Remote control shower mixer - anyone using one?

I stayed in an airbnb that had one. It was the usual electronic thing, a remote keypad with some buttons with at best hieroglyphs but no instructions, and at best a beeper and maybe an LED for output. I pressed the buttons, randomly. When that didn't work I held them down in random combinations. First it wouldn't turn on when you wanted a shower. Then it would turn itself on when everyone was elsewhere, risking a flood. This happened several times.

I found the isolator switch in the airing cupboard and left it off for the landlord to sort out.

I may have put it into some kind of weird mode, maybe a 'pause' mode where it would stop the water and then start of its own accord later. Of course there was no display or anything to indicate what was going on. But there's really no excuse for the water to turn on unexpectedly.

I can't remember what brand it was, but one of the major ones.

If it was my house I'd be ripping it out and replacing it with a mechanical dial.

(I suppose there's one benefit in that you can fit one somewhere you have water overhead but no pipes in the wall to fit the mixer. But that can be fixed by just adding a false wall with some studwork to contain the pipes)

Theo

This is probably not very helpful but we have a Mira Activate Digital shower which can be remotely controlled by Bluetooth. Since me and domestic management seem to like the same settings flow and temperature wise having manually set them it is just a case of pressing the tit and away it goes and as you say at best it only saves about 30s which is probably the time it would take me to find the phone open the app and do what is required. So it is a feature we simply have not used.

If you are wanting a recommendation then I can tell you that we are very happy with the performance.

Its like those adverts 'think how much better your life would be with remote controlled blinds'

Bad mistake. I thought and realised it was probably the last thing on my list of wants and absolutely not on any list of needs.

Sometimes its tech for the sake of it.

Which is why my microwave has no rotating platter, just a heat level and a timer.

Golly. I just reach in and turn the shower on, go about my morning business for 2 minutes, by which time the hot water has fed through, and shower,

Only remote controlled things is my Pi controlled central heating, as it gives me far more flexibility than s straight timer and is a bloody sight easier to program (and doesnt lose its settings after a power cut)

Looking at pictures and from what I can remember of the controls, I think it was an Aqualisa iSystem. From the instructions there is a Boost mode, and I think what happened was the Boost mode actually stopped the water. After 20 minutes the shower is supposed to turn itself off, but it appears that timeout actually turned the shower back on. That's a very bad bug.

One factor that made it much worse was that it was a dual head device (ceiling rose and hand shower) and that direction was controlled via electronics, so the randomly turning on happened to have it in hand shower mode, and if the hand shower wasn't pointed into the bath then it would spray whatever it happened to be pointing at (ceiling, floor, etc). If it did that when we were out that would have been a serious problem - it was just by chance that we heard the water running upstairs when everyone was downstairs.

Theo

The platter is needed as the microwaves are uneven. I think that all microwave ovens (apart from the very first) either have a rotating platter or something that "stirs" the microwaves.

I agree that you only need the two knobs to control it, in fact I always leave the power setting at maximum, as the only need for lower power is for defrosting, which microwaves don't do very well as they don't heat frozen water very well.

Something that stirs the microwaves yes. A rotating platter, no

They work juts fine if you pulse it and leave it off for long periods for the temperatiue to equalize. You cannot 'fast' defrost

My neighbours have one (principally because she has limited mobility) but he says it's useful avoid getting the initial cold water hit you when turning a manual valve on ...

Thanks to all so far.

As I read it, the major benefit is for someone of limited mobility so they can get everything running, and up to a safe temperature, before they/we totter into the shower.

So worth considering because we are planning for the next 10+ years, but also possibly to reserve as an option in a few years time.

Cheers

Dave R

I'll stick to the thermostatic shower valve and head on a flexible hose

- turn the head to the side, turn on, wait a few seconds for the flow to suddenly increase a bit as the hot water arrives and the cold begins to be added, then turn the head to spray over me. Simple and effective.

FWIW, I find the 'Chaos' defrost setting on my Panasonic microwave seems to work perfectly - on bread at least.

Quite. I'm not understanding how limited mobility makes that a problem. Certain types of mental health/illness, maybe.

Balance problems ...

Ah, yes, thanks.

If that's a concern I'd look at putting additional valves outside the shower. Without the water flowing, set the thermostatic shower valve to the appropriate position (get one with a scale in degC not just '1 2 3'), step out of the shower and open the outside valves. Water starts flowing while you are out of the shower and gets up to temperature. Have shower. When you are done, turn off the thermostatic valve, exit the shower and turn off the valves outside the shower.

If you want to be fancy about it, you could use electric valves as for central heating zones connected to a switch (maybe a big red emergency stop type switch). But having a regular thermostatic valve downstream means it's impossible for software to cause a flood or a scalding, and no need to wrestle with awkwardly designed buttons to set the temperature.

In particular, if you get a thermostatic valve where the temperature setting is separate from the flow setting (so the temperature can be left set to the desired value most of the time) you may find you can just use the external controls for water on/off and never touch the temperature.

Also insulate pipe runs so water is less likely to get cold in them and you have to wait less time running through cold legs.

I did once have an electric shower with a digital display and preset buttons that could be programmed with temperature, one for each user. That was nice, but largely because it was thermostatically controlled and sophisticated enough to avoid the usual cold-hot-cold-hot dance you get with standard dumb electric showers.

Theo

Theo on a digital shower you do not have any valves. You have a controller which you set temperature , flow rate, which shower head or both if you have a dual system, all you do is press the button and away you go. As for how quick the shower achieves the set temperature depends on length of pipework with ours being less than a Metre from our combi and with about 2m of pipework to the shower heads it is a matter of seconds.

Richard

You do have valves, but they're just inside the electric valve block which you install (typically) in the loft above the shower. Big Clive has a teardown:

My suggestion is you can acheive the roughly same thing in an analogue way without using software, apps, internet connection ('security updates until

Theo

I know about the internal valves, it is a mixer after all. My point was that there are no user operated valves if you exclude the two service valves on the hot and cold inputs.

As for comparing digital over analogue shower control whatever floats your boat, for me there was not much choice since we have a Combi boiler and no hot water tank. So it was digital or electric and my experience of the latter is poor flow and a lot of fiddling so convenience and good flow won out.

Can you not use a mechanical thermostatic mixer with a combi boiler? Is there something about the flow rate from the combi or the on-demand nature that means a traditional mixer is out?

If it's not an option then I suppose an electronic thermostatic mixer has some appeal (if you can avoid the IoT stuff). But surprised that an analogue one can't handle it.

Theo