Hot showers in Croatia
We’ve spent more time in Croatia than any other country so far, and really loved it. And that time has inevitably showed us some interesting quirks in differences between life here and life back in the US. One of the most immediate was the use of individual hot water heaters with their own on/off switch.
The personal water heater
In Croatia, unlike the other European countries to which we’ve been, each bathroom has its own mini hot water heater. In hostels with multiple bathrooms, there are a bunch of these heaters. While it’s great that someone else’s long shower doesn’t affect yours, that only works if the heater is on! Each heater has an on/off switch located in the panel of bathroom switches. Use to hotel bathrooms with too many switches anyways, we’d politely turn off all the switches when we left – wrong! We’d turn the switches off at night – wrong! That sentences the next person to a very cold shower. At first we couldn’t understand why the second person’s shower was always so cold… whoops.
The all-important switch
We are now very careful about heater switches.
You’re right to turn it off when you leave the hotel or go to sleep! You only have to turn it on ~15-20 minutes before your shower (even less in tropical/subtropical countries where the ambient temperature is warm already). No need to leave it on overnight!
Ahhh – we never tried it with that much time to warm up… Thanks for the heads up!
A great energy saver!