Tuesday, September 23, 2008

548 - Thermostatic thingy

Stop laughing, it's not funny! I thought I would get that out of the way up front.

So I'm in the shower. A shower that has 'thermostatic shower mixer valve'. That's a valve that keeps the temperature of the water constant no matter how many toilets get flushed around the house. You may lose a little pressure but the temperature doesn't change. Most of the time.

I knew this valve was going bad because I was having trouble getting a good setting. A good setting to me is a little on the warm side while the water is beating on my back and I pretend that I'm back in bed and I really didn't have to get up.

So I'm standing there pretending the water is warmer than it really is when it happens. The valve 'goes out' all the way. And when it did it shifted all the way to the hot side. No warning. Bam! Hot!

Now remember I'm facing away from the shower head so the on/off lever is behind me. And I'm in a 32" square shower stall. The only good thing is that I have a shower curtain rather than a glass door. Because you would not believe how fast I got out of that shower stall. Bam! Out! Now!

My advice from this. If you have a 'thermostatic shower mixer valve', and it starts acting up, REPLACE IT IMMEDIATELY! Which I finally did today. Now go back and reread the first line of this post.

4 comments:

Amanda said...

I'm not laughing....just giggling.

My parent's house here in Brisbane has this digital thingi that sets the temperature. The problem is that the thing is shared for kitchen and bathroom use and you have to remember to press 'transfer' if its on the kitchen mode. Otherwise, same thing like what happened to you! Although, I always stick my hand in first. Bit dangerous with Aaron around though....the owners of this house never imagined a little one in it!

Bilbo said...

You didn't need to replace it...just adjust the thingamajig on the flabbin grommet while holding the frammistat with a torque wrench and tightening it up to 14 angstrom-drams. Presto!

Mike said...

That thingamajig is lucky it's still alive. I just about ripped all the plumbing out of the wall right after the incident.

John A Hill said...

I'm just shaking my head, drinking my coffee and wondering how I'm going to get the image of Mike ripping through the shower curtain to get out of the scalding shower out of my brain.