They’re so sensitive because the person who installed them didn’t care enough to adjust the regulator. If this bothers you, you can take the handle off yourself with an allen wrench and adjust the valve so that when you turn it on, it’s the perfect temperature for you every time.
This is a great idea if you are the only one using your shower. If you have 4 family members, each of whom likes a different shower temperature, it is less ideal. I think controls that allow separate on/off and hot/cold dimensions are best for most scenarios.
From my understanding when I fixed mine, when you adjust it it just makes for a more gradual heat change
I tried that and it still ends up either freezing or burning, unless I turn the handle all the way on, then half way, then creep it up.
Is that what a bad mixing valve looks like?
Yeah, you need a new cartridge for yours.
If you live in the US, then you probably have a standard mixing valve
If you live elsewhere, it’s probably a thermostatic one
For US:
You want to turn your handle all the way hot to clear your hot water lines fast, it’s room temperature in the hot water lines. Once the water is hot, then you start mixing in cold water.
The first cold water is from the lines in your house. It is heated or cooled by your home, basically room temperature water.
So say I turn the valve on full hot. Pure hot water is pouring out. Now you add some of that “room temperature cold water” to get to your perfect temperature.
Now, once you run out of “room temperature cold water,” it will start pulling water from the street.
I’m guessing you live in a cooler climate area?
120°F + 70°F = perfect temperature
But if the outside water becomes, say 50°F after you use all your water stored in your cold water lines
120°F + 50°F = colder water
So you have to add less 50°F water, which means slowly creeping your valve up until you have steady temperature water going to the valve.
Things like the type of water heater matters. If you use a tank then as you use water it adds water. If you keep your tank at 120° and you’re adding 70° cold water or 50° water to the tank matters. You also have “room temperature water” in your cold lines going to your tank at first, then colder water. So that creates another “lag” in temperature
US standard mixing valves aren’t as nice as a thermostatic valve. They are just cheap and standard and work well enough in most places.
Thermostatic valves allow you to select, say 100°F water, and the knob just controls the water flow rate. No matter what, the water that comes out of your shower will be 100°F. As the water coming into your house gets colder it will automatically adjust. As the water from your tank gets colder, it will automatically adjust.
Sounds like your valve is working as intended though
That’s fantastic info. Thank you! Though it sounds like I want to upgrade to thermostatic.
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Yes, but this wastes water, so if you’re trying to be green, you should be able to open up the valve to full hot.
Not only does it waste water, your shower will take longer to heat up.
Also, depending on where you live the perfect temperature changes a lot because of outside temperatures. If you use all the room temperature water in your cold lines then start pulling cold water from the outside. You’re going to have to adjust it. Bigger the house, the more the problem.
But if you have to dump out your entire hot and cold lines to even begin to step in the shower, that’s a ton of wasted water.
Answer is a thermostatic valve. It will just use hot water until it needs to mix in cold. If your cold water temperature changes, it will adjust it automatically. You really do pick a temperature to set the valve at, and then the handle just controls the flow rate.
The regular for a standard mixing valve is there only so you can’t turn the valve to burn you. When people keep their water tanks at 160°F, a full turn to the left would be devastating if you’re standing in it.
That’s 70ºC, 49ºC (120ºF) is usually plenty hot enough and the recommended temperature. It can actually cause burns with long enough direct exposure at 50, 70 is madness.
In the US the standard safety temperature for the water heater is 120° F
You don’t need it higher than that unless you have a small tank and use a lot of it. Tankless is 120°F.
I don’t know where you got 70°C from.
You said:
When people keep their water tanks at 160°F
That’s 70ºC and I’m agreeing that it is a ridiculously high temperature to keep a water tank at. That’s instant second degree burn temperatures, completely unsafe.
Ohh I see now.
Yeah 160° is too hot. But people do it. Small tank multiple showers needed. You can stretch it.
I was saying for people that have their water too hot. The regulator inside the US mixing valve has a stopper so you can’t go to max hot. That’s all the piece inside does, stops you from turning the valve more. Doesn’t help reglate the temperature. Someone in comments said their regulator is bad and I thought it was OP.
You should just move to a more tropical area. Where I live, I only ever use the “Cold” tap and sometimes, even that is too warm.
That’s how it is for me in the summer, and Jersey ain’t exactly tropical. But it’s kinda nice being able to just turn on the shower and get in. The cold water is likecold in the summers, and it’s usually humid, so a shower with no hot water ends up very refreshing.
Something something pid control.
Observe while I shower comfortably with:
I really don’t understand how this is still not the standard everywhere… The cheapest ones aren’t even that expensive and already way better than the alternative… Don’t think I’ve not showered with one of these in the last 25 years, except for in some kind of social housing projects homes.
What’s that called?
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seems like a smarter solution than what one house I lived in did of just oversizing all the plumbing and having a recirculating hot water pump (probably could help prevent freezing, but it only got to -40 once or twice there) so you could run all faucets, the washer, and the dishwasher and still have pressure at the furthest shower.
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When I first moved to Japan over twenty years ago they were already about a hundred years ahead of typical US toilet/bath technology. For me, using one of these faucets where you can just set the temperature by number was like Liko getting beamed from her hut directly onto the damn Enterprise.
Interesting, so it adjusts the flow of hot/cold in the fly to keep a consistent temp? That’s amazing, thought I imagine it would have the same issue I have at the end of the shower where it’s on 100% hot just to eke out a bit more time
You can adjust the temp on your water heater to solve that.
Growing up in rural France, we had these at home for as far as I can remember. They may not have been the norm 30 years ago, but at least common.
Yes, but that is not a fair comparison, these are European.
Except British homes which have two separate showerheads, one scalding hot and the other freezing cold.
The trick is to spin really fast.
British when straight into inventing the radar and completely skipped over the invention of warm water.
Ah wel… the British have always been a bit particular to be honest.
This technology is only possible with degree Celsius. It is impossible to adapt to degree Fahrenheit.
You might have a point there
What is this?
Thermostatic faucet
Same man, it’s been a dream since installing this.
These things existe for at least 30 years, I don’t understand why anyone would want to use anything else for a shower or bathtub.
Do they hold for 30 years?
Definitely not :) I had to get it replaced at my flat this year. There is a filter inside that can get block if you have hard water or debris.
Ah, see, we have high calcium here, didn’t even know this thing exists.
Don’t let that stop you getting the ultimate shower experience! My parents also have water with very high calcium at their house and I don’t think they had any problems with the faucet in the past 15 years.
I live in a rented place, they were doing repairs to the heating systems, several times we had brown water coming out the tap. I bet they installed the cheapest option, plus the debris in the water, this fucked it.
Just invest in a good thermostatic faucet and never look back !
Probably American build.
Yep, if China had products at this quality and price point muricans would never shut up.
i saw a comment on a meme like this that said some water mixing thing was broken
There are several possible causes to this problem, but that one is the most common.
The cartridge is likely bad. They get clogged up with lime scale over time and start to perform worse and worse. Either replace the cartridge or the whole faucet itself.
There are set screws behind the cover that will let you adjust the balance. Open up the cold a bit more.
This. So many comments in this thread make it pretty clear that most people don’t know there’s a regulator built into the faucet.
So there are lots of good answers, but there’s one I haven’t seen: The type of shower control in the photo is probably low quality, cheap, meaning the internal parts do a poor job of mixing the hot/cold water.
Adjusting the water heater may help, but you might also consider upgrading the shower faucet.
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A bigger water heater?
Okay I’m gonna be real. I didn’t understand the meme at first and thought you were showing a melted door handle and the guy in the meme was trying to melt another door handle with his mind
I was fully prepared to read a bunch of comments about how are door handles so sensitive to heat due to their metallic composition and how you absolutely cannot melt things with your mind that the actual comments tripped me
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See this is what I was expecting thanks
Warm 👏 thoughts 👏 can’t 👏 melt 👏 steel 👏 knobs 👏
You need at least the heat of your hand to melt metals. Or at least at least the heat of a cold but not cold wave winter day.
In seriousness, it’s often about water pressure and how your hot water is fed. If you have very high water pressure normally but a solar hot water system where gravity and input pressure play a role, you’ll naturally have an imbalance on hot and cold. When you turn the handle on the shower you’re lining up two holes in the shower cartridge (in the handle) with the two hot and cold water pipes, the resulting mix comes out a third hole which feeds the shower head. As you turn the handle, one hole opening gets smaller and the other bigger- thereby changing the ratio of hot : cold. When you already have a huge pressure of cold water pumping in, the degree of rotation needed to go from warm/almost just right to PURE HOT WATER is minuscule. Usually the cold will stay pretty cold for about half of the handle range of motion too.
If water input pressure being high is a problem you can put a reducing valve on your system overall or you can buy Venturi style pumps which add pressure into your hot water system.
You’ll normally find when it’s pressure imbalance that it’s easier to balance the temp when the tap isn’t open full bore. But who wants a weak-ass shower stream!!
This, exactly. When we redid our bathroom, we went from “immersion tank” hot water with about three metres of pressure behind it, to central heating in a closed system, where both hot and cold have the exact same pressure, about thirty metres head. Went from being basically impossible to have a shower, to being an absolute pleasure where nearly the entire range of the tap gives a useful temperature, and it’s got a right blast of pressure behind it too.
Another alternative would be an electric shower - since you’re just heating up cold water, the pressure is “always the same”. They tend to be a bit pathetic and crap, tho.
i can just turn the hot on and use that only. the water heater is so far away (have a walk-up, and it is in the basement) that the water is usually just about right when it gets all the way up here.
Come to Japan (and, so I’ve heard, several European countries) where we have a temperature setting on the tap. Mine caps at 40 by default, but you can press a little button and make it hotter if desired (up to however hot your water heater puts out).
Most of these types of faucets have a regulator in them as well in the US, you have to take off the handle to set it and most people never bother to do so.
Nah, Brougham.
All the way to the left, then back off 1/16".
Burn me, baby.
