Submitted 3 weeks ago by borth@sh.itjust.works to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
It’s reasonably common for showers to have a mixing valve and a flow rate valve on separate handles. That accomplishes what you want. You just have to remember which is which and only use the flow rslate valve to turn on and off.
More importantly, hot water circulation systems should be more common. It’s the waiting for the cold water in the line to flush out that really makes setting temperature a hassle.
hot water circulation systems should be more common
That just sounds like a waste of energy. Why not have the water heater right next to your shower, so that there’s no wait? It’s how it was set up in my parents home. Really enjoyed that setup, never had to wait for hot water.
Because the kitchen isn’t always wall to wall with the bathroom?
On demand recirculating works reasonably well but only for people who tolerate it. Push button, wait 3 min, water hot. It works for me but I know it’s way too much trouble for other people. It saves water and energy.
I’m irritated by these half-measures. Just bathe in the hot water heater!
I assume electric showers are pretty rare over there? We’d have like a 16mm2 cable ran to the bathroom for a 10.5kW shower. And with one of those it’s practically instant heat, and enough to heat high flow.
Depending on your location the wasted water from letting the faucet run can be much more valuable than the energy needed to maintain a circ system, however install cost is high and the lines need to be entirely insulated so really, new construction works best. I wanted it on my house but I think it’d just drive costs way up, especially with a tankless as it’d be firing all the damn time.
and when the hot water heater is two floors down and the pipe from there runs up unheated parts of the building, it takes a very long time to get even a hint of warmth out of the hot water faucets.
i’ve lived 3 minutes away from hot water for nearly thirty years now. it sucks. if i ever get money enough to own a house, or choose where i live with little regard to cost, it will have instant hot water (tankless water heaters).
I thought a hot water circulator would be great, and it kind of is, but it comes with a drawback that I hadn’t considered. If you want cold water from the tap, to fill a glass of water at night for example, you have to wait for that just as long as you would have had to for the hot water before!
The solution to that is for a third return line to be run during a new build or remodel, but that’s definitely not a weekend project for most homes.
My super basic faucet handles are exactly that…you twist it left-right to set temp and tilt it up-down for pressure from off to full. We just leave it rotated wherever we like it for temp and tilt up to turn on each time to the desired pressure. Our water pressure is always variable, so the amount tilted up varies, but the “rotational temp” almost never needs changing. There’s no fancy thermostatic valve in these like some shower have.
I feel like sink handles like this are super common, too. I’ve had similar ones in the states and in Europe…
My kitchen faucet does this. It's a 2-axis lever. Y axis is the temperature adjustment, X axis is flow. As long as you leave it set to the same Y position when you turn it off and on, it'll be at the "last used combination".
Mine did this was well. If looks like a little stick on a ball
You mean a (single handle) mixer tap?
Keep in mind that mixing the levels of hot and cold water isn't the only factor in the final temperature. It's also the actual temperature of the water in the pipes. Depending on where your pipes run, the cold water in the pipes may be warmer or cooler than the underground source of the water. The hot water may also have cooled more or less since leaving your hot water heater. Initial temperature may therefore be too hot or cold compared to where it ends after a period of use.
Ambient temperature in the room will also affect how hot you want the final temperature to be
The only correct kind of faucet is the kind with a thermostatic handle for temperature, and a separate handle for flow.
They are almost exclusively available for showers and that’s stupid. It’s the correct solution for the problem, with extremely few drawbacks.
The only improvement I could see is making the temperature handle short circuit to the drain until the water going through is hot enough. But I dont know if that’s really possible without electronics, and I really dont want my faucet handles to be plugged in or take AA batteries.
Being able to maintain the ratio with fluctuating water pressure would be cool too. It’s probably possible to do entirely mechanically.
YES, I remember this Sweden when I went there and it’s amazing.
would love indexing and numbers on my handle
or just go full Japan and incorporate a thermostat
That’s not even Japan, any European country has that as standard on showers
oof, you caught me red-handed, USian here 😭 <greatest country on earth she says between sobs>
Not needed because you shouldn’t be using warm water to wash your hands. Cold only.
Why?
What I read is that cold water cleans just as well as warm water but uses less energy, therefore better for the planet overall.
I agree it is more comfortable, but that was my reasoning.
Have you tried using your own memory?
everytime
Not a word, my dude.
they will be ok in life
single handles are all well and good, but I’d prefer a hot knob, a cold knob, and a flow knob. I’ve never been clear why this isn’t done, I suppose its probably cost. Maybe there is some wear and tare reason?
Seperate hot and cold knobs in showers are against code in a lot of places
Why would you need separate hot and cold knobs if all that matters is the ratio between them?
Because sometimes you want full cold, sometimes you want full hot. Yes you could use a three way valve but you’d generally lose maximum water pressure.
Something like this works. Just turn the water off with the spray nozzle, not the handle. share.google/1HpxlLwZ6RMXGdMoS
I used to have a kitchen sink faucet with the mixing handle on the side, that i installed after the 2 tap mixers.
So the 2 taps controlled hot and cold, which fed into the faucets cold line, and the hot line was capped off, making the handle only control flow, and temp was the 2 knobs. (I did this out of laziness because I didnt want to unsolder and resolder in new fittings)
I bet it would not be hard a 3d print a little ring with a twisty arrow that you could use to “save” your last handle placement, kinda a neat idea.
People here saying single handle faucets must have much better ones than what we've got where I'm from, no fucking chance of getting the same temperature again after shutting it. And the middle of it is extremely sensitive, it goes from 10% to 90% in like the middle two millimeters, and I think the pressure of the hot water overcomes the cold's so you have to turn a bit left and then right again to stabilize the temp.
For my shower, which is the one that matters most for me, I got a thermostatic one—you set the temperature on the right handle and the flow on the left one, and that's it, perfect temperature forever. Even if someone flushes, which only happens when my sister is visiting because she doesn't understand boundaries, it doesn't change one whole degree for more than a second, only the flow is be affected.
As a side note my grandma's bath tube some 30+ years ago (it had probably another 30 or more) had two handles for hot-cold, left and right, and then another two for the shower-faucet flow, up and down. It wasn't as fine tuned as my modern one, but worked quite well. You would only open or shut without touching the proportion of hot/cold.
my grandma’s bath tube
Your grandma bathed in a tube?
SGGeorwell@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There are! They’re called thermostatic faucets.
towerful@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
I’m amazed at the comments explaining incoming water temperature fluctuations and pressures…
No no, thermostatic tap/faucet mixes waters depending on the output temperature. Ignores all of the variables except the thermal mass (I guess reaction speed) of the thermostatic system.
I think they are normally like 10x the price of a standard mixer tap tho.
So, it’s a budget choice
m0darn@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Yeah, and obviously if the ‘hot’ water isnt hot, there isn’t anything it can do.
Wispy2891@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
When I bought the faucet for my bathtub, the regular one was 35€ while the thermostatic one was 60€. I wonder why they still make the regular ones
whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I have a feeling like you could do a completely mechanical one. Like a way to push it open and a part gets pushed out to stay put so when you open the faucet back up it bumps it and has a little resistance when it first turns so you don’t accidentally move it. Rotate the full way around to reset.