumption or they just steal electricity from the electricity company (that is called "gato"). Neverthless, solar power is still expensive for most people.

On a side note, and without getting into a political argument, but f*ck our corrupt, socialist government, elected by the uneducated and ignorant. A day doesn't go by when my wife and I don't plan on leaving Brazil and move to Australia, where her sister lives (and is married to a very nice Aussie fellow).

Same thing over here, except for the 140% increase. Electricity is not very cheap, but it's manageable. We switched to a gas heater because it's cheaper. We could afford more efficient appliances, so we replaced the 20 year old fridge with something much more efficient, for example. I'd like to have solar when I settle down. Prices should be low by then.

Gas prices never went down, even though oil prices were down by a lot last year.

[ivan747]

This is certainly more expensive than 12 Euros.

No doubt not paid for by the local home owners.

I any event there is no need to heat the water for showers in hot countries.

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He's right. We're just spoiled.

[tszaboo]

I don't think the US education system is necessarily better in this regard. Most people here don't see anything wrong with this:
and knowledge of what is and isn't safe doesn't seem to be much better among the trades.

Yes. The first day I was in the US, I was shocked by the socket. I mean shocked by the quality, the accessibility to the metals, and the general dodgyness. Like it came from some 50s retro movie. Looks like it was designed by the USB-IF.

[CatalinaWOW]

I don't think the US education system is necessarily better in this regard. Most people here don't see anything wrong with this:
and knowledge of what is and isn't safe doesn't seem to be much better among the trades.

Yes. The first day I was in the US, I was shocked by the socket. I mean shocked by the quality, the accessibility to the metals, and the general dodgyness. Like it came from some 50s retro movie. Looks like it was designed by the USB-IF.

While these are valid comments, they really aren't a leading safety problem here. 

The bigger electrical related safety problem is fires caused by putting too many loads on the socket/cord/extension cord.  No amount of safety features in the socket/plug would change that.  The circuit breaker or fuze can't solve the problem, it requires some understanding that there are limits to performance, and buying the cheapest 24 gauge extension cord you can find and then plugging the coffee pot and microwave into it is not a good idea.

The same thing also partially applies to your comments.  If you ignore fundamental design flaws in the socket/plug you still can find high quality implementations and low quality implementations.  Guess which ones cost more (and are more often used by electricians), and which cost less (and are installed by homeowners and contractors who don't plan to operate an ongoing business)?  I am sure that something of the same problem exists with the British and European designs, though your regulatory agencies may be stricter than ours.

[Zero999]

The bigger electrical related safety problem is fires caused by putting too many loads on the socket/cord/extension cord.  No amount of safety features in the socket/plug would change that.  The circuit breaker or fuze can't solve the problem, it requires some understanding that there are limits to performance, and buying the cheapest 24 gauge extension cord you can find and then plugging the coffee pot and microwave into it is not a good idea.

This can be a problem where ever you go, to some extent.

In the UK it's mitigated by not allowing extension leads with cable rated to anything less than 13A and having a plug top fuse. Of course this doesn't stop stupid people coiling the cable or cheap dodgy extension leads from China.

[raspberrypi]

I used to own two of these ...things... They are really crap and I never really trusted them. This was before I got into electronics, living with my parents so we didn't know much better. None of the two models that were installed had the earth wire installed by an electrician (due to the electricians own incompetence, we weren't being cheap or anything like that). Not that it would matter over time... look at the video. We no longer have those deathtraps. Good riddance. They did give the tingling sensation the guy describes.

Whats sad here in America is that they are trying to get rid of these "job killing" regulations. We will be a third world country here soon enough. Really sad to think how many poor people die just because of laziness and greed, and no education to know that its unsafe.