I haven't tracked the cellphone network status continuously, but here in Buenos Aires, I had a VoIP call from 8:30 to 9:00 which worked fine. Until it didn't, at about 9:00, but that's par for the course with fucking Movistar. I was using cellphone data because the power was out in the house. I didn't realize it was out in the entire country.
Here in Argentina, municipal water is totally reliable (I've never heard of a water service loss due to a power outage), but the pressure in the pipes is so low that every individual house has a pump to raise the water into a rooftop tank. These pumps are invariably electric and powered from either the grid or, on the frequent occasions that doesn't work, a generator. Municipal water typically has service losses a few times a year, but not due to blackouts.
Gas stoves are far more common in Argentina than electric stoves, although my apartment has an electric stove, which has a short which electrifies the stainless-steel surface of the stove when it's turned on. Most people in and near the capital run their gas stoves and on-demand hot-water heaters from public-utility natural gas, supplied by local monopolies (state-owned in some cases). Propane cylinders are common in less-populated areas and in houses where the gas piping has been disconnected from the public utility, usually due to billing disputes or safety concerns.
Over the last few years, the utilities have been sandbagging gas reconnections after disconnections due to safety concerns, often allowing them to leave unprofitable customers disconnected for years at a time once someone has called in a gas leak, while they wait for the government price controls (which have fallen far behind our absurd levels of inflation) to be loosened, making those customers' business profitable again. This has been a significant reason for new installations of electrical cooking and hot-water-heating appliances. A court recently ruled against this practice, and so gas reconnections have been sped up lately.
Uruguay has much less use of natural gas, for regulatory reasons: gas appliances can only be installed indoors if the room in which they are installed has a window to the outside that cannot be closed, thus removing the risk of explosions in the case of a gas leak. Consequently in Uruguay gas stoves are almost unheard of, and nearly all cooking is electric. Many hot-water heaters in Uruguay are still the gas-powered tankless type that is nearly universal in Argentina, though. They're just installed outdoors.
(Actually, I'm not sure if the above information about Uruguay applies outside of Montevideo.)
Not OP, but deeply interesting to me and especially so as I travel around South America.
I am completely fascinated by the home infrastructure choices in different parts of the world. I'm currently in Sao Paulo and the hot water setup is a little scary. There's no hot water reserve or hot water plumbing at all.
The only hot water source is in the shower. It's heated electrically in real time by a 5000W appliance that sits just above the shower head. The only way to change water temperature is by turning a knob on the appliance. In homes with bad grounding, this results in shocks often enough that my hosts have shown me Brazilian memes about it.
Yeah, electric showers are common in much of Latin America. In theory you could build them to be safe, but often they aren't. I showered with a tank-based electric shower today: you fill the tank, plug it in until it's hot, unplug it, step underneath, and open the valve. This arrangement has less risk of electrical shock, but it's far less convenient. Because the power was out, I filled it with hot water from the tankless gas heater, but it was able to cool enough in the process that it was more like a lukewarm shower than a hot one.
Many of the showers in Scotland are electric too, but they look much more modern and safe than the Asian and South American ones I've seen on the internet.
The difference is that in Scotland and Europe, it’s just one or two insulated heating elements that the water flows past. There are numerous safeties, overheat protectors, usually an RCD - in short, you’d be very unlucky to get a shock.
In South America, I’ve seen two types. One: an element, but it’s uninsulated and has no safety features. This is usually operated by a water pressure switch and operates by heating a thin resistive element up. High danger of faults to earth (you’re earth).
The other kind has me rather gobsmacked - the water is the element. The idea is to just pump in enough juice that the water starts to flash boil, and forms a plasma channel that then heats the surrounding water. Ostensibly safe, if earthed, but I really disliked the 60hz skin tingle - later discovered that they’d hooked earth up to the third phase in that house, when I plugged my laptop in. Metal case, leg, funky chicken. I guess the shower is reliant on skin effect to not kill you.
There’s a really great YouTuber who is forever tearing domestic appliances apart - it’s actually quite amazing how some stuff is built, both in a good way and a bad way.
> In theory you could build them to be safe, but often they aren't. I showered with a tank-based electric shower today: you fill the tank, plug it in until it's hot, unplug it, step underneath, and open the valve.
Do any homes have things set up like most homes in the United States - that is, a central water heater of 40 gallons or more that supplies all taps in the house?
Something else we have here, but aren't as common, are "instant on" heaters; they come in two fashions:
1) Tankless - basically similar to the "electric showerhead", except much higher wattage and installed usually below the sink for both sink and shower usage (if in a bathroom). Water flows in and thru a very tiny holding tank, is rapidly heated, then passed to the tap.
2) Recirculation - in this system, the hot water side of things is basically connected in a loop fashion to the main water heater, and is circulated with a pump. The main water heater, IIRC, can also be smaller. The lines are also all insulated. Hot water is circulated around, turn it on, there it is.
In the usual system, though, you turn on a tap and wait for it to "warm up"; our American wastefulness in action I guess (but technically, at least in most non-rural areas, that water goes down the drain and into the sewer system, where it is taken back to the water purification plant, and is essentially turned back into drinking water - while it doesn't all return, due to evaporation, leaks, etc - the majority I would surmise does, so while still wasteful, it isn't as terrible as you might imagine - but you do still have to pay for that extra water, which is where it does hit ya).
I live in a shitty new apartment building without gas (not the one with the tank-based electric shower I mentioned above) and there's a central water heater in the basement for the entire building. Like all the other heating devices in the building, it is electric. I think it's about 2000 liters ("528 gallons" in medieval units). I don't know if it's equipped with a recirculation system, but the basement is about 10 meters below my apartment ("33 feet" in medieval units), and it sure doesn't seem like I have to wait for hot water to come up from the basement when I turn the hot water on, so possibly.
Most US cities discharge their treated sewage into bodies of water, allowing it to evaporate from the ocean before entering a potable-water plant. Perhaps yours is an exception?
> I'm currently in Sao Paulo and the hot water setup is a little scary. There's no hot water reserve or hot water plumbing at all.
While that's a common setup, some homes have instead a "boiler" which is a large water tank heated by a electric resistance. The disadvantage is that, once you've used up all the hot water, it takes a long time to heat up again; electric shower heads are instant. Another common setup is a gas-powered heater; I never liked these, since they're dangerous (you have to be very careful to always leave the window open while they're operating, and always be mindful of leaks). Sometimes a home has more than one setup at the same time (like having the gas-powered heater for the kitchen and one service bathroom, while the main bathrooms are on a boiler or use electric shower heads).
> In homes with bad grounding
Or no grounding; I live in a relatively modern building (~30 years old) which predates the newer three-pin power plugs, and all sockets have no ground. I suppose, though I'm not certain, that the power panel for the apartment has no ground wire, with the neutral being connected to the ground only near the meter in the ground floor.
5000W seems like a very low power draw for heating on the spot. Heating water requires about 4000W per degree Celsius for a flow rate of 1 liter/sec; a typical shower flow rate is maybe a third of that, so call it 1000W per degree Celsius of heating. So 5000W would only give about 5 degrees Celsius of heating, which doesn't seem like much.
While you're right that 5000 W is only 1.2 kelvin liters per second on water, typical shower flow rates are about 8 ℓ/minute, 133 mℓ/s in SI units, and at that flow rate you get about 9°C of heating. This may be a reason electric showers are more popular in tropical countries like Brazil, Perú, and Costa Rica: ΔT = 9° gets you from 28° to 37° just fine. And you always (well, usually) have the option of lowering the shower flow rate to get a wimpier flow of much hotter water.
This is a fair bit slower than a typical US flow rate (which is about 5 gallons/minute or about 20 liters/minute). So yes, with a slower flow rate and hotter water to begin with I can see it being usable.
> Uruguay has much less use of natural gas, for regulatory reasons: gas appliances can only be installed indoors if the room in which they are installed has a window to the outside that cannot be closed, thus removing the risk of explosions in the case of a gas leak. Consequently in Uruguay gas stoves are almost unheard of, and nearly all cooking is electric. Many hot-water heaters in Uruguay are still the gas-powered tankless type that is nearly universal in Argentina, though. They're just installed outdoors.
Uruguayan from Montevideo here, and I disagree with this. I've seen very very few electric kitchens. Almost all the stoves I've seen are gas powered. Most use gas tanks, and some have piped gas into their homes. Hot water heaters are usually electric, and installed indoors. You'd only have a gas heater if you have piped gas.
Here in Argentina, municipal water is totally reliable (I've never heard of a water service loss due to a power outage), but the pressure in the pipes is so low that every individual house has a pump to raise the water into a rooftop tank. These pumps are invariably electric and powered from either the grid or, on the frequent occasions that doesn't work, a generator. Municipal water typically has service losses a few times a year, but not due to blackouts.
Gas stoves are far more common in Argentina than electric stoves, although my apartment has an electric stove, which has a short which electrifies the stainless-steel surface of the stove when it's turned on. Most people in and near the capital run their gas stoves and on-demand hot-water heaters from public-utility natural gas, supplied by local monopolies (state-owned in some cases). Propane cylinders are common in less-populated areas and in houses where the gas piping has been disconnected from the public utility, usually due to billing disputes or safety concerns.
Over the last few years, the utilities have been sandbagging gas reconnections after disconnections due to safety concerns, often allowing them to leave unprofitable customers disconnected for years at a time once someone has called in a gas leak, while they wait for the government price controls (which have fallen far behind our absurd levels of inflation) to be loosened, making those customers' business profitable again. This has been a significant reason for new installations of electrical cooking and hot-water-heating appliances. A court recently ruled against this practice, and so gas reconnections have been sped up lately.
Uruguay has much less use of natural gas, for regulatory reasons: gas appliances can only be installed indoors if the room in which they are installed has a window to the outside that cannot be closed, thus removing the risk of explosions in the case of a gas leak. Consequently in Uruguay gas stoves are almost unheard of, and nearly all cooking is electric. Many hot-water heaters in Uruguay are still the gas-powered tankless type that is nearly universal in Argentina, though. They're just installed outdoors.
(Actually, I'm not sure if the above information about Uruguay applies outside of Montevideo.)
I hope this information is interesting to you!