Thermostatic shower

[DerbyBorn]

An elderly friend has moved into a new retirement home. she said that the shower keeps going cold soon after she gets in. I don't think it will be a shortage of hot water. She describes the shower valve as chrome with two knobs - one for temp and one to turn it off.

I don't have any first hand experience of thermostatic valves (I have a pressure balancing type)but I suspect she may be doing the typical "old person" technique of turning it up full to bring the heat through - and this might be activating some sort of anti-scald device.

I imagine the builders would have fitted a safe unit.

As she is 20 miles away, and it blaming the builders and the modern world, I would like to try and make an appropriate suggestion before she gets too wound up.

Do such showers have a feature that is likely to respond to a high temp by shutting down the hot flow?

I feel inclined to tactfully suggest she sets the temp lower before turning it on.

[bert]

In message , DerbyBorn writes

Option 1 - it's faulty

There is s stop on the temperature control to prevent accidental turning up of the temperature too far. This can be overridden by pressing it in enabling the knob to be turned further. The User Guide should tell you how to set this stop to the required temperature. It may be that it has been set too low. How long after she gets in the shower does it go cold? It should only take a couple of seconds to react and adjust to the correct temperature.

[DerbyBorn]

bert wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Unfortunately the developer was a bit haphazard about instructions. They have instructions for things they don't have and none for things they need to understand.

[Roger Mills]

Where does the hot water come from? Is it a self-contained home with its own boiler, or is there a communal supply.

If she has her own boiler, is it a combi or is there a stored hot water system? There can be strange interactions between combis and thermostatic showers which could possibly be the cause of her problem - so it could possibly be more of a boiler problem than a shower problem per se.

[DerbyBorn]

The system seemed complex - a centralised source - but metered in some way. Didn't really get a chance to try to understand it.

[harry]

Most showers in such places are pre-set and not adjustable as a safety precaution. (To prevent scalding)

[DerbyBorn]

It's a retirement home - not a care home! I suspect the plumber went off site before stuff was commissioned. She tends to blame the installation - but I want to make sure it is not due to her misusing the thermostat.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , DerbyBorn writes

A feature of the Aqualisa mixer shower I have is that you only get hot water above a certain flow rate.

The supply is from a twin impeller Stuart Turner shower pump so I assume the pressures are similar.

I haven't tried restricting the shower head nozzles to see if it is pressure or flow related. I have always vaguely assumed it was a safety feature: checking that cold is flowing before it allows any hot.

Try upping the flow setting to see if that makes a difference.