Long[ish], large bore shower hoses, why not?

[Jim K..]

Has anyone asked why you need one? That's often a large part of why "no-one" sells them...

[Jim K..]

(You think he means Shetland pony?)

[Chris Green]

I can find lots of large bore (11mm or 12mm) shower hoses, I can find lots of 'long' (2.5 or 3 metre) shower hoses, but I can't find any long large bore shower hoses. I'd have thought if you have a long hose it's more likely to need to be large bore!

Can anyone suggest where I might find a large bore 2.5m shower hose?

[Harry Bloomfield]

Chris Green formulated on Thursday :

I thought long ones were illegal? I heard something about they hadn't to be long enough, to be able to dip them under the water - chance if the water went off, the could syphon foul water back into the mains..

[spuorgelgoog]

This is 2 metres

Could you use a coupler to join two lengths?

They also say "We are able to supply special size shower hoses in any length up to 4 meters to special order. Please contact us to enquire." They do 11mm bore in 2 metres.

These people have a number of bores and lengths and say " we are a real company with a real factory where we make and design our products, just south of Birmingham in Redditch" so might be able to handle a custom job:

Owain

[Chris Green]

Anything from a metre up would quite happily dip into the water in our bath (it's an 'over bath' shower I'm dealing with).

There seem lots of 2.5 and 3 metre long hoses, just not large bore ones.

[John Rumm]

You could always fit doublecheck valves in cases like that.

[Steve Walker]

They have to be short OR you need a double check valve.

In our case, as its fed from the loft tank, it is not going to syphon back into the mains under any circumstances, so we don't bother with check valves and the consequent flow reduction.

SteveW

[Brian Gaff]

Do you need it to give a shower to a large bore as well? I thought the fact that showers had a head that restricts water coming out might make a large bore a bit pointless? Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Eh, how does that work? Surely a small bore would just siphon it slower? Brian

[spuorgelgoog]

He /says/ it's for washing the dog :-)

Owain

[tabbypurr]

I had a shower that wouldn't work ok until it got a large bore hose & head with lots of holes. Until then the cold pressure was pushing back on the hot feed.

NT

[Chris Green]

We do have a horse but it wouldn't be that handy getting him up to the bathroom.

The whole saga in the two threads is because I wanted a handy 'spray on a trigger' head for the shower for hair washing and such.

First try was exactly that, a little trigger spray head, take off the normal head, screw on the little trigger one and off you go. The trouble is that the hose gets kinked with all the on-off of spray heads and it's a bit of a faff swapping heads all the time.

So, first thought was a quicker and easier way to swap shower heads but that seemed to be a bit of a non-starter.

Then I spotted the shower heads with an 'on-off' control, one of these would provide both a 'normal' shower head hung on the wall and a 'spray on a trigger' one. So I have ordered one of these.

The 'long large bore hose' is just to replace the one that kinks and, as we currently have a 2.5 metre long one and that's just right I was looking for another the same length. The 'large bore' bit is because this is a low pressure (tank in roof space, shower upstairs) system and thus minimising the resistance is a 'good thing'.

OK everyone? :-)

[Harry Bloomfield]

I have just rigged something up for washing the dogs outside on the drive, and it works quite well...

Our HW is open vented. In the downstairs toilet, long ago I replaced the hot and cold taps in the wash basin, with a single tap and installed temperature controlled mixer, so visiting kids couldn't burn themselves with our really hot HW.

Last year I bought a fold up dog bath I could use out on the drive, to avoid having to struggle with the dogs into the bath. I used it a couple of times carrying buckets of water, then this year I got the bright idea to add a clip on hose to the mixer tap. Makes it easy to fill their bath and rinse them off after their bath.

[spuorgelgoog]

When looking after two dogs, I found the lab was willing to go in the shower and have a warm wash.

The wimerarner refused (I think he hated the hissing noise of the electric shower) but was amenable to a cold hosepipe on the loggia.

Owain

[Harry Bloomfield]

[e-mail] formulated on Saturday :

The older male, border collie/newfoundland cross, has always been a fight to heave him into the bath, though he is much better now than he was. His much younger step sister, all BC, is difficult to keep out of the bath - she often jumps in or tries to, when I take a shower. She used to go missing - usually to be found asleep in the empty bath. Now the bathroom door is kept closed.

He is now getting a bit arthritic and too heavy for me to lift into the bath, so when I spotted a dog bath in a charity shop, I grabbed it. Brand new and unused, for 1/5th retail price.

It's made from an heavy duty plastic sheet, with a tubular metal frame to support it and one end drops down to allow a dog to just walk in and not cramped when they are in. It all folds down to fit in a quite small carry case. Much easier washing them on the drive and they don't soak the house with spray as they shake themselves.

[Marland]

My 88 year old mother is getting to the stage where lifting her medium sized dog in and out of the bath is getting quite difficult,she is fortunate in that some kind neighbours take it out for exercise now she cannot but it does mean the dog sometimes comes back grubby if it has been playing with their dogs in a field. On Friday we spotted one of these in a pet supplies shop.

Looks a bit gimmicky to me and not all dogs would obligingly yet use it but I wonder if anyone has used one or knows somebody who has. A previous dog used to love being pressure washed which we discovered by accident when he started attacking the jet of water, turned it down to minimum and kept away from the eyes when washing him though the silly bugger would still playfully bite the water jet. At least he got clean teeth.

GH