Trevi TT mixer not always turning on

Have a Trevi TT shower mixer valve in our en-suite. It has been out of action a couple of months or so whilst I got around to re-sealing the shower tray where there was a slight leak.

Re-sealing done, I've started using it again but noticed pretty much immediately that water won't always start to flow when the valve is turned on, and needs a sharp tap on the back of the valve body and it will spring into life (eventhough this is inset into the wall, I can get to it from the other side) and the pump will then fire up on from its flow switches as normal. Turn it on and off then, and it will behave itself - but come back to it the next morning, and usually the same problem.

Any ideas?

TIA, Midge

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Midge
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Probably best to get a repair kit for your particular shower, if you're brave enough to attempt it, will cost around £10 to £20. It's more than likely that an O ring has limed up while the shower was out of use. You could just try pulling it all to bits and cleaning everything, but if you're going to bother to do that, you may as well take the opportunity to renew the O rings etc. If you do attempt it, be very, very careful to keep all things aligned as they were originally.

Bod

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Bod

Reply to
Midge

Rang Ideal standard customer care up yesterday - and they recommended pulling out the two check valves which are screwed into the front of the valve body and giving em a good clean which I did today.

What I did notice is if I blow through the valves, it does take a little bit of pressure before the valve pops open (whereas I expected the check valve to be very lightly sprung and start opening with only moderate pressure). I'm wondering if the check valves kinda bed themselves into their seals when left for a while......

Anyway, cleaning them made no difference. The unit behaved fine, but I then left it for about 5 hours and it then decided it wouldn't start again (quick tap and off it goes again). Nothing restricting the flow in - I checked and cleaned my pump filters too.

Gonna take the check valves out again tomorrow and see if I can wire them open just to test.

Midge.

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Midge

Well, looks like it is the check valves in the mixer. I've temporarily removed the check valve inserts and it starts up reliably every time now.

What I've noticed is if the inserts are left for a period of time, and you blow through them, it takes a lot more pressure to open the valve up than it does (say) a few minutes after it last opened. That being said, I've just dug out a brand new Pegler 15mm single check valve from my stock and that, if anything, was even harder to open the first time, and subsequent operations - so I don't think there is actually anything *wrong* with the mixer ones.

The bizarre thing is with the check value inserts back in place, if I unhook the shower head and drop it down a couple of foot towards the mixer, it will fire up. So its looking like the weight of the water in the hose/shower head is helping to keep the valve sealed. So I had a brainwave and raised the water level in my cold tank a couple of inches - thinking that would more than offset this, but it didn't make the slightest bit of difference.

Any ideas? My only one is to cut a bit off the return spring so there is just enough to close the the valve.

Midge.

Reply to
Midge

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