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Back when I was younger, showers were a cheap
electrical
afterthought mounted somewhere above a bath. They
weren't very good at being showers, especially in winter,
but at least they had a head on the end of a hose that
could be moved around to spray the shower walls down
when cleaning.
Nowadays,
all the showers I encounter are more
deliberate
built-in systems attached to pleasingly robust heat
sources.
The downside is that after spraying down the walls with
your shower cleaner of choice, giving it a bit of a scrub
and
leaving it for the recommended 15-238.2 minutes,
there's
no easy way of rinsing off the walls anymore. Sure you
can
get in there with wet cloths, but you face the choice of
bringing dirt into a freshly cleaned bath with shoes, or
dissolving your feet in shower cleaner. So a solution, or
two, is needed.
The first, is a simple device that clips onto the underside
of the shower head and with a rotating propeller-type
arrangement, turns the shower into an inverted garden
sprinkler, splashing fresh clean water to all corners of
the
enclosure.
A further improvement on this would include a reservoir
above the shower head that could be filled with shower
cleaner (Alkaline w/bleach for mold/slime, acid with
EDTA
for calcium/magnesium deposits, use in that order, a
little
biological laundry detergent is good at digesting hair in
the drain*). Turn
on, sprinkler sprays down the walls with water + trickle
of
concentrated cleaner. Wait, turn back on, cleaner is
exhausted and rinsing begins.
*unless it's covered in silicones from conditioner. You're
on you're own there.
The shower configuration in question
https://www.homedep...Lw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
[bs0u0155, Feb 18 2021]
Highly recommended.
https://www.amazon....-610949888556&psc=1
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Feb 19 2021]
(?) Machine gun powered consumer electronics
[pocmloc, Feb 20 2021]
Double the Goodness
https://www.reddit....pp&utm_source=share
[AusCan531, Feb 20 2021]
[link]
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Sheer geniosity. It might even work. Have a [+]. |
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Only put the cleaner at the bottom? |
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Yeah, maybe Mr. Baked, but they wouldn't be as esoteric or as
cool as a garden hose like sprayer invented by a halfbaker. |
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Umm, "electrical" afterthought? Plumbing afterthought,
shirley?
But a good idea, too. |
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In the UK, it's quite common to have a fixed head
main shower and a flexible pipe hand held shower
with a simple diverter. American plumbing is quite
primitive, to match their electrics. (note mess
Texas is currently in because of that) |
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That's a bit unfair, [xen]. |
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My understanding is that Texas' current difficulties arise from a
combination of factors: |
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1. Very unexpected weather
2. Building houses without insulation (which, in more normal
conditions, would also help with A/C loads)
3. Rugged independence, so that their transmission network
cannot tap into other states' resources for help
4. Embarking on a transition to renewables without enough
storage and/or "peaker" capacity. (There's an inverse correlation
between the amount of storage and peaker capacity you need
and the geographical distribution of the renewable assets you
can draw on - see #3). |
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None of these things indicates primitive electrics as such. |
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//Only put the cleaner at the bottom?// |
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I wanted a way to meter it in slowly, dripping through a
narrow orifice seemed the way to go for simplicity. |
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//Handheld showerhead/hose attachments are a pretty
cheap retrofit to just about any "fixed" showerhead.// |
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Not possible if the shower is built into the wall, however. |
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//Umm, "electrical" afterthought? Plumbing afterthought,
shirley?// |
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Well, they're an electrical plumbing afterthought. They're
quite an effective torture device also, they essentially
have a fixed output heating coil, say 11kW, and the
temperature regulation is achieved by restricting the
flow, so in winter you get colder input and the
compensation is achieved by providing a miserable
trickle. Then, someone turns on a tap. The pressure drops
and the water in the heating coil starts to boil. The
manufacturers were correctly cautious about letting
superheated water flow out of their product onto an
unsuspecting human, so, it cuts the heater immediately.
The net result being that the shower turns ice cold
immediately. |
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//n the UK, it's quite common to have a fixed head main
shower and a flexible pipe hand held shower with a
simple diverter.// That is probably the best arrangement. |
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//American plumbing is quite primitive// |
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You know, they don't have draining boards. It's barbaric. |
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//to match their electrics.// |
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This is something of a mixed blessing. You can get away
with almost anything as satisfactory wiring, that scene
where Mr Bean rams bare wires into a plug and gives it a
twist, is practically code here. But because their electrics
are so anaemic, there's hidden benefits, cheap electric
showers have never been a thing & electric hand dryers in
public bathrooms are rare. |
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As a downside, it takes far too long to boil a kettle. I
wonder, if I got a 220V outlet installed I could use a 3kW
UK kettle... it's just a resistive heating element, so
shouldn't be sensitive to the switch from single phase to
two phase, but it's not the sort of thing you want to
amateurishly dabble in. |
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//1. Very unexpected weather// Fair enough |
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//2. Building houses without insulation (which, in more
normal conditions, would also help with A/C loads).// |
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Insulation is communist, and, so expensive for a 66,574 sq
ft starter home it would cut into the pool budget. |
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//3. Rugged independence, so that their transmission
network cannot tap into other states' resources for help// |
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This is dumb, you can isolate the grid and have DC
interconnects like UK-France and those in Scandinavia.
You get to use the interconnect to average out peaks and
troughs in demand, even better the western neighbor
states are in a different time zone. Plus you can sell your
excess. |
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//4. Embarking on a transition to renewables without
enough storage and/or "peaker" capacity. // |
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Texans store plenty of energy, in a distributed chemical
form, protected in individual brass casings. Someone just
needs to invent a generator that runs on thirty-aught-six. |
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//Can’t even picture what you’re describing.// |
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Well, it would be weird looking to attach anything to the
end of the pipe. So much so as to cause a domestic
disturbance if attempted, and therefore impossible. |
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We have been upgrading every shower here, (for exactly the reasons you mention), to hand-held sprayers which mount for hands free showering. [link] |
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They attach easily to your existing shower spout and don't look bad at all. About five minutes or so to swap one out. |
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//Someone just needs to invent a generator that runs on thirty-
aught-six.// |
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I'm pretty sure that has been proposed before on this site. |
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If the propellant charge in one cartridge yields about one
kilojoule, then firing one round per second gives you a
theoretical maximum of one kilowatt. So, given a well- tuned
generator of the type proposed, a properly second- amended
Texan might be able to run a bar heater for half an hour. Maybe.
A lot less than one night, in any case. |
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Ah, you need the 30mm model. |
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//I'm pretty sure that has been proposed before on this site.// et viola! |
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Someone has an idea that's twice as good. [link] |
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^But can they cash that pressure cheque? |
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