The Right Mixer Showers for Your Home

Mixer showers are a new technology for your contemporary bathrooms. Designed to make your bathing experience even more simpler, safer and enjoyable, mixer showers (as the name goes) combine existing cold and hot water from two separate sources through a valve and ultimately deliver it to the shower head at a moderate temperature. Mixer showers are best fitted in houses with an unending supply of hot water.

The greatest advantage of using mixer showers is that they are safe for elderly people and toddlers at your home. A wide range of contemporary all-chrome designs made to fit any style of bathrooms are spread across the market to allure you.

Mixer Shower Fittings

Mixer showers are available depending on the type of fixtures that you would prefer – external or internal:

• Surface Mounted Fixtures – Here you can fit the pipeline easily on your existing plumbing surface. It is ideal when you decide to install a mixer shower after your house has been built
• Flush Mounted Fixtures – Here, the valve can be seen from outside, but the pipeline needs to be fitted inside the wall. This type is best to fit in the shower cubicle wall cavity for your new home.

However, before looking to buy a mixer shower, you should take into consideration the drawbacks of this system and then finalize on the one that best suits your heating and plumping fittings.

Consider the Disadvantages of Mixer Showers Installation

Mixer showers can be a challenge to fit in already existing outdated plumbing set ups. In old plumbing set ups, the valves of mixer showers are rather hard to fit on already existing pipelines that supply water elsewhere like basins, toilet flushes and so on, to channelize the water from there and does not have a point to point water supply system to the shower. This might mean reduction in pressure levels of running water – either hot or cold and a fluctuation in the temperature of the water coming out of the shower head if another faucet is being used.

How can this be taken care of? Well the simplest way is fitting separate pipelines from hot and cold water sources to the shower. Such a fitting is a necessity when you decide upon fitting a mixer shower. These mixer showers need manual adjustments in case there are fluctuations in temperature or pressure of water.

Also consider fitting a thermostatic shower valve. Through the usage of this valve, you can configure the water temperature at a desired temperature during installation and does not require fiddling with the water inlets. The thermostatic valve can by itself sense any fluctuations in water temperatures and adjust a degree less or more accordingly. Thermostatic mixer showers can gauge pressure fluctuations in the water flow as well and adjust for them too.

A drawback of mixer showers is that they usually fail to operate properly if the hot and cold water do not come from sources which operate under similar pressure conditions. That is, either both the supplies of water are coming through mains fed system or both are supplied through a tank fed system. For mixer showers operating through mains fed system, a thermostatic valve is recommended.

If such situations arise that one supply is coming from a high pressure condition while the other is coming from a low pressure one, (that is you need to fit a mixer shower for a combination boiler), you need to separately install a pressure balancing mixer shower valve. Such a valve will adjust for changes in pressure levels of hot or cold water.

In case of water pressure fluctuations, this valve will lower the pressure and maintain the water temperature at a constant level. Always check with your supplier before deciding on the type of mixer showers you buy.

It is always preferable to fit thermostatic mixer shower valves in master bathrooms with customized showers, while pressure balancing mixer shower valves can be had in secondary shower cubicles.