Mixer taps - really wasteful?

elljay

I've recently moved to a house with a mixer tap in the kitchen.  I feel it's really wasteful.  If I want a drink of fresh water I end up running it for maybe half a washing up bowl full before it's nice and cold and conversely, if I want hot water to wash up with I have to run off the cold first - I certainly can't have a cold drink or fill the kettle while washing up!!!!  Seems incredibly wasteful and I'm getting fed up of carrying water through the house to the garden to water the plants.  They don't need it at the moment and my water butts are also full.

Am I managing this wrong?  Is this a known thing?  I absolutely hate the waste and feel it's managing me more as I'm planning my drinks or hot water use around it!!  When I had something from Severn Trent the other day about running the tap while teeth brushing I thought this mixer tap malarkey is far more wasteful but I've never seen anything about it.  It's a rented house so I can't change it and anyway, I know in many countries including the US, mixer taps are universally used so it must be me!!

Anyone else with a mixer tap wasting water?

Thanks

comeandgo

I have a jug of tap drinking water in the fridge so I don’t have to turn on any taps.  

elljay

Thanks, yes that's probably what I'll end up doing - but I do like a glass of freshly drawn water and I think tea is nicer with fresh water too.  Probably no difference really!

QrizB

elljay said:

I've recently moved to a house with a mixer tap in the kitchen.  I feel it's really wasteful.  If I want a drink of fresh water I end up running it for maybe half a washing up bowl full before it's nice and cold and conversely, if I want hot water to wash up with I have to run off the cold first - I certainly can't have a cold drink or fill the kettle while washing up!!!!

Am I managing this wrong?  Is this a known thing?

Anyone else with a mixer tap wasting water?

The problem almost certainly isn't the tap; the total volume of water held in the tap itself should be less than a glass full.

The problem is probably that in your new home there is a lot of pipework between the tap and the rising main (for cold) / tank (for hot). This water sits in the pipes and warms/cools to room temperature between uses.

Is your new house bigger than your old one? A metre of 15mm pipe holds 140ml of water so if you're having to run off 5 litres that's ~35 metres of pipe to the main or tank. (If it's plumbed in 22mm pipe then the volume is 280ml per metre and ~18 metres of pipe.)

Do you know where your rising main is? It should be near the main stopcock. How close is it to the kitchen?

Reed_Richards

There should a minimal amount of stored water inside the tap so I guess it must be the stored heat, of lack of it, in the metal of the tap that is a problem - for you at least.  I can get cold water after hot in a second or two.  For hot water I have to run-off a section of pipe where the water has cooled if I have not used the hot recently but since I generally cool the hot water down a bit for dish washing that isn't a waste.  Perhaps it's your particular tap that is the probleM?

Penguin_

As above, my boiler is upstairs on the other side of the house so when I turn the hot tap on, the water that is already in the pipes has to come through before the hot water from the boiler comes to the tap. Sadly that's got very little to do with what type of tap I have.

theoretica

The mixer tap has very little volume of water in it - a foot or so length of not very thick pipe. I suspect some of the time when you are wanting it to run cold it is water coming from the cold main but just running through warm pipes (not what you want for a drink, but I consider fine for filling the kettle). 

Ectophile

Why are you wasting the water?

I keep an old 5 litre water carrier in my kitchen.  Since the hot water tank is about as far as it could be from the kitchen, it takes about 3 litres before it runs hot. And that's not the fault of the tap, it's the very long pipe between the tank and the tap.

That 3 litres of water is useful for watering plants or flushing the loo.

On the cold water side, make some ice cubes, and drop a few into each glass of water.

elljay

Thank you all, it seems as if the length of the pipe is the cause of the problem, nothing I can do about that but good to understand the whys and wherefores.   Thanks again.

Reed_Richards

Before I fixed it, I had to run-off two buckets of water before I could get hot water out of the hot tap in my kitchen.  A previous owner had installed a combi boiler right outside the kitchen but kept the old pipework so the hot water from the combi went all the way to the centre of the house (where there had been a cylinder) then all the way back again to reach the kitchen tap.

So @elljay here may be something you can do but it would involve changing the pipes rather than changing the tap.  

savvy

I have the same issue for the hot, espcially if the boiler isn't already on. I have a jug at the side and run off about 3-4 litres to get hot, but luckily I have a gravity water filter I pour it straight into and then also the dog bowls