Don’t get me wrong - I have Big Love for most things British, but I’m really confused about their sinks. It seems like they all (or almost all) have two separate faucets, one with blisteringly hot near-boiling water and one with numbingly cold near-frozen water, and only your defenseless hand to act as a mixer.
Why not put both streams through a single faucet, like we do here in the good ol’ US of A? That way you can get water temperatures anywhere along the spectrum. Is there some sort of advantage to or secret British technique for using these dual faucets???
The thing is we don’t have faucets over here. We have taps. But other than that I have no idea why they don’t merge. It seems to be a standard in bathroom sinks but in the kitchen we use the type that merges.
We did this discussion a while back but I think it may have been lost when the board went down.
The reason that we have separate taps(faucets) is that originally there was no such thing as a mixer tap(faucet), so you had to put the plug(?) in the sink(basin), mix the water to the required temperature, then wash your hands. If your hands are very dirty, then washing them becomes a two-stage process; washing first in soapy water, then rinsing in clean.
Then along came mixer taps(faucets), but they didn’t fit on all existing sinks(basins) as the hot and cold feeds were at opposite sides, so there wan’t much of a market for them; because there wan’t much of a market, there wasn’t much point in anybody stocking large quantities of them, and so on.
People are much more interested in home renovation and decorating nowadays and things are changing - mixer taps(faucets) are becoming more common, but for the bath, I prefer separate taps(faucets).
Undoubtedly the issue of back siphonage will come up in this discussion, but I’ll let somebody else tackle that.
We did this discussion a while back but I think it may have been lost when the board went down.
The reason that we have separate taps(faucets) is that originally there was no such thing as a mixer tap(faucet), so you had to put the plug(?) in the sink(basin), mix the water to the required temperature, then wash your hands. If your hands are very dirty, then washing them becomes a two-stage process; washing first in soapy water, then rinsing in clean.
Then along came mixer taps(faucets), but they didn’t fit on all existing sinks(basins) as the hot and cold feeds were at opposite sides, so there wan’t much of a market for them; because there wan’t much of a market, there wasn’t much point in anybody stocking large quantities of them, and so on.
People are much more interested in home renovation and decorating nowadays and things are changing - mixer taps(faucets) are becoming more common, but for the bath, I prefer separate taps(faucets).
Undoubtedly the issue of back siphonage will come up in this discussion, but I’ll let somebody else tackle that.
I am sure it had something to do with Britihs homes having seperate sources for cold and hot water. You are nto supposed to drink water from the hot tap in Britain as quite often (if it is a house) the water has at some point been stored in an open tank in the loft/attic/whatever.
That’s right; that is the back-siphonage issue; many hot-water systems rely on a hot tank with a cold header tank in the loft which, even if it was covered, could be infiltrated by creepy-crawlies etc.
S it’s imperative that hot water, which may be unsafe for drinking, be isolated from cold water in case a drop in the cold pressure should draw potentially contaminated hot water into the cold pipes. This can be overcome by fitting a valve though.
I still simply don’t feel the need to have mixer taps although I have one in the kitchen*, but I never run mixed water from it (always hot first then cold), I used to travel a lot and nearly every hotel (including those in the UK) seems to now have mixer taps fitted, but I don’t see them as superior to individual hot/cold taps; just different.
*The only advantage of the mixer tap in the kitchen is that the spout is repositionable, so I can move it to fill either of the sinks.
OK, I have worked out one - just one - reason that it could be a Good Thing.
When you want cold water from a mixer that has already been running, you have to run the tap for a couple of seconds to flush out the mixed water. Multiply this by 70,000,000 every day, and that’s a lot of wasted water. Given the droughts Britain has been having (despite it bleedin raining all the time), this is not beneficial.
Plus thoroughly washing your hands under running water (probably) uses more water than putting the plug in, even if you do use two lots for a wash/rinse.
Actually, I’ve perfected the art of moving my hands very, very quickly between the hot and cold. It’s easiest if you alternate the hands (that is, have one under the other, one going L->R and one going R->L).
The only downside is that depending on the design of the sink(basin) and how hot the hot is (length of time under hot tap being inversely proportional to temperature) you can end up covering much of yourself and the nearby bathroom with water.
Still, it looks pretty impressive (though I say so myself); like a speeded up version of those 50’s handjives, but with water.
amanset is essentially correct. In the UK you shouldn’t ask “why,” you should ask, “since when?”
When hot water heaters were first invented, they did rely on an open tank in the attic or on the roof. The hot and cold streams were kept separate to ensure that contamination (for some reason there seemed to be a particular concern about dead bats) didn’t get into the entire system. The cold tap would always be potable no matter what died in your hot water tank.
AFAIK, this hasn’t really been a serious issue for 100 years or so. Nonetheless, British law requires all taps – even in the bathroom, I believe – to split the hot and cold water streams. (Many taps “cheat” by using a single tap that runs the two streams together just after they come out.)
Even though this regulation has long ceased to effect its original purpose, it’s maintained because it gives domestic plumbing manufacturers a monopoly. No other country in Europe has this law, so they’d have to produce a specially designed tap for the British market, rather than just shipping over their standard design, if they wanted to compete. I believe there have been complaints to the EU about this which seek to force the British to drop this regulation and open their plumbing market to competition.
These separate taps are seen occasionally in the US also.
What really gets me though: what’s with the spring-loaded taps that won’t stay on unless you’re holding them open (or the time-delay ones that aren’t much better)? How is one supposed to wash one hand at a time while the other hand is holding the tap open?