• fulcrummed@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    In seriousness, it’s often about water pressure and how your hot water is fed. If you have very high water pressure normally but a solar hot water system where gravity and input pressure play a role, you’ll naturally have an imbalance on hot and cold. When you turn the handle on the shower you’re lining up two holes in the shower cartridge (in the handle) with the two hot and cold water pipes, the resulting mix comes out a third hole which feeds the shower head. As you turn the handle, one hole opening gets smaller and the other bigger- thereby changing the ratio of hot : cold. When you already have a huge pressure of cold water pumping in, the degree of rotation needed to go from warm/almost just right to PURE HOT WATER is minuscule. Usually the cold will stay pretty cold for about half of the handle range of motion too.

    If water input pressure being high is a problem you can put a reducing valve on your system overall or you can buy Venturi style pumps which add pressure into your hot water system.

    You’ll normally find when it’s pressure imbalance that it’s easier to balance the temp when the tap isn’t open full bore. But who wants a weak-ass shower stream!!

    • slippyferret
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      10 months ago

      When I first moved to Japan over twenty years ago they were already about a hundred years ahead of typical US toilet/bath technology. For me, using one of these faucets where you can just set the temperature by number was like Liko getting beamed from her hut directly onto the damn Enterprise.

      • Synapse@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Growing up in rural France, we had these at home for as far as I can remember. They may not have been the norm 30 years ago, but at least common.

      • spooky2092
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        10 months ago

        Interesting, so it adjusts the flow of hot/cold in the fly to keep a consistent temp? That’s amazing, thought I imagine it would have the same issue I have at the end of the shower where it’s on 100% hot just to eke out a bit more time

        • desktop_user [they/them] Banned
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          10 months ago

          seems like a smarter solution than what one house I lived in did of just oversizing all the plumbing and having a recirculating hot water pump (probably could help prevent freezing, but it only got to -40 once or twice there) so you could run all faucets, the washer, and the dishwasher and still have pressure at the furthest shower.

      • Synapse@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        These things existe for at least 30 years, I don’t understand why anyone would want to use anything else for a shower or bathtub.

          • Synapse@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Definitely not :) I had to get it replaced at my flat this year. There is a filter inside that can get block if you have hard water or debris.

              • Synapse@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                Don’t let that stop you getting the ultimate shower experience! My parents also have water with very high calcium at their house and I don’t think they had any problems with the faucet in the past 15 years.

                I live in a rented place, they were doing repairs to the heating systems, several times we had brown water coming out the tap. I bet they installed the cheapest option, plus the debris in the water, this fucked it.

                Just invest in a good thermostatic faucet and never look back !

    • Decq@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I really don’t understand how this is still not the standard everywhere… The cheapest ones aren’t even that expensive and already way better than the alternative… Don’t think I’ve not showered with one of these in the last 25 years, except for in some kind of social housing projects homes.

  • Shardikprime@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Okay I’m gonna be real. I didn’t understand the meme at first and thought you were showing a melted door handle and the guy in the meme was trying to melt another door handle with his mind

    I was fully prepared to read a bunch of comments about how are door handles so sensitive to heat due to their metallic composition and how you absolutely cannot melt things with your mind that the actual comments tripped me

  • Blass Rose@pawb.social
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    10 months ago

    Set your water heater lower. Like: make sure it’s above 120 at all times (130+ preferably) to prevent legionnaire’s, but 140 is PLENTY for most home uses. And it means you get a bigger range to move your mixer taps to.

  • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The cartridge is likely bad. They get clogged up with lime scale over time and start to perform worse and worse. Either replace the cartridge or the whole faucet itself.

  • drhodl@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    You should just move to a more tropical area. Where I live, I only ever use the “Cold” tap and sometimes, even that is too warm.

  • Angry_Autist@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Because it is hard to make a cheap valve that has a wide mixing ‘sweet spot’.

    Rich people showers don’t have this problem

  • 2piradians@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    So there are lots of good answers, but there’s one I haven’t seen: The type of shower control in the photo is probably low quality, cheap, meaning the internal parts do a poor job of mixing the hot/cold water.

    Adjusting the water heater may help, but you might also consider upgrading the shower faucet.

  • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
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    10 months ago

    Come to Japan (and, so I’ve heard, several European countries) where we have a temperature setting on the tap. Mine caps at 40 by default, but you can press a little button and make it hotter if desired (up to however hot your water heater puts out).

  • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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    10 months ago

    My kitchen faucet is like this. It’s one of those with single little stalk to regulate both temperature and pressure. Not only do you need to get it precisely right for the correction temperature, you also need to get it right for the pressure. Not far enough up and you get a little drizzle, too far and it splashes everywhere. And the stalk is kind of sticky as well, as you push it there is no movement until suddenly it moves. So making small adjustments is really hard