Thread: Thailand Water Heaters Bathroom & Kitchen

Bath and shower heaters are generally 2 different beasts in Thailand, 1, shower heaters tend to burn out the first time you use them to fill up a bath if they are the cheap crappy ones, and 2, shower heaters generally are turned on by a tap before the heater as they work on a pressure switching system, so onto bath and sink water heaters.

In Pattaya I have always used the Siemens water heaters, main reason being that 15 years ago they were the only brand name I knew that were actually available, they had others like National and some that I have never heard of, but so far all the water heaters I have had installed are most likely to outlive the the old gits whose bathrooms or kitchens they are installed in, the better Siemens ones are also 3 phase electric if you really want loads of hot water, sadly most houses and condos are on single phase electric, nowadays in Thailand most brand names are available here though now.

Installing a water heater you need to use table 4 cable, well the ones we use, this is bigger than normal mains plugs/outlets cables, ie you can get more electric down it, now I admit the cables aint as big as they use on the electric chair in the good 'ol US of A, but mixed with water it can quite easily do the same job as "'Ol Smokey" does, so earths are probably quite a good idea, ie a hard wired earth and an earth leakage breaker.

If you have say a 1 room condo you will find that normally the kitchen area backs onto the bathroom area, this is the perfect setting to use a single hot water heater for all your hot water outlets as there isn't far to run the copper pipes, also it's easy to shout at anyone that uses the hot water in the kitchen sink whilst you are having a shower, for houses a little more thought needs to be used for the placement of water heaters, the further away it is from say the shower outlet the longer it takes for the warm or hot water to reach what will be it's mean temperature, ie if it takes the water heater 10 seconds to reach the temperature it is set up at and then has to pump water through 5 meters of cold pipes to the shower it could be couple of minutes before it reaches its normal running temperature.

A picture of a water heater stolen from the net due to some unknown reason I have never bothered taking a picture of one myself.



So where to place your water heater? In this sink unit would be a good idea, as all this stuff is made to measure probably best to either have short drawers so the heater can be hidden behind them, don't really want it under the sink which is quite likely to develop a leak in the future and cover your expensive electrical heater in water, it really doesn't matter if it is a pain to get, I mean it aint going to be you who has to crawl into your sink counter to do any repairs etc that might need to be done in the future.




So what happens if the worst comes to the worse, ie your kitchen tap water gets blocked up and then the water heater stays on and gets hotter and hotter and hotter?

Well hopefully it won't be as bad as this water cooler explosion in Russia.