Shower faucet: output configuration, installation methods,

What are the signs to choose a faucet in the bathroom? Is it worth it, for example, to choose a shower mixer without a gander? What to look for when buying and how to properly install your chosen product? Let's figure it out.

Selection

Let's start with the criteria for choosing a sanitary appliance.

Output configuration

In the absolute majority of cases, the classic is optimal, the most familiar to us is the device with a separate gander and a shower head on a flexible hose with manual adjustment of the pressure and water temperature.

Why?

Here are the arguments:

• Faucets for shower without spout slightly cheaper due to a simpler design and are ideal for the cottage; but in a bathroom or shower in a house or apartment it is often necessary to take water in a flower vase, a bottle for drinking, or some other vessel with a narrow neck. To use for this shower head - the pleasure is below average.

To clarify: the mode switch on the watering can partly compensates for the absence of a gander. As a rule, in one of the modes it provides the possibility of hydromassage, producing a narrow stream of parallel jets with a large head.

• A variety of high-tech exotics (sensory products, mixers with a dosing unit or a thermostat) do not shine with maintainability: in case of a breakdown, you will not be able to repair or replace the failed node with your own hands. Buying a new mixer of the same type is a very expensive pleasure.

Mounting methods

There are only two of them - onboard installation on the edge of the bath and wall mounting. Let's compare them.

Tip: Plumbers with considerable experience, strongly recommend the reader to stay on the second option - precisely because of its high maintainability. Sooner or later, all sanitary appliances fail, and it is better that their repair does not require the dismantling of the bath.

Material

What can be made shower mixer with a watering can?

For the body are massively used:

• Brass. Absolute corrosion resistance of the metal is combined with moderate mechanical strength: it is relatively easy to break the threads on the brass body. In a humid environment, brass darkens over time due to oxidation of the surface, so it is often coated with chrome-nickel plating.
• Stainless steel is quality and strength without compromise; however, the price of the corresponding solutions may be 2–3 times higher than that of the brass mixer.

• Silumin - the exact opposite of stainless steel. The minimum cost is combined with extremely low strength, which does not always allow the product to survive the installation.

Hint: chrome silumin is apparently indistinguishable from chrome-plated brass. However, it gives a small weight of the body of the mixer: the density of metals varies three times.

• A white or colored ceramic body is an attractive but defiantly impractical solution. Ceramic faucet for a shower or bath creates a lot of problems with sealing the connection of ceramic and brass parts of the body; In addition, ceramics are afraid of rapid temperature changes with a significant delta.

Head and temperature control

The best solution for a bath or shower is separate hot and cold water taps with ceramic faucets.

Judge for yourself:

1. Unlike screw cranes, ceramics do not require maintenance (replacement of gaskets, sealing rings around rods or packing gland).
2. A mixer without a tap, with one lever for adjusting the temperature and pressure, would also seem to be not capricious. However, over time, as the development of silicone grease between the plates, the handle begins to rise and turn with noticeable resistance. Cranbooks with ceramic plates are devoid of this problem due to the small contact area of ​​the plates.

Switch to shower

A shower with a faucet that has a gander requires a switch. The best available option is the ball switch, which allows the handle to rotate 360 ​​degrees.

To argue our point of view, we again resort to arguments by contradiction, showing the shortcomings of competing solutions:

• Pushbutton switches with rubber valve stop switching water due to its wear or loss of rubber elasticity in hard water. Over time, scratches form on the metal valve, preventing it from tightly fitting to the seat.
• The problem of the lever switch, the handle of which is rotated by 45 - 60 degrees is the wear of the gaskets on the keg, which blocks the water to the shower or the gander, or guides in the mixer body, along which this keg moves.

The ball switch is practically not subject to wear and in normal mode it can work for decades.

Important: ceramic taps and ball switches are afraid of large suspensions. A simple instruction will help to get rid of them: install a pair of coarse filters at the entrance to the apartment after the valves.

Installation

Finally - a few tips on installing a wall mixer.

• The most comfortable height of the mixer in the shower (booth) is about 90-100 cm from the bottom of the pan.
• Above the bath the device with a fixed spout is installed at a height of 15 - 30 cm from its side.
• The holder for the watering can with the hose is fixed at such a level that the net is 20-30 cm taller than the tallest member of the family.
• Before screwing eccentrics into water sockets or corners, drive a pair of thin brass locknuts onto them. This will simplify the sealing of pipe threads.

• Tighten the flare nut of the mixer without distortion, alternately, 1/2 to 1 turn at a time.

Conclusion

We hope that our simple recommendations will help the reader in choosing and installing a new plumbing fixture. The video in this article will allow him to more clearly get acquainted with how to install a shower faucet with a flexible hose. Successes!