r/oddlyterrifying • u/ashsabre • 3d ago

Stealing electricity in Southeast Asia

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u/PNW35 3d ago

This reminds me of taking a shower in Honduras. You want hot water, you got to touch the two wires above the shower head together to get it.

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u/halpfulhinderance 3d ago

So like. It heats up the shower head and that warms the water as it’s coming out? That’s so inefficient

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u/equake 3d ago

Why inefficient?!?

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u/halpfulhinderance 3d ago edited 3d ago

It’s much more efficient to heat water up with a heating element inside an insulated container. That’s why we have water heaters. Trying to heat up a liquid as it’s flowing is… well the water is flowing per unit time and the heat is being transferred to each unit of water per unit time so you hit the inverse square rule. It’s exponentially less efficient than heating it in a tank. The shower head would have to be ridiculously hot to get even a little bit of temperature change in the water hitting you. Ntm it’s less surface area for the heat to transfer through, given that it’s a tiny shower head and not a coil. And it’s uninsulated and open to the air so it’s losing a lot of heat that way too, and the metal for the shower head isn’t as efficient a heating element as what you’d normally use…

TL;DR: The shower head would practically have to be glowing hot to get you a steamy shower, assuming the water is cold to begin with. And it would use a TONNE of electricity. This is all not even considering the safety concerns

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u/less_unique_username 3d ago

Any heater is 100% efficient in heating things. The only problem might be, it could be heating the wrong things. But what else, if not water, could it heat here?

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u/halpfulhinderance 3d ago

You are technically correct in terms of thermodynamics, but incorrect in terms of design lol. In this case we’re trying to heat each unit of water to a comfortable temperature, and spending more power to do it compared to a traditional water heater. Primarily because because the water needs to be heated a lot faster

Edit: Also, it would be losing heat to the air, as I mentioned. It’s normal for water to lose heat to the air (steam) but not so much for the heating element to do the same

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u/less_unique_username 3d ago

Just not seeing how heating something faster leads to higher losses. The losses in the wires are perhaps a little bit higher and that’s it? As for loss to the air, I doubt it’s a thing given that the heating elements are completely surrounded by moving water.