Shower isolater switch wasting money?

[yossarian]

I have been at the receiving end of much aggro from parents/flatmates and now my girlfriend when it comes to forgetting to turn of the shower switch located outside the bathroom. It's my fault for being a forgetful chap I guess. Anyway, I was wondering, does it really waste that much electricity? I assume that's what the general gripe is about.

I like to think that it's just a simple illuminated on/off indicator to show whether electricity is available or not in the bathroom, and consequently the shower. Am I mistaken?

If this is the case then the money wasted is insignificant really… back me up here, or at least let me know the error of my ways!

 

[Damocles]

Well who knows. It might also be connected to the surveillance and automated recording system within the bathrooom... but most likely there is nothing actually using power until someone turns on a tap and the pressure switch turns on the water heater. It does mean that everything is definitively 'off' if you turn the switch off. Just in case something nasty happend, but I have no idea how remotely likely that is.

 

[fido]

I leave mine on from one year to the next. Early electric showers did not have all the safety features they build in these days so it was important to turn off the supply each time but I don't suppose you are using an antique appliance. Mine has an LED display so will be taking a minute amout of electricity when not operating but this is negligible.

 

[felix]

You are wasting the power needed to illuminate a neon bulb. These vary but 0.5 watts would be typical. This means you are wasting about one unit per quarter. I wouldn't lose too much sleep over that.

 

[towman]

Times it by a million of them left on and it does start to mount up! I work in appliance research and the energy/money wasted by appliances left on STANDBY is incredible. Start to add up the appliances left on - telly,vidoe,sat box,dvd,stereo,mwave,dw,wmc etc etc and multiply by 2 or 3 watts each (a typical standby consumption) and the figures soon mount up!
Personally I'd prefer to turn off any unused appliances etc - having seen the results when a kettle left with a "live" supply developed a fault in the switch, somehow turned itself on/shorted the switch contacts and nearly burnt someone's house down , a couple of seconds using the switch at the socket seems a good investment!

 

[Big_Spark]

Towman has a point about some things left on standby, however as the shower has it's own internal controls, none of which are "live" until the flow control switch closes and activates a contactor to supply the shower with power, until such time then no power is being used.

HOWEVER....it is very good idea to turn off the Isolator for Safety Reasons.