On 02/01/2013 15:28, Terry Fields wrote:
On Wed, 02 Jan 2013 14:20:45 +0000, MM wrote:

I thought I'd hold off ordering anything until after everyone is back
from the Christmas/New Year break, so this morning I enquired at two
separate places this morning, the local family-run bathroom supplier;
and Plumb Center in Spalding.

Both told me the same thing independently of each other: Water regs
prevent swapping out two separate taps for a mixer tap/shower where the
cold water is at mains pressure, which mine is. Apparently, once the
mixer is installed, when the cold and hot are turned on, the high
pressure cold water will overwhelm the gravity-fed hot.

Water regs say that I have to run the flexible pipe for the shower head through a hole in the soap dish to prevent
water from the bath getting back up the shower. It also means you can't use the shower head to get water up
your whahoola to rinse the soap off. That is, Water regs might make sense, but sometimes only sort of.

As our shower is gravity fed and the cold tank forms an air break, I'm
not going to get dirty water back into their mains, so they can sod
right off with their ridiculous regs on short shower hoses; and
non-return valves that'd strangle the flow completely.

SteveW