Thermostatic bath/shower mixers – do they work?

Have seen a thermostatic bath/shower mixer tap at Wickes which looks like a simple solution to have a useable shower over the bath – its a low pressure one (0.1 bar – water tank is about a meter above the shower head position so I guess this would work).

Has anyone got one, and will it provide a useable shower (not expecting power-shower performance, just as a second shower to take the pressure off no.1 in the mornings)

Aren’t these really common? They’re just taps, surely? So it dependson your water pressure…

Aren’t these really common?

Not that many available having a bit of a google – not thermostatic anyway.

Mine works fine – but off a combi, no idea if they are happy with low pressure.

Ours is also from a combi, but certainly works well.
I hate the faffing in hotel showers, when it takes 10minutes to get the water at the right temperature & flow.
(So I send Mrs M in first)

Aah yes – the delights of British plumbing. Always a source of wonder to foreign visitors.

I have fitted a couple of these to combi systems and the customers, who were both initially sceptical, now think they’re the best shower they’ve used. They weren’t from Wickes though but they didn’t cost a fortune.

If you’ve only got a 1m head you’re never going to get more than a trickle though. You need to get a twin impeller pump.

I was asked to fit one of those pumps in a house recently where the whole bathroom was fed by the 2 pipes where the pump was to be fitted. I was surprised that even though the bog, bath & basin are now pumped too it all works just fine.

is it not cheaper to go with an electric shower if you need to have to have a pump fitted to run the mixer?

As usual you get what you pay for and the cheap ones can be a bit crap. There are always bargains on eBay for the better brands (Hansgrohe etc)

One problem is that you need a significantly higher temp when you run a bath (as it cools while it fills) compared to what you want in the shower. Even on max ours wasn’t hot enough to get a bath hot after it cooked down a bit. My advice – good for shower but normal taps better for the bath.

Off topic a bit, but has anyone ever fitted a pressure reducing valve? Our water supply is straight off t’hill so has a pretty huge head on it, cue various incidents of drenching yourself when you turn the kitchen tap on too far and also the hot water losing it’s ‘boost’ from the thermal store in the boiler pretty damn quickly (worcester oil boiler), on the bright side we have a pretty powerful shower! The way the water supply comes into the house it’d be pretty easy to fit a reducer to lower the pressure for the entire property, I’m not just not sure about reliability/effectiveness, etc?

Mine was £40 from some online place.

If you fit a proper stopcock you can turn it down to get the flow rate you need. No harm in fitting a 2nd one just after the one where the water comes into the house.

Cheers John, was considering this, the existing stop valve is a bit old and fusty looking so was thinking of fitting a second above it as I don’t really want to use the old one much if possible (we haven’t found the external stopcock yet either and Scottish Water are proving to be a bunch of unhelpful bumholes).

I’ve looked at pressure reducing valves for our house, as our pressure is silly high. The pipes bang if the stopcock is slightly shut and it doesn’t help with high pressures when a tap is only slightly open anyway; it still makes lots of noise and splashes all over the place.

Biggest problems for us are having to service them every year (iirc) – will I ever actually get round to it? – and they need to be on a horizontal pipe run, which we don’t have of sufficient length in accessible places. I’ve found people who do have them installed vertically, but you’re not meant to, so I’m hesitant to start sawing through pipes…

Recently fitted one of these to bath in the house we just moved into as the electric shower just didn’t cut it.

http://www.victorianplumbing.co.uk/Premier-Deck-Mounted-Thermostatic-Bath-Shower-Mixer-Valve-Bottom-Outlet-Chrome.aspx

Running off a combi and it’s great. Only intended as a stop gap till we get the bathroom done fully. Which will no doubt be years longer than we intend 😆

We use one (well a shower with thermo control) using a pressurised system (ie, hot water tank fed directly from the boiler with no header tank so it is a sealed system).

That works well and the changes in temperature (when someone else uses water elsewhere) soon sort themselves out without the need to dive out of the shower hopping like a loon.

We had an expensive thermostatic shower fitted [separate to the bath] eight years ago. After four not working the importers decided that we needed to get the water pressure checked as they had a maximum water pressure range on their showers. The outcome of that was that our water pressure was far too high and it is now regulated down to four bar. We also had a problem with the quality of water coming into the house, if you wanted a bath you had to sit in grit and silt, and so at the same time had a full water filtration system fitted. Since then all the water main pipes in our area have been replaced but we do have a problem with the hardness of the water clogging up the thermostatic valve. We have just ripped it out and fitted a normal shower, similar to the girls bathroom that has worked perfect for twenty two years

We had an armitage shanks thermostatic bath and shower mixer in our old house run off a combi and it was great. Our water pressure for the house wasn’t brilliant but the shower never missed a beat and was so much better than the electric one it replaced. 3 years in we still own the house but let it out and no problems to report.

Of all the places, Argos have some good deals

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/8580388.htm

if your installing for a Combi, don’t forget the FLOW REGULATOR that goes in the pipe, without this the thermostatic valve becomes useless*.

*as I’ve ucking found out…