Firstly, congratulations for this site!
Well, it is very interesting to find here something related to Brazil - which since 1980 doesn´t follow NEC.
The related installation - 2 wires for a 127 V electric shower - was used (officially)till 1980, because in this year was issued a new Electrical Code, (the previous one was issued in 1960) that stated for areas with humidity (kitchen, bathrooms, outside areas), the use of a 3 wire system, 1 of them exclusively for grounding (colored green with yellow stripes) and the circuit has to be protected by one residual differential circuit breaker - called "DR" - similar to your american GFCI.
But, it stated that for new erections - not to the old houses. The electric showers since that were manufactured with 3 wires, but as eletricians were used that 2 wire system for a long time, it is possible to find today a lot of houses with a 2 wire internal distribution system - including the showers circuits.
Adding this, old houses had metallic water pipes, but newer ones use plastic water pipes.
We can say that still today the "culture" is that only 2 wires are enough to "run anything". Although electricians need to get an official certificate, it is very common to find illetrate people doing residential electrical services (home owners don´t use to ask for the official certificates for such "small and low cost jobs").
Electric showers in Brazil - the highest is 5500W 127 V.
The wires in Brazil since 1980 are sized in mm2. Our code follows IEC 364.
As the previous messages say, it is necessary to take extremely care when contracting a person that calls himself as "electrician" in Brazil.
[This message has been edited by roadie (edited 08-12-2002).]
[This message has been edited by roadie (edited 08-13-2002).]
