Is there a building regulation that stipulates bath taps have to be
3/4 inch? I'm sure my bath taps are a duplicate of the basin taps, which are 1/2 inch. I won't know for sure till I switch off the water and take out the tap valve.MM
MM brought next idea :
The hole in the bath is normally larger, to accommodate a 3/4 tap.
Are bath taps conventionally larger (diameter) than taps for a washbasin or a sink because historically hot water was low-pressure, gravity-fed from a tank only one storey above in the loft? Nowadays many modern houses are built with a pressurised hot water system (either via a cylinder or a heat-on-demand combi boiler) so they don't need 22 mm (3/4") pipes and large taps: 15 mm (1/2") pipes and smaller taps will suffice. But baths are still designed for large taps and these are what people expect to see.
We recently had our gravity-fed cylinder system replaced with a mains-fed combi boiler, when the cylinder developed a leak and the boiler was then found to be near to corroding through. The difference in flow rate from the hot tap is very dramatic, and the time for the hot water to run hot has also improved.
When elderly neighbour moved out in 2014 the young couple who bought the
1976-built house gave it a makeover, new bathroom, kitchen etc. Previous owner had already paid BG megabucks to remove the baxi-bermuda back boiler and put a WB condensing boiler in an upstair cupboard, keeping the original hot tank. Being gravity fed from a 50 litre cold tank in the loft, the bathroom taps were 3/4 inch fed by 22 mm pipewrk from the hot tank and loft tank.New owners fitted a 'shower bath' with fancy taps that have waterfall effect, ditto handbasin, but these were intended for a continental installation running at mains pressure. Needless to say, the bath took
1/2 hour to run and the toilet 15+ mins to refill, so they then had to fit a hot+cold pump next to the hot tank that sounded like a jet engine running.
You had a very poorly designed storage system if a combi can fill a bath to the required temperature more quickly.
The daft part of our plumbing is that there seems to be mixed one half and three quarters feeds joined together in an apparently ad hoc way over time, I guess. Adaptors etc and T sections abound as I imagine in1939 things were a lot different.
Brian
Hence why feeds to the bath are always 3/4" (22mm).
As I said, a poorly designed storage system.
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