Buying Taps from UK

Andy From Sligo

I got a bathroom basin from Woodies last week to replace our old one. 60euro for the basin with mono hole and pedestal. Good price. Tap or waste never came with it, so got the wife to ask how much a tap was for it and plughole. 70euro was the cheapest he could do for tap and a tenner for the plug hole. so I told her to leave it. That evening I went on Amazon UK website and found a monobloc basin tap for an unbelievable £7.00 UK pounds and free delivery to UK/NI so I used parcel motel and got delivery for €3.50. Even after reading in the description of the tap that these were for High pressure plumbing or plumbing with a pump and reading a minimum 1.0 bar required (i havent got a foggiest what our hot and cold bar reading from the tank is, and plus the header tank is up in the loft but its a bungalow we live in) well at that price of 7 uk pounds i weren't going to turn that price down and we only had the 2 separate hot and cold taps and i needed a monoblock tap for the new basin so I ordered it.

When it came, so impressed, it came with the flexible tails (I was sceptical it would come with them seeing as the price of the tap was so low) and all boxed with all its fittings and looked really good quality and nice looking, certainly didnt look 'cheap' and the chrome on it looks really good quality, but you guessed it and i guessed it (but hoped i was wrong) it had a pathetic stream of water coming out of it which all i can think is when i come to fill up the basin to have a wash your gonna have to run tap put kettle on and hop when you get back to it the basin will be full lol. - however I will stick with it cause im on a budget with doing the whole suite as cheap as possible. I have unscrewed the spout bit and i must say the water seems to come out more (it had one of those plastic aerator things that give oxygen to the water as it comes out, so i got rid of that) and as I say the water does appear to come out quicker.

But what does determine a high pressure tap to a low pressure one? - is it to do with the ceramic cartridges are they a diffferent size in a high and low pressure tap? is it the bore holes of the tap? (from what I can see on the Irish taps they have the same size diameter flexible tails as the UK ones). - is there anything else i can do to make the water more powerful apart from going down the expensive route and fitting a pump(s) to the house or header tank to raise up the Bar pressure? which i dont really want to do, and of course i cannot make the header tank any higher. Nor do I want to buy a new tap thats designed to run on low pressure as they are a fierce price. ALDI or LIDL sometimes have bathroom taps for €30 and they seem to run well on low pressure plumbing but its waiting for them to come on offer, and then managing to get them before they sell out but everywhere else seem up in the 60's and 70euro price mark starting off at. Any ideas? could i 'modify' this UK tap to run on low pressure any more than i have done? - I dont suppose there would be some kind of restrictor inside the tap at all could there be that i could take out? many thanks for any ideas.

Please I know all about 'you get what you pay for' and all that but because it was only 7.00 as opposed to 70euro i could not pass it by. If I have to live with it I will live with it, its still functional even if its not powerful enough. The offer is here if anyone else is interested in getting a cheap basin tap at that price:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Summer-Bathroom-Taps-Basin-Mixer/dp/B008L17EDQ

micks_address

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

I got a bathroom basin from Woodies last week to replace our old one. 60euro for the basin with mono hole and pedestal. Good price. Tap or waste never came with it, so got the wife to ask how much a tap was for it and plughole. 70euro was the cheapest he could do for tap and a tenner for the plug hole. so I told her to leave it. That evening I went on Amazon UK website and found a monobloc basin tap for an unbelievable £7.00 UK pounds and free delivery to UK/NI so I used parcel motel and got delivery for €3.50. Even after reading in the description of the tap that these were for High pressure plumbing or plumbing with a pump and reading a minimum 1.0 bar required (i havent got a foggiest what our hot and cold bar reading from the tank is, and plus the header tank is up in the loft but its a bungalow we live in) well at that price of 7 uk pounds i weren't going to turn that price down and we only had the 2 separate hot and cold taps and i needed a monoblock tap for the new basin so I ordered it.

When it came, so impressed, it came with the flexible tails (I was sceptical it would come with them seeing as the price of the tap was so low) and all boxed with all its fittings and looked really good quality and nice looking, certainly didnt look 'cheap' and the chrome on it looks really good quality, but you guessed it and i guessed it (but hoped i was wrong) it had a pathetic stream of water coming out of it which all i can think is when i come to fill up the basin to have a wash your gonna have to run tap put kettle on and hop when you get back to it the basin will be full lol. - however I will stick with it cause im on a budget with doing the whole suite as cheap as possible. I have unscrewed the spout bit and i must say the water seems to come out more (it had one of those plastic aerator things that give oxygen to the water as it comes out, so i got rid of that) and as I say the water does appear to come out quicker.

But what does determine a high pressure tap to a low pressure one? - is it to do with the ceramic cartridges are they a diffferent size in a high and low pressure tap? is it the bore holes of the tap? (from what I can see on the Irish taps they have the same size diameter flexible tails as the UK ones). - is there anything else i can do to make the water more powerful apart from going down the expensive route and fitting a pump(s) to the house or header tank to raise up the Bar pressure? which i dont really want to do, and of course i cannot make the header tank any higher. Nor do I want to buy a new tap thats designed to run on low pressure as they are a fierce price. ALDI or LIDL sometimes have bathroom taps for €30 and they seem to run well on low pressure plumbing but its waiting for them to come on offer, and then managing to get them before they sell out but everywhere else seem up in the 60's and 70euro price mark starting off at. Any ideas? could i 'modify' this UK tap to run on low pressure any more than i have done? - I dont suppose there would be some kind of restrictor inside the tap at all could there be that i could take out? many thanks for any ideas.

Please I know all about 'you get what you pay for' and all that but because it was only 7.00 as opposed to 70euro i could not pass it by. If I have to live with it I will live with it, its still functional even if its not powerful enough. The offer is here if anyone else is interested in getting a cheap basin tap at that price:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Summer-Bathroom-Taps-Basin-Mixer/dp/B008L17EDQ

When we were getting kitchen done i almost ordered a tap from the UK but installer said to be careful that if we didn't have high pressure it would result in a really slow flow from tap and we would need a pump... So we went with the free tap and it's fine..

dpofloinn

No there is nothing you can do to change the tap to low pressure. At a guess I would say the max pressure you have is 0.25 bar, normal operating pressure for your tap is 1bar so unless you pump the system ( ridiculous idea for the sake of one tap ) then you will have to just replace it with a low pressure tap decent one's can be got for about 70 to 80 euro.

Fyi if you are going online to buy low pressure taps beware that the British consider .5 bar to be low pressure

scudo2

Simple solution.
Raise the tank 30' = 1 bar.
60' better !

Andy From Sligo

scudo2 wrote: »

Simple solution.
Raise the tank 30' = 1 bar.
60' better !

is that feet? !

Andy From Sligo

i found out today that I unscrewed the spout from a mixer tap in the kitchen (again high pressure taps bought from another uk supplier) and I put in a normal rubber tap washer (with a small hole) into the spout bit, it fitted in there perfect, and now when I turn on the hot tap its a hell of a lot more powerful than it was, albeit a narrow stream of water now as opposed to a wide but less powerful stream. So maybe thats some kind of work-around with using these high pressure taps on a low pressure setup, make the stream of water coming out of the spout smaller

Sleeper12

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

is that feet? !

It is feet. You increase your pressure by . 25 bar every 10 foot or so. If you have 4 story house pressure on ground floor will be around 1 bar from attic tank