You don’t realize how much you rely on hot water until you have a luke warm shower on a cold winters day. No one likes to wake up on a cold morning to find there is no hot water!If you have a family, your children are sure to tell you and nag you until it gets fixed. And I visited one such family this week!
The issue was when both showers were on and the mixer was turned on to hot, it only produced luke warm water. After inspecting the hot water unit, a tempering valve had been installed and it was faulty. By changing the dial settings of the tempering valve, we realized that it didn’t do anything to the temperature of the water.
A tempering valve is a valve that must be installed on all hot water systems to temper the hot water to bathrooms. It is set at a maximum of 50 degrees Celsius. A tempering valve is a safety requirement to ensure that a child does not scald themselves when they turn on a hot water tap.
A tempering valve is only usually applied to the hot water connected to the bathrooms and this was why hot water was reaching the kitchen mixer downstairs but not the bathrooms upstairs.
The reason tempered water is not connected to kitchens is because hot water is needed for washing up and to kill bacteria. Often, though, tempered water can be piped to the kitchen as most people generally use dishwashers to wash their dishes.
Replacing a tempering valve is an easy installation. Most older households don’t have one installed because they weren’t around back then, but newer houses must have one installed in order to get a plumbing clearance certificate for their property.
Most instantaneous gas hot water systems don’t require a tempering valve as they are already set to 50 degrees Celsius at manufacture.
Have you ever experienced no hot water in your household? What did you do?
