Taps and water pressure

Feb 07, 2006 7 Replies

Last Saturday, I spoke to the man behind the counter, of the place where I am going to buy my wash hand basin and loo. He tells me that the modern quarter turn taps can be difficult when supplied with low pressure water. Water getting from the hot supply to the cold, or the other way round. A plumber told me today, that they should work fine on tank fed water.



Who do I believe?



Dave


They will work, but unless you have a good head, the flow may not be very good - some don't open as far as conventional taps.

The bit about hot & cold mixing is nonsense, unless your feeds are at different pressures.

OK on that. I can understand it if the orifice is smaller than the taps I have been used to. Kitchen mixer is much the same, but this tap is fed from a smaller bore pipe than usual.

I didn't like to press this home, as I had just agreed £27-00 discount per set from him :-)

Dave

Kitchen taps are generally not "mixers" they just look like them. Normally the water goes up separate channels to the spout.

Some modern taps have very poor flow rates when fed with tank pressure rather than mains pressure.

If you're feeding a tap with cold water at mains pressure and hot water at tank pressure, it's important that the hot and cold have independent paths all the way to the discharge nozzle - rather than mixing further back in the tap. Maybe this was what the man behind the counter was saying? If the mixing takes place further back, the mains pressure cold can push the low pressure hot *backwards* up the feed pipe. I think you're supposed to fit double check valves to prevent that sort of thing anyway - but I'm not sure how many people do!

I have seen quarter turn taps that dripped when turned off holding back low presure tank fed water. However once the pressure was raised (shower pump) they shut off perfectly.

FWIW I've a quarter turn tap which is the exact opposite1

Regards Capitol

Noted, thanks.

That sounds about right from memory.

The counter man mentioned this as well. Many thanks for your input to my question. It looks like I will have to as at the plumbing supplier.

Regards

Dave

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