And to make it worse is like you are playing over the most laggy connection ever.
The only thing with more latency is IPoAC
Change the water pressure too
More water pressure = less hot Less water pressure = more hot
That’s cuz water that moves faster has less time to get hot
Take the handle off. There is a little collar that adjusts where the hot start/stops. Move it until desired range achieved. Takes a couple tries. Most contractors just leave it factory, which sucks. Some cities have regulations on how hot water can get when a house is sold too.
The sweet spot for my shower can be found by tapping the handle up or down with less force than a mouse click, like I think this moves it a micrometre.
Exactly how I do it. I start it running for a few second in the general middle spot, and tap it either way. It’s going to vary where that is summer or winter, but fortunately the handle isn’t too tight and I can get it with a few taps.
I had one shower in an apartment where the temp was set by twisting the round knob, but turned on by pulling out the whole thing. Perfection.
That’s not all. Once you get the temp just right, the plumbing starts to heat up and the temp changes gradually over the course of the shower, so you have to adjust it as you go.
Also the hot water layers in the hot water tank
Are thermostatic shower mixers not a thing where you guys live?
This is a thermostatic shower mixer. This is what happens when they seize up with limescale. This is not normal operation. The cartridge needs to be replaced.
Are you sure about that? I don’t see any numeric temperature settings. Every thermostatic mixer I have ever seen as at least a 38°C/100°F setting.
And also people are talking about the temperature creeping up during the shower due to the pipes heating up… That doesn’t happen on a thermostatic mixer.
But I guess limescale could seize it up… I have just never experienced that, and the water is very hard where I live…
This was my favorite thing about visiting Europe, and no, most Americans have no fucking clue what that is.
Just because it doesn’t have temperature markings doesn’t mean it can’t maintain a constant temperature (selectable from a wide band). These are mechanical devices without any electronics. They work by maintaining the pressure ratio you set between the hot and cold supplies. When they seize up they become “100% cold or 100% hot, no in between” devices. In other words, a cold/hot toggle switch.
The ones I’m talking about doesn’t just keep the pressure ratio static, they actually adapt to the temperature of the hot and cold water.
If the hot water drops in temperature, then the output water stays at the right temperature, but the output pressure might drop, as the mixer allow more of the hot water through, and less of the cold water.
Of course if the hot water drops below the set temperature, it can no longer maintain it’s temperature.
And yes these are also entirely mechanical, no electronics or even electricity.
If the hot water drops in temperature
There’s not much reason for that to happen unless the building’s water heater has failed or is undersized. I have had that happen once in the decades I’ve lived at this house and it was a simple matter of turning the handle up a bit hotter.
Otherwise, the effect thing you described (the mixer lowering the pressure to maintain a constant output temperature, assuming the hot water supply is constant temperature) works just fine. I have never had the water suddenly become unexpectedly hot or cold after the initial warmup phase.
There’s plenty of reasons for that to happen, but it depends a lot on how your heat source works.
Most regular furnaces will heat up the water quite high, and just leave it at that temperature, and as soon as the water temperature is about to drop, it starts heating again, therefore the temperature rarely changes, unless you have used up all the hot water (teenagers running long and hot showers for rather long, or just many people showering in short succession).
But many newer smart furnaces, and especially heatpumps will change the amount of hot water available depending on demand, and even dynamic electricity costs.
I have a modern heatpump which both controls the temperature and amount of hot water depending on usage patterns, as well at optimizing for heating up the water when the electricity is cheap. Just today electricity is 5x as expensive at 20:45 as it was at 15:00
This means that the hot water temperature and volume can change quite significantly, depending on the time of day and the electricity cost.
Right now I can see that my hot water is only 45.7°C/114.1°F, which fits well because no one in the house is usually showering at this time, and the hot water is only used for washing up and washing hands.
In the morning the hot water tank will likely be around 55-60°C/131-140°F, because that’s when people are usually showering, and the electricity is usually cheaper during the night hours.
Having a thermostatic mixer that can be set to a fixed temperature, regardless of the input hot water temperature is quite nice in this case.
Where I live it’s against building code for hot water to be kept below 60C, due to the potential for growth of water-borne pathogens. A hot water tank that allows water to fall to 45C would not be allowed. In practice, the companies who supply water heaters set them much higher than 60C to avoid the risk of water cooling below that temperature during extended power outages.
Thermostatic mixer valves use a (typically mechanical) thermostat to automatically control the hot/cold valves to maintain the desired output temperature – regardless of fluctuations in hot/cold water temp.
My apartments hot water supply is really hot, so the band is still pretty narrow.
All hot is about 60° C, so you need comparatively little hot water, at least in relation to every other place I’ve showered…
Mines just a valve that controls the flow of hot vs tap water, I know this for a fact cause I installed it myself. Mind you that doesn’t give away the daisy chained together nature of my water hook up but hey it works.
Nope. I hadn’t even heard of them until a few days ago, when someone from a different country than mine mentioned them, so I went searching the web to figure out what they were. I’m so jealous!
You forgot to mention that it’s dynamic and changes throughout the course of the shower based on how hot the water is in the tank 🤬
Sounds like you need to drain your tank and also should probably check the sacrificial anode while you’re at it.
Thank you, kind sir!
I have no idea why thermostatic mixer valves never caught on in most of the world.
Most showers here in Germany gave it nowadays, but they rarely put it in the faucets and the water in our apartment is steaming hot. Burned my hand more than once on accident.
Of course no one has ever done this joke better than Suzy Izzard
Thank you for posting this so I didn’t have to. Genuinely every time I struggle to get a shower to the right temperature (so, you know, every time I shower) I hear this bit in my head.
Also, I didn’t realise she was going by Suzy now. Good for her!
I realized recently that there’s a good market opening for universal shower valve handle extenders if anyone wants to change their job title to “inventor” and potentially make anywhere from -$20,000 to $1,000,000.
I’m renting, I’m not doing anything to fix the plumbing here but I definitely looked to see if anyone sold a widget that would make it marginally easier to dial in the shower.
My shower has a thermostat and I can just set the temperature and go.
You bastard! I am so deeply jealous!
that’s an izzard bit!
of course we all realize, the fault is with landlords for buying the cheapest possible shower faucets. there are faucets that dont do this.
And the single knob/lever designs are just bad idea. I want two separate knobs for hot and cold water, that way I don’t have to get maximum pressure all the time. Sometimes being able to take a long warm shower without using a ton of water is great.
The shower at my apartment is like this, if I even so much as twist the knob more than half a millimeter, the temperature will swing wildly
I just burn the dirt from my skin
This meme doesn’t include the other factor when living with other people that they might run a tap elsewhere in the house or flush a toilet
Those shower valves are self balancing. Pressure will drop, but temperature doesn’t change.
Depends on the age of your house and if you’ve removed pressure restrictors and such.
My old house we had to be careful AF, if you were showering and someone so much as turned on the dishwasher, you were going to freeze.
My new house has mixers and the fancy balancing, and also didn’t leak water through the walls, the wonders… i tell you
The hot water dial on my shower slowly turns itself off over there course of a shower, so I stick a latex glove between the dial and the tile so the friction keeps it from turning.
