No the bath is definately fed from the mains - out of interest I just checked - ran the tap on full for a while, but no sound of the tank filling. The taps are separate, not mixer. One shower is electric (mains fed), the other is power (fed from hot water and header tanks). The hot water is conventional - header tank, cylinder, gas boiler etc.
Peter.
Talking of British and French plumbing - lets get to the loos. In France flushing seems to be always done by pressing a button on the top of the tank or a small leaver on the side. Whilst in Britain we have the leaver and syphon, which often seems to go faulty after a time. Why the difference? Can the French flushing mechanisms be used here?
Peter.
Assuming you have the space in the roof void, and enough height to give a decent head, it has many advantages.
Wouldn't milk be more useful?
Mine's not missed a beat in 22 years. The technical name for the syphon flush is/was WWP - waste water preventer. If it is faulty nothing happens, unlike the arrangements which have a valve in the bottom of the flushing tank. I suspect it all goes back to the days when water supplies were much less reliable (thus the c.w. cistern in the loft) and is also down to our water being unmetered, so water undertakings needed to know that the chances of it just running to waste were minimised
A flap valve seal can leak and water will run down the toilet. This does not happen with a syphon flush. Flap vales require less water to flush, although bowls are designed to take a certain amount of water, so too little and no flush. raising the cistern does help, like having it in the loft.
My parent's house used to be gravity cold on all taps, except the kitchen sink. Now every tap, hot and cold, is mains pressure through a Megaflo. You still shouldn't drink from an upstairs tap, as the cold is softened up there.
My previous house had mains cold and gravity hot (pump assisted by the time I'd left). My current house has mains cold and gravity hot. Next week it should have mains hot and cold.
The installed base is currently getting much more mains based, IME. In particular, a lot of combi boilers seem to get installed these days.
Christian.
Like 650-700,000 per year out of near one million fitted. Combi's will soon become the "traditional" boiler.
On Wed, 08 Oct 2003 19:27:47 GMT, "BigWallop" >> > Most also have cheaper electricity bills which make it easier to have
Eh, no actually.
See the EU's benchmarking figures.
Page 36 shows electricity prices for consumers. UK is slightly higher than average for the EU but not hugely more expensive (try Italy or Germany for that).
Might it also be to do with the fact that we own our supplies, and others don't?
Not those porcelain shower-tray types where you stand on two raised "footprints" and aim for the hole? Ye Gods, they're primitive over there...
The British syphon arrangement is the more perfect solution. There's a thing called a "Duoflush" too, by which mechanism a small quantity of water or the while lot can be used, thus encouraging water saving.
Unfortunately, yes. I wonder where they were invented, I bet not in Frarnce. The trouble with the flap valve types is that they are prone to leakage. This is not environmentally or wallet friendly!
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What's normal depends to a degree on the age of the installation, as does the "no drinking from cold tap" bit, which is largely nonsense.
Depends, again, on age...
Erm, but if you have a cold water tank and a hot cylinder system the pressures are equal, aren't they!
If it was the other way around, then they'd worry!
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"Snowman" wrote | Talking of British and French plumbing - lets get to the loos. In France | flushing seems to be always done by pressing a button on the top of the tank | or a small leaver on the side. Whilst in Britain we have the leaver and | syphon, which often seems to go faulty after a time.
I still think a proper chain is best; stand back and pull any-old-how and the water descends.
Owain
Although someone did suggest to me that they were more hygenic, because you don't have to sit on or touch anything. And that must have been the way you "did it" before pedestal loos were invented I guess.
Peter.
Aren't French style mechanisms banned in Britain? I seem to remember that the EU wanted Britain to change its rules a few years ago to permit the foreign systems. The argument against was that the British water supply wouldn't be able to cope with millions of leaking cisterns.
Another discussion point might be why the French apparently adopted the British imperial plumbing sizes, hence you have 1/2", 3/4", 1", etc. pipes and fittings rather than nicely rounded metric sizes: 10mm,
20mm, 30mm, etc. Its always worth pointing this out if a French person moans about the British using imperial weights and measures (And by the way, French trains run on the left, just like in Britain.) Can any one confirm if plumbing fittings bought in France are exactly interchangeable with equivalents bought in Britain?
Their standard copper tube sizes are not the same, e.g. IIRC,
14mm is one of their standard ones.One interesting feature of their gas plumbing is that appliance isolation valves have to include a feature to automatically cut off the supply in the event of excessive gas flow, like if the appliance falls off the wall and gas pipe breaks off. Kind of like a gas MCB ;-)
On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 13:39:26 +0100, Dave Plowman
The fact is prices for domestic consumers (indeed, all consumers) dropped very significantly following the liberalisation of the market. This really is something the british did well (excepting the wideboy door-to-door tactics of a few of the suppliers).
Having our own gas helps but others have their own supplies also (the dutch , danish, irish, etc.) The UK is set to become a net importer over the next few years - our gas is running out. We'll be getting gas from Norway (pipeline networks being joined just now) and from Russia via continental Europe (current interconnector moving to reverse flow and another is to be built). Prices will rise over the next few years to reflect the higher transport charges being incurred as we move to Siberian imports but the same is true for most EU countries.
AA
JS writes
IIRC, the only copper pipe size that is, is 10mm
Threads all appear to be our 1/2", 3/4" etc and are exactly compatible.
One of the waste-pipe sizes is.
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Ours too. I've lived in several C19th houses (with original water systems) and an early C20th house. Our present house was built in 1937 with hot and cold water systems. All the cold water systems come directly from the main.
We don't even have a header tank now since spouse installed a multipoint water heater but the lavatory cistern is still in place.
Mary
Mary
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