Thermostatic bathroom taps - are they any good?

andre_xs

Hi,
I'm thinking about a thermostatic tap for the bathtub/shower, those where one sets the temperature in degree celsius at one knob, and the amount of waterflow at the other knob.

I was wondering how well these work with changing hot water temperature (our boiler is acting up a bit) and changing pressure (e.g. if someone flushes the toilet). Will they keep the temperature rather steady despite such disturbances, or will it vary quite a bit as well?

Currently our water temperature changes quite a bit when showering (not touching any knob) which is annoying for us adults, but really bad with little kids.

I don't mind the accuracy of the actual temperature on the knob, my hope would just be that these things keep the temperature nicely constant, once a good setting has been found.

If they can do this in principle, are the cheap ones fine (£50-£100), or does one need really expensive ones?

Best wishes,
Andre

Debbie_Savard

Do you have a thermostatic shower? If so, taps won't do any better

andre_xs

What do you mean by thermostatic shower? The taps I have in mind are (as far as I understood) attached to hot and cold water, just as any other bathroom tap as well. Then they have two outlets, one for the bathtub, and one for the shower hose. The only difference I can see is that the two knobs are not for water cold / water warm, but instead for temperature / amount of waterflow.

In other words, would we need to change anything else beside the tap?

pineneedles

Hi, sounds like you have a similar setup to us. We replaced our bath/shower mixer tap with a thermostatic one (Aqualisa Midas 110 which is a bit more expensive than the price range you quote) earlier this year. My observations:


It is much better at controlling shower temperature than the old simpler mixer tap was.


However, hot water pressure is still an issue in that if you turn the shower pressure up, the temperature drops. In this way I think it is slightly misleading to call these taps 'thermostatic' (which I thought would mean that once you select a temperature the mixer keeps to that temperature, even if this is at the cost of less flow). But we got used to this quite quickly and as long as we don't turn the shower flow on too high, the temperature is good and it's a decent flow too.



Our only toilet is in the same room so cannot comment on whether flushing it affects the temperature of the shower. Kitchen tap being used doesn't seem to have an effect.


One definite negative for us is that the hottest water from the mixer is not as hot as the water that comes out of the boiler. This is understandable for the shower for safety reasons, but the problem is that it's now hard to run a full hot bath as the water cools down before the bath is full. This might be a matter of re-calibrating the tap a bit to make maximum temperature higher, but haven't got round to trying it.


Overall I would still make the switch, showers are more comfortable now, and especially if you have kids the safety thermostat feature would be worth it.



Hope this helps!

Norman_Castle

I bought one of these 3 1/2 years ago http://ourtaps.com/DECK-MOUNTED-THERMOSTATIC-BATH-SHOWER-MIXER-TAPS-1/4-TURN-MPN-TMC-101-Mixer. Same company but bought off ebay. I often put muddy cycling clothes in the washing machine then shower. The water flow changes due to the washing machine but the temperature is constant. I use it on the pre set 38 degree setting which is fine for me. I recently turned it to maximum to fill a bucket and the water was painfully hot.
I'm happy with mine and would replace it with the same.


I also insulated the entire hot water pipe run from the boiler rather than just bits prone to freezing which I expect helps keep a high temperature at the tap and probably saves money.


Also pleased to see they are still in business and sell spare parts.