showers
Do bathroom showers stimulate you?
Are you planning to update your shower? Perhaps you are completely renovating your bathroom from scratch and need to know what shower options are available. The range of products on offer is vast but here is a quick summary of what’s available and what is possible.
The only real question you need to answer is how much can you afford to splash out on your bathroom shower? The cheapest option on the market is the mixer shower. This takes water from your hot and cold system, mixes them in the faucet and supplies it to the shower head. Only problems with this type of shower are that it is only as powerful as the water pressure in your house and, if someone flushes a toilet, you get a blast of hot water from the shower. Fitting a thermostatic mixer or a pressure balanced mixer will cost more but effectively reduces or cuts out that temperature shock.
Electric showers have some great benefits. They only use a cold feed, so they don’t use up your hot water supply and they are economical since they heat the water as it is used. Low power electric showers are cheap but the water pressure at the shower head can be disappointing so buy the highest power you can afford. The down-side of electric showers is that they will never be as powerful as other types.
The ultimate shower must be the Power Shower. This is a thermostatic mixer shower supplied through an electric pump. Easily the most expensive option, this feeds water at breathtaking and stimulating pressure.
If you are replacing an existing shower, the amount of work you will have to do will depend on what you have already and what type of shower you want to move up to. Replacing one electric shower with a more powerful model is very straightforward. You may only need to adjust the mounting holes, the cold water feed and the electrical feed by a small amount to accommodate the new heater module.
Adding a thermostatic mixer to an existing mixer shower is generally a wrench job, although you may need to fit new center-adjusters to hold updated water filters. Any other upgrade; electric or mixer shower to power shower will need some pretty major surgery to the plumbing system and also to your wall tiles, so be prepared to budget accordingly.