Bath/shower mixer taps - minimum operating head?

[Adrian Brentnall]

HI All We have one of the 'classic' style bathroom tap/shower setups - where you move a lever from left to right to select either 'bath fill' or 'shower' - the shower head being on a flexible hose.

Over time, the selector lever seems to become sloppy, and difficult to move (we've been here 10 years and we're on our second tap assembly, which is now playing up). Having dismantled our lever to take a look it seems there's a small brass 'nub' that engages with a slot in a brass piston with o-ring seals - and the nub itself wears - creating the slop.

The bathroom is upstairs, and the taps are fed from a water tank in the attic - probably no more than 7 ft of head.

Many of the ads for these taps on eBay & Amazon seem to require an operating pressure of 0.5 or 1 Bar - which we don't have.

Is this on account of the shower? I can't imagine that a tap actually cares too much about the operating pressure... We don't use the shower for actual 'showering' - more for sluicing down and washing our hair..

So - will one of the '0.5 bar minimum' tap assemblies be OK in our situation? Thanks Adrian

[John Rumm]

It will likely function as a tap, but the flow rate may be disappointing. Note that some quarter turn style cartridges may fail to fully seal on too little pressure and leave the tap dribbling when "off".

You can get taps specced for low pressure use - they are just a bit harder to find.

[harry]

For very low pressures the traditional screw down tap works best. Twenty years ago virtually all hot water set ups were like yours.

You could get hold of a second hand tap if all else fails. They can be dismantled and serviced and then be as good as new.

The old taps were good for sixty or seventy years. Only idiots threw them out.