By Patrick Gordon – Consultant
The question is often asked, why do I have to plumb balanced water pressure to my mixers?
In the olden days we never worried about balanced pressure. However, we forget that “in the olden days” we did not install mixer taps. Most installations were two separate taps.
The mixing took place in the receptacle that they emptied into. Then we started to fit mixing taps, especially in the showers. The showers were fitted with watering-can type shower roses that caused little to no flow restriction. This limited the amount of mixing that took place in the system.
All Images courtesy of SPLASHWORKS, proud distributor of the ICON brand of taps
But what has all this got to do with balanced water pressure?
The need for balanced pressure started when we wanted more and more pressure at the terminal water delivery points to improve user comfort and to experience the luxury of new and improved technology.
The result was that if the water pressure is not the same, the stronger pressure will always overpower the weaker pressure.
This results in poor user comfort. A small change in adjustment on the taps have a large resultant change in the temperature. This effect is even more drastic due to the water saving fittings that we fit so that we can to do our part in saving this priceless commodity called, water.
In the last 20 years we have done a complete change in the type of taps and mixers that we install. Most people are now fitting single lever cartridge type mixers.
These mixers cater for a variety of different functions and installation types. They also have excellent performance properties and user comfort. To enable these comforts a ceramic cartridge is used. The cartridge has two ceramic discs that are finely ground to give a perfect watertight seal as well as a smooth opening and closing action.
However as soon as there is an imbalance of pressure exerted on the sealing area, there is a high percentage of resultant damage that occurs. If your installation uses balanced water pressure you will eliminate this problem.
The other benefit of balanced water pressure installations is that now both the hot and the cold-water pipes and fittings are protected from dirt as the supply line has a strainer fitted as part of the pressure control valve.
Most unbalanced installations can be corrected in the time that it took for me to write this article. If you take the cost of your income that you sacrificed to take the time to read this article, you will find that to correct the installation would cost very little more.
So, all considered, the law says that we should do balanced pressure installations, but now we have some practical reasoning as to why we should do it.
For any further information on this topic please contact the writer: PA Gordon on patrickg@splashworks.co.za.
