I need to repair a Mira shower spray handset if possible - looks like this:
It's got water pouring out one edge - probably a duff O-ring - does anybody know whether you can get inside the beasts to fix? I can get the rotating circular piece off the outside but any more looks tricky.
Reasonably posh handset and in ohterwise excellent nick so would rather avoid binning it
Thanks David
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Dont even try. I've had three of them and on mains pressure they blow the O-ring in about 5 seconds flat.
Not fit for purpose.
Gave up and fitted a cheapo.
Other showers have old fashioned retro metal heads with no fancy adjustment and work fine. I vary the spray using the taps.
Those things are designed to get the best out of a crap shower with limited water and bugger all pressure.
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After removing the outer ring just unscrew the main plate in an anti-clockwise direction. It will feel quite stiff but should move.
There are 4 O-rings inside separating the concentric flow areas - that's why it's quite stiff to unscrew. It's possible that one of them might have split but when mine developed the same problem it was due to a small split in the plastic body and I had to replace the whole thing.
Spare O-rings should be available from Mira (part no.41137). Google came up with a place selling a set for about £3 but wanted £12.50 delivery which comes out nearly as much as a new handset. You might find a better deal on Ebay.
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Mira are fairly good. I made mine last nearly 20 years at mains pressure with the help of the very nice, and knowledgeable, lady who answered the phone at Mira. This was about once every 5 years and always, luckily, the same lady.
If you can get it apart, they can supply you the spares needed. Then you can fix it. Go with what Mike says. TNP I think may be mistaken in his generalisations. HTH N
Same here - with the added benefit that when the cheapy's O-ring went about five years later it was easy to take apart - there's an obvious screw. New O-ring and away it goes again.
Others have said how to get it apart. If it's an O-ring, you're OK, but there are boot-seals farther inside the works that have perished in the one I have. I tried Mira for replacements and got this response:
Thank you for your recent email. Although the 'O' seals that fit to the inside of the sprayplate are available as spares, parts housed beneath the flow divertor - including the boot seals you seek - are not. Everything beneath the flow divertor is factory-set and cannot be reassembled by hand, hence why the components you seek are not made available as spares. As such you will have to replace the shower head on this occasion.
which didn't please me...
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I think the bin beckons! but as you seem to have experience of this shower head - does it definitely come apart as described above? I'm rotating anti-clockwise as directed, and it's indeed pretty stiff (I can hear/feel a protesting squeaky rubber seal inside) but it just keeps turning. I'd assume it's undismantlable as others suggest, except that your experience sounds otherwise?
Thanks David
Mine did, but only to get to the O-rings. As Jón Fairbairn has noted you can't do anything to the internal spray divertor unit.
Sounds right. You should have about 1/3rd of a turn corresponding to switching between the 3 different spray patterns and then it gets very stiff. When you overcome the initial stiffness it should move quite easily and come apart after about one whole turn.
That seems odd. Perhaps the O-ring is stuck and stopping it coming apart. Try giving it a hard pull or prising it off after a couple of turns.
There's probably nothing you can do to fix the flow divertor which is built in to the main part of the handset but you can change the spray plate and O-rings. I've put a couple of pages from the installation manual on Flickr:
Since you say that you have water pouring out of one edge I'd expect that you have a problem with the largest diameter O-ring, but it might be the casing that's cracked like mine was (after about 10 years of use) in which case it's probably for the bin.
I'd expect any problem with the (non repairable) divertor would just result in you not being able to select the desired spray pattern rather than leaking round the edge.
Another point to note is that some models of the Response shower were supplied with interchangeable high and low capacity spray plates . My shower had the low capacity plate as did the replacement I got from B&Q. If you replace yours and the plate is different you might want to swap it over from the original so don't bin the old one too soon.
Many thanks for the further input. Looking closely at the shower head and your manual, the spray patterns are actually very slightly different and so they are evidently different models - anyway I just went for broke, more out of interest than anything else really - and predictable the whole thing burst apart in a flurry of broken bits of polystyrene. There was clearly no way of dismantling it properly, and how bloody irritating is that? I'd have expected more from a company like Mira.
Looking at my bits, the original leaking problem was exactly as I'd envisaged - two O-rings have come adrift - but otherwise there's nothing wrong mechanically anywhere, that wasn't cause by my recent application of brute force.
David
Yes, I'd have expected better from them, the replacement I bought last year was the same construction as the original so it doesn't look like they've pruned down the design of the Response head but I don't know how their other models compare. Could it have been a Mira lookalike?
Mira do seem quite keen on non-serviceable bits though. The thermostatic mixer and control cartridge is designed as a non-serviceable unit costing over a hundred quid (or more if you get it direct from Mira). Ours developed a problem which left it running full flow even with the knob turned to "off". I was about to order up a replacement when our friendly local plumber said he'd taken one to bits before so it was worth a try on the grounds that we couldn't make it any worse. After prising off numerous snap on bits of plastic and springs and re-lubricating with silicone grease he got it going and I had nearly another couple of years out of it before having to get a new cartridge. If the unit hadn't been flush mounted into the wall I could have just replaced the entire shower for the same cost or less but would have had to rip off several tiles to do that.
Showerspares on the net somewhere used them last year for Mira bits and cheaper;)./..
Excellent unit's, had a couple some 10 years now and work fine apart from one where the brushes did the motor armature a power of no good;!..
This site has given me the clue to > In article , Mike
My mira response shower head was dropped in bath and has come apart showing two springs and a cross thread screw on the spray part. Is it beyond putting back together? I have tried to no avail!
I think a plastic bit normally splits where a screw fixes it together and needs a part replacing. I do hate plastic engineering myself. I do not have one of these, but a neighbour did. Brian
I don't know if it helps but the Mainenance section in this guide shows an exploded diagram of that shower head which might help with putting it back together.
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