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Comment by twodave | Hacker News Reader

I remember some showers I took in Rio that, to my surprise/dismay, required bringing a match along to light the water heater within the shower. That now seems tame by comparison.

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My flat in Czechia had a gas burning tankless water heater in the shower. Standard tub with a shower head and water heater directly on the wall.

The floor of the tub was also at least 10" above the bathroom floor. I literally broke a rib trying to get out of the damn thing

Those things were everywhere in the Netherlands when I was a child - 70's. I had one above the sink in the kitchen in my student apartment (half of a pigsty converted to human habitation, pigs in the other half, a thin wall in between - that's what you get when studying at an agricultural university and living on a farm) running off a propane tank in the garden. We had one in the kitchen and a bigger one in the bathroom, running off natural gas which the country had plenty of after the discovery of a large gas deposit in the northern Netherlands. There were no vents to the outside, the things just vented into the room. They're called 'geisers' (geysers) in Dutch.

Those would output absolutely blisteringly hot water as well. Almost boiling. As I recall they'd often also have the tap directly attached to them. We kept the pilot light on ours always lit, though I can totally see people turning them off fully when not in use for a bit. The fancy ones had a button to light them. The less fancy ones involved a match and a startle as the gas caught fire.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I had forgotten all about those!

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