Showers

There are some key fundamental differences between these types of showers which we will summarise below.

Manual Showers are controlled entirely by the user, the water is mixed by the amount of hot and cold water the user lets through by turning the tap/s on. However, if another outlet, say a kitchen cold tap, is turned on elsewhere in the house then the amount of cold water reaching the shower is decreased, the then mixed water temperature can shoot up potentially scolding the user stood underneath it. For this reason we would not recommend using a manual shower valve for domestic showering purposes. These types of valves are ideal for shower heads on a bath to clean with, or installations in boot rooms.

Thermostatic Showers contain an inbuilt cartridge that will adjust the input of hot and cold water to constantly maintain the required temperature. If you set the valve to be 38 degrees and someone turns on the cold tap in the kitchen, the amount of cold is decreased to the valve, the cartridge will sense this and adjust the hot flow automatically to maintain 38 degrees, even if at a lower pressure.

These are the most common types of showers for domestic use and we highly recommend this type of valve rather a manual alternative.

Electric Showers only require a cold feed. The cold feed goes into the electric shower and is passed through a heated coil to make the showering water the required temperature. It’s sometimes more difficult to get the required pressure from these types of showers but they are useful in a multitude of environments and are becoming more and more advanced.

This will depend on the walls, what they are made of, and where the water comes into the room. To use a concealed shower you will either need to route the pipe work into the stud wall or if it’s brick it will need to be channeled out to allow for the pipework to be installed properly.

A concealed shower is one that has all the pipe work hidden behind the wall, shower heads and handsets appear to be hung on the wall with no visible connections.

An exposed shower has the valve on the side of the wall that the user is on, the valve is fully accessible and pipe work to connect the shower head, and handset is fully visible and a part of the shower set itself.

For more information check out our shower valve buying guide.