Which tap is which? [Matthew's Journal]

That's an awful pun.

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I missed it ... ?

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curig.livejournal.com

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wellinghall.livejournal.com

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emperor

I would have no idea which tap was which because in the US they have this habit of doing it the other way around to what I'm used to in the UK, and I am now so turned around and sideways by living one way and being brought up with another that I genuinely have no frame of reference at the moment. I suspect this will change when I am entrenched with good old-fashioned UK taps again.

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US plumbing code tends to have hot on the left, which matches most places I've lived in the UK.

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the-lady-lily.livejournal.com

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pellegrina.livejournal.com

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ashfae.livejournal.com

Our bathroom taps are one way and our kitchen tap the other... so I'd have no idea what the "usual" way is.

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Mine too.

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yrieithydd.livejournal.com

Thank you for the mixer taps option. You have saved me a rant. =)

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I hear you.

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emperor

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ashfae.livejournal.com

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gerald_duck

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jane-somebody.livejournal.com

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gerald_duck

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didiusjulianus.livejournal.com

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imc.livejournal.com

I have always understood that that there is a standard; I believe that it is Left = Hot and Right = Cold, but that might simply be what we have on the basin in our bathroom.

Even with mixer taps the controls abide by the left and right convention, even the single lever ones, turn to the left to get hot water, etc.

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My parents' static caravan had it different to what we had at home. At our house, the kitchen and bathroom sinks disagree. I'm not convinced there's anything more than a highly notional idea of a normal way round for them.

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A mixer tap doesn't solve the problem; it just replaces it with the question of which way to twist for hot and which for cold.

Often, mixer taps are innovative, stylish and ergonomic. Which is a shorthand for there being an even more confusing range of possible manipulations to choose from.

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We have one which is a joy-stick, which is fun but confuses guests. Also, it's broken.

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gerald_duck

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robert-jones.livejournal.com

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yrieithydd.livejournal.com

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jane-somebody.livejournal.com

Left = hot in this house. But then that's this house.

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I have wondered this in the past, but cursory inspection of my own and other people's plumbing (snerk) leads me to conclude that there is no standard. My bathroom is hot-on-the-left for both sink and bath, my kitchen is hot-on-the-right.

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Hot on the left, because most people are right-handed. You want the hot tap to be the one that takes more effort to turn on, even if it's just the small extra effort of reaching across diagonally, so that people are less likely turn it on accidentally and scald themselves.

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You mean, people don't turn the left tap with their left hand, and the right tap with their right?

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gerald_duck

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didiusjulianus.livejournal.com

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sashajwolf.livejournal.com

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jane-somebody.livejournal.com

Our house has cold-left, hot-right;

stripey_cat's parents' house has hot-left, cold-right. I think my mother's house has hot on the right, but couldn't absolutely swear to it. Unlabelled taps are wrong :)

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Grrrr mixer taps. The people who fitted the plumbing into our house fitted mixer taps that don't actually mix. The hot water comes out the left half of the tap and the cold water comes out of the right half of the tap. Also the cold water often comes out warm to start off with. I don't know *what* the pipework is doing and I'm not sure I want to know.

The imminent bathroom havoc will at least result in one decent mixer tap in the house. As it's right by the hot water tank, I hope we can sort out the hot/cold issue as well.

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Ahhh I had a tap like that at my previous house; it's just about the worst of both worlds.

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karohemd.livejournal.com

I know I've encountered both layouts, I *think* one is more common, but can't remember which, so I'm going by my bathroom (and saying I have no expectation); also I get confused with which is left and which is right and whether the tap on the left is the one I might reach for with my left hand or the one that would be my left hand if I were the sink or...

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I have no instinct at all for this. Left and right still confuses the hell out of me. I have remembered that the bathtap closest to me is hot, and work out all other taps in the bathroom by analogy to it. Other places, it's just trial and error.

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Read my answer as "left/right valve of the mixer tap" respectively. :P

As a continental European, it still surprises me that the majority of UK households has two separate taps (and those stupid water tanks in the loft). There's not a single house I've been to in Germany that doesn't have mixer taps (at least with two valves, not necessarily the funky one-handed ones) and that includes houses that were built in the 1930s and not updated since then.

Plumbing (incl. central heating) in the UK as a whole seems to be decades behind continental tech. I'm actually surprised all those Polish plumbers don't fall over laughing.

I clearly remember a conversation I had with one of my first RP groups over here (sometime in '96) during which I voiced my suprise about the water tank in the loft systems, stating that in Germany, the water supply is fed directly from the mains.
- Them: The mains pressure is too low.
- Me: Then increase the pressure.
- Them: Then there would be too much loss from leaks.
- Me: THEN BLOODY FIX THE LEAKS!

I found that this sort of attitude (fiddling with symptoms rather than tackling the causes) was typically British and I slowly learned to live with it.

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I hear your rant!

The (non) fixing of leaks, is I think down to trying to make some sort of profit, and the problem of the residents getting fed up with the continual digging up of the roads to find the leaks.

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karohemd.livejournal.com

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sigisgrim.livejournal.com

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smileyfish.livejournal.com

Although my current house has the right hand tap as hot I've encountered houses where they're the other way round. So I try not to assume.

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Ha, it's worse than that. The mixer tap on the bath has hot on the right and cold on the left. The single taps on the sink, less than 2 feet away, are the other way round.

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It does seem to vary quite a lot, but with a leaning to the one I voted for being the more prevalent.

If they were unlabelled I would either:
a. automatically (accidentally) assume it was the same as at home, and probably scald myself in the process, or
b. have my wits about me and proceed with caution, testing both gingerly

But always assume those single ones in public loos and the like are hot, scalding hot, and very fast flowing and splashy until you find out otherwise ;)

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Adrian and I agreed to get all the taps put the same way round with hot on the right in the remodeled bits of the house. However they are not consistent in the non-remodeled bits of the house. Except that on filling out the poll and asking Adrian and checking a couple if sinks, it turns out we actually have hot on the left and not the right. Which is confusing me now ;-(

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Every tap in our home is right=cold, left=hot. Every tap in every home that I've been in in America is right=cold, left=hot. Every tap in every fairly-newly-constructed place of business that I've been in as been right=cold, left=hot. I have, however, been in one place of business where the bathroom was pre-1920, and the taps were the wrong way around, which has lead me to believe that it has become standardised, but once was not, which accounts for the times when it is not right, or does not match.

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I found out about this when we were plumbing our bathroom - there IS a convention, and, from memory it is hot on the left and cold on the right (Oli may correct me)... However there are so many exceptions to the 'rule' it's probably only useful when doing new plumbing rather than when affronted with unknown taps...

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My grandparents 1930s house - L=C, R=H
My parents 1950s house - L=H, R=C
My 1890s house - L=H, R=C
My 1960s house - L=C, R=H

If I were faced with a pair of unlabeled and indistinguishable taps, I'd try them and see which one produced hot water.

Mixer taps are the work of Stan!

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All the taps in my house appear to have hot on the left (although you can approach the bath taps from either side — hot is on the left from the perspective of being in the bath). The kitchen tap is unfortunately unlabelled from the user's point of view, but I think specified hot on the left from the plumber's point of view.

The house I grew up in had the taps that way round in the kitchen, but had cold on the left in the bathroom. I always thought that was the better way round, because the toothbrush is in my right hand so it's the left hand that turns on the (cold) water.

I do hate it when I find myself brushing my teeth with warm water in a hotel room because I got the mixer tap setting wrong. It's not always obvious.

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