Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Living overseas

Whether you're considering emigrating or an expat abroad, you'll find likeminds on this forum.

Original poster

Mixer Taps in the UK

35 replies

DSMEZ · 17/05/2007 22:19

Can someone please explain to me why in the UK separate taps for hot and cold water in the bathroom are still very common??? Just curious.

OP posts:
expatinscotland · 17/05/2007 22:21

I don't know. I lived in Europe for a couple of years and saw lots of mixer taps.

emkana · 17/05/2007 22:22

I was puzzled by it as well when I first moved to the UK from Germany.

Nine years down the line I actually prefer seperate taps!

RustyBear · 17/05/2007 22:23

I think mixers are getting more common - I have them in my new bathroom, on both basin and bath & there seemed to be more mixers than separate ones when I was choosing them.

expatinscotland · 17/05/2007 22:24

Yes, em, I noticed they were the norm in France and Germany.

In fact, I never noticed taps being separate till I moved here.

Tamum · 17/05/2007 22:24

I can't remember the last time I lived in a house without mixer taps to be honest.

Original poster
DSMEZ · 17/05/2007 22:25

I love the fact that they have a special name "mixer tap". I thought taps were just taps before.

OP posts:
expatinscotland · 17/05/2007 22:26

We have one in the kitchen, but not in the bathroom.

The house where we've moving also has separate taps in the bathroom.

Just take it as par for the course here, but I'm not sure why this is so here and not in Europe.

suejonezwillsoonbeKewcumber · 17/05/2007 22:26

I'm a mixer girl - kitchen and bathrooms - don't get why you would scald or freeze your hands when washing them.

cece · 17/05/2007 22:28

Because if I want cold water I want it cold not warm. I can never get the mix quite right with mixer taps. If I want warm to wash my hands then I put a mix of hot and cold into sink and wash!

Original poster
DSMEZ · 17/05/2007 22:28

I'm used to it--just wondering why the Brits have clung on to them for so long.

OP posts:
Original poster
DSMEZ · 17/05/2007 22:29

Doesn't that take donkey's years though cece?

OP posts:
RustyBear · 17/05/2007 22:31

But if you just turn the cold side on you only get cold water, same as with separate taps

geekgrrl · 17/05/2007 22:32

'tis one of life's great mysteries

I think it's to do with the British obsession with 'original features' and anything that looks a bit old

first thing we ever did in any house we moved into was to install mixer taps

I remember being perplexed and amazed by separate taps on my first holiday to the UK as a teenager

emkana · 17/05/2007 22:33

I find with mixer taps that it's very difficult to get the temperature right.

geekgrrl · 17/05/2007 22:34

actually, it goes hand-in-hand with that other grrreat British idea of having windows which open outwards, thus preventing you from being able to clean them easily without the need for ladders, pulley systems etc.

emkana · 17/05/2007 22:35

I went on an exchange to the Uk as a teenager and the family had a rubbish rubber hose you attached to the taps in the bath. I was .

We do have mixer taps in the kitchen and on the bath, I must admit, and I like that.

Just not on the basin in the bathroom, which I prefer now for washing myself at night.

expatinscotland · 17/05/2007 22:38

When I first moved here, DH lived in a place that didn't even have a shower.

cece · 17/05/2007 23:09

no longer than it owuld for it to come out the right temp directly from the tap. And I can never get it right, either too hot or too cold... Like to mix it myself with separate controls.

noseynora · 17/05/2007 23:30

You used to be able to buy one of these rubber hose thingys but with an extra long hose for use as a sort of shower substitute. I had one - crap!
Maybe that's why we don't have mixer taps in the uk - you can't fit a rubber hose onto it .

noseynora · 17/05/2007 23:32

As opposed to the standard "hair washing" model that is..

sibble · 18/05/2007 05:06

ah the plastic shower hose, a blast from the past, they were great...run the tap too fast and they would blow off and flood the bathroom, don't run it hard eno9ugh and you couldn't get the shampoo out of your hair.

Re. seperate taps....now this is probably an old wives tale but I was bought up to only drink the water from the cold tap in the kitchen as it came from a main pipe and the water had been treated the hot tap and the bathroom taps came from a tank in the loft. the worry was that if it wasn't kept clean you often found dead birds etc in there!! I have always been paranoid about drinking water from anywhere except the kitchen cold tap. this would in theory explain seperate taps!!! PS I now live in NZ and we don't have mains water connection so have had to get over my fear of tank water but we do have an all singing all dancing filter system. just a suggestion.

KTeePee · 18/05/2007 07:27

I remember hearing that too sibble!

It's all mixer taps here - but mainly to save space as we have v. small bathrooms.

Re the shower thing expat - I remember trying to rent a flat with a shower (as opposed to just a bath) about 12 years ago and it was impossible to find one - the estate agents claimed it would be unusual to get one in a 1 bed flat - had to rig up one of those plastic shower attachments.... but then I remember when it was unusual to shower/bathe more than once a week....

scienceteacher · 18/05/2007 09:08

I used to frequent a website for American Expat in the UK, and this was such a popular and bewildering subject.

If you want a mixer tap, it is so easy to get one. If you want separate taps, they are easy to find too! There is a choice - hurrah!

BTW, historically, hot and cold water would not have necessarily at the same pressure, so extra technology (aka a static mixer) is required in a mixer tap to get it to work properly, which results in them being more expensive than separate taps. Kitchen taps, where there is a huge difference in pressure, unless you have high pressure hot water in your house, means that the two lots of water don't really mix very well at all - the stream is both hot and cold at the same time.

As for having warm water on demand in your bathroon, I don't think I have ever been in a bathroom where you don't have to let the hot water run for a bit before it actually appears, so it's very normal to wash your hands in just cold water after spending a penny.

expatinengland · 18/05/2007 10:08

I noticed the taps were weird when we moved to the UK while staying in a hotel before we got a house. I used to wash my hands in the bathtub to get warm water out of the same tap. The house has mixer taps...so that's what you call them..thank goodness. Why do so many places not have regular taps?

My grandmother had separate taps in her utility room (laundry room...also called side porch) but she died in 1972 when I was very young and her house was built in the late 1800s..very old in the US. She did have mixer taps in the kitchen and bathrooms, but I think she had remodeled a couple of times. Before moving over here that was the only time I ever saw them.

Now can somebody tell me why there are no screens on the windows in the UK????? Don't tell me it's because you don't have bugs, because wasps, bees and flies keep flying into our house. We would love to have the windows open more, but we're scared of DD getting bit so a lot of times we turn on the portable A/C we bought last July when it was so hot.

scienceteacher · 18/05/2007 10:18

Screens are ugly!!!

You could always get nets - twitch twitch!