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Dolphin shower installed in 2000.

Sparkingchip
d35ee5eac4f417f1de1dffee148404bb-huge-img-20210928-wa0001.jpg

 

A photo from a plumber of a twenty one year old Dolphin shower he is replacing, he wants to know what the black wire is for. 

My first thought was it's for a waste pump, but he cannot see one and a watering can full of water ran away down the waste. 

There's no sign of an extractor fan either, so I said terminated it and leave it in the enclosure. 

Anyone aware of something we have missed?

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    Apart from the RCD difficulty, (and being unsuited to DC mains) having a bare hot wire element in the water is perfectly OK - assuming the water not so mineralised as to be undrinkable it will also not be conductive enough to need much of a water column to keep the leakage currents to a manageable level. Very common in South America to find the bare element inside a fixed shower head so the isolation column is actually the stream of droplets from the shower, not a plastic pipe.

    Such designs can be much more compact relative to the now ubiquitous kettle-element design where the hotwire is mineral insulated inside a metal tube. Also as the wire only gets to 100C, unlike inside the centre of the mineral insulation, and does not have a jacket to fail, they can also be more reliable in the right sort of water hardness.

    No idea about that extra wiring though.

    Mike

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