<story><title>Coober Pedy, the Australian mining town where residents live underground (2020)</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-coober-pedy-australias-underground-town-2016-1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thaumasiotes</author><text>&amp;gt; Also all the water is trucked in, so shower stalls are often coin-fed. Works OK except when there is no warning that you&amp;#x27;re about to run out of water and your face is covered in soap.&lt;p&gt;Seems like you&amp;#x27;d get used to it quickly.&lt;p&gt;In Chinese apartments (in Shanghai, at least), there is a small water heater dedicated to the shower. It stores a certain amount of water at a temperature you configure, and when it runs out, your shower will be cold. (You&amp;#x27;re expected to set it much hotter than you want the shower, and mix it with cold water, which is unlimited, to get the shower temperature you want.)&lt;p&gt;This means it&amp;#x27;s impossible to take a two-hour hot shower. But it also means the showering process doesn&amp;#x27;t include &amp;quot;step 0: wait a few minutes for hot water to start coming out of the shower&amp;quot;. When you turn on the hot water, you get hot water. It&amp;#x27;s really soured me on the American system.</text></item><item><author>zbrozek</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m an American citizen and I needed to go to the hospital in Coober Pedy in 2009. It was after hours, so I rang the bell up front and a cheerful nurse responded on the intercom. My case was deemed sufficient to merit a response, so the nurse and a doctor both came over at once and booted up the place. I got my exam, some crutches, and a prescription in about an hour and $45.&lt;p&gt;Also all the water is trucked in, so shower stalls are often coin-fed. Works OK except when there is no warning that you&amp;#x27;re about to run out of water and your face is covered in soap. Makes it hard to find and fidget with coins.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>axiolite</author><text>&amp;gt;  it also means the showering process doesn&amp;#x27;t include &amp;quot;step 0: wait a few minutes for hot water to start coming out of the shower&amp;quot;. When you turn on the hot water, you get hot water. It&amp;#x27;s really soured me on the American system.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;American System&amp;quot; such as it is, is a byproduct of increasing efficiency.  If you buy an old house, built when shower heads were 5GPM, the piping was sized to handle that load.  When you switch to 2.5GPM shower heads (mandated as the maximum by federal law in 1994), or lower (1.25GPM is easy to find and what I use) then you&amp;#x27;ve got 4X the amount of water setting in the pipes that needs to be slowly flushed out.&lt;p&gt;Any competent builders of new homes will minimize the size of hot water pipes to greatly reduce the amount of cold water that needs to be flushed out.  Instead of 3&amp;#x2F;4 or 1&amp;#x2F;2&amp;quot; pipes, 3&amp;#x2F;8&amp;quot; or even 1&amp;#x2F;4&amp;quot; pipes may be adequate for a 1.8GPM (California 2018 maximum) shower, and greatly reduces the amount of cold water standing in the pipes.&lt;p&gt;The US system of using natural gas (or electric heat pumps) offers about 4X better energy efficiency than smaller resistive electric point-of-use water heaters.  In warmers climates (southern US, and much of Asia) the difference can be small.  And the centralized US system can be retrofitted easily enough.  There are pump systems which can be installed under bathroom sinks where you just push a button and the cold water is pumped through, automatically shutting off when it becomes warm&amp;#x2F;hot.</text></comment>
<story><title>Coober Pedy, the Australian mining town where residents live underground (2020)</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-coober-pedy-australias-underground-town-2016-1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thaumasiotes</author><text>&amp;gt; Also all the water is trucked in, so shower stalls are often coin-fed. Works OK except when there is no warning that you&amp;#x27;re about to run out of water and your face is covered in soap.&lt;p&gt;Seems like you&amp;#x27;d get used to it quickly.&lt;p&gt;In Chinese apartments (in Shanghai, at least), there is a small water heater dedicated to the shower. It stores a certain amount of water at a temperature you configure, and when it runs out, your shower will be cold. (You&amp;#x27;re expected to set it much hotter than you want the shower, and mix it with cold water, which is unlimited, to get the shower temperature you want.)&lt;p&gt;This means it&amp;#x27;s impossible to take a two-hour hot shower. But it also means the showering process doesn&amp;#x27;t include &amp;quot;step 0: wait a few minutes for hot water to start coming out of the shower&amp;quot;. When you turn on the hot water, you get hot water. It&amp;#x27;s really soured me on the American system.</text></item><item><author>zbrozek</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m an American citizen and I needed to go to the hospital in Coober Pedy in 2009. It was after hours, so I rang the bell up front and a cheerful nurse responded on the intercom. My case was deemed sufficient to merit a response, so the nurse and a doctor both came over at once and booted up the place. I got my exam, some crutches, and a prescription in about an hour and $45.&lt;p&gt;Also all the water is trucked in, so shower stalls are often coin-fed. Works OK except when there is no warning that you&amp;#x27;re about to run out of water and your face is covered in soap. Makes it hard to find and fidget with coins.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dragonwriter</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s really soured me on the American system.&lt;p&gt;What American systems? There&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;lots&lt;/i&gt; of different water heating setups in the US, including “small dedicated tankless heater for the shower”, whole house tankless or hybrid system, etc., etc...</text></comment>