exactly. and if professing his undying love to it while softly caressing it didn’t turn it on, he could always just try the switch.
Twin tubs Cialis style might be more prudent.
Yes.
Once.
No. Your space heater would become broken. You don’t want to break your space heater do you?
I just wish to point out:
- I never said I was going to do this. I just wondered sbout the GFCI.
- On reflection, and in consideration of some of the most-recent replies, it occurs to me to point out that a space heater is a sun.
Ah well, thank you all.
well that took a weird turn,
my recommendation remains the same though.
i do not recommend you throw your son in the tub with you.
- seriously though, who ever calls a space heater a sun? or the sun a space heater?
A couple of things occur to me not mentioned above.
The GFCI depends upon there being a ground current to unbalance the nominal current path. If your heater was double insulated, and the bath constructed of plastic with plastic water and inlet pipes, there will be no ground path. Basically your heater could be immersed in the bath and act as nothing different to an old style electric kettle (those with an exposed wire heater.)
I vaguely remember an earlier thread where a similar question was asked, and the question of the actual electric field in water around the heating element came up. The answer is likely that if you were too close to the element there would be a field in the water of enough strength that the current through you would be fatal - and the GFCI would not trip.
The time span of the shock before the breaker drops as noted above may involve a bit of luck. A hit to the heart at just the wrong moment in the cycle may be enough to stop it when a moment earlier or later may just be very unpleasant. But the amount of current that would pass through you with no GFCI in the way would not just be stopping your heart, but very likely irrecoverably trashing a whole range of electrochemical processes in your body and eventually cooking you. There is no coming back from this level of electrocution.
Unless you are in a Groundhog’s Day situation. In that case, you might wish to try a multi-slice toaster.
a further reason why someone wouldn’t want to bathe with their heater is, even if it’s wired properly, it might not work from having been exposed to power surges, especially or typically those from lightning strikes.
“In addition, GFCI protection devices fail at times, leaving the switching contacts closed and allowing the device to continue to provide power without protection. According to a 1999 study by ( One of our Association Competitors ), 21% of GFCI circuit breakers and 19% of GFCI receptacles inspected didn’t provide protection, leaving the energized circuit unprotected. In most cases, damage to the internal transient voltage surge protectors (metal-oxide varistors) that protect the GFCI sensing circuit were responsible for the failures of the protection devices. In areas of high lightning activity, such as southwest Florida, the failure rate for GFCI circuit breakers and receptacles was over 50%!”
that’s from an article written by mike Holt.
http://www.ecmweb.com/basics/how-gfcis-work
the takeaway from that is that just pressing the test/reset buttons is only part of testing them. plugging something into the outlet, while it’s tripped, to see if the receptacle is still live is the important part.
When I was a kid and our family visited scenic overlooks at places like the Grand Canyon, my dad always warned me not to lean against the railings. Similar to GFCI, they’re nice as a backstop against the occasional “oops”, but since you never know just what they’ve been through or whether they’ll hold up when tested, it’s probably smart not to trust your life to them unless there’s no other choice.