bathroom taps - advice wanted please

okay, when we first moved into our house we had normal twist/handle type taps and both hot and cold worked perfectly. we have since changed the taps to a lever type and the cold tap is now quite loud when the water comes out, the hot is still fine.

The cold tap is fed direct from mains and i assume that the lever tap cant handle the pressure? this is only my assumption, the hot works fine, no noise at all but then i guess this is low pressure hot water.

My question is i want to change the taps back to the twist/handle type and i was looking in B&Q this weekend and have seen various but they all have a pressure measurement on the label, some say 0.2 bar, 0.1 bar, 0.5 bar etc... Question is am i better going for a higher bar or lower, i.e. which is best 0.1 bar or 0.5 bar? The twist handle type taps are labelled at 0.5 bar.

Can anyone offer some advice please.

Many thanks, much appreciated.

Cheers, Matt.

hot water is fed from a tank you say

Pressure from a tank is roughly 1 bar per 10 metres height.

So if the tank is 1 metre above the tap it will be about 0.1 bar pressure. In this case a simple UK standard tap with a 3/4" connector will give much better flow than some fancy Italian thing with a tiny pipe fitting.

For the cold, the water main might be 2 bar or it might be 5 bar, but it will be a lot higher than the hot.

so you can't use a mixer.

You can get a presssure reducing valve to put on the cold pipe, it will cost about £30

JohnD said:

hot water is fed from a tank you say

Pressure from a tank is roughly 1 bar per 10 metres height.

So if the tank is 1 metre above the tap it will be about 0.1 bar pressure. In this case a simple UK standard tap with a 3/4" connector will give much better flow than some fancy Italian thing with a tiny pipe fitting.

For the cold, the water main might be 2 bar or it might be 5 bar, but it will be a lot higher than the hot.

so you can't use a mixer.

You can get a presssure reducing valve to put on the cold pipe, it will cost about £30

Click to expand...

thanks john d, the hot tap is fine, its just the cold tap thats makes noise as the water passes through. thinking of getting some taps that are 0.5 bar - but not sure what this actually means?

taps are likely to have a Min bar and a Max bar rating

you need some where the min is less than your hot, and the max is more than your cold.

any normal tap will work fine don't worry to much about the pressure rating its mainly for propertys with low pressure

cant understand why when we moved into the house there were normal twist type taps and as soon as we changed them to a lever twist handle type tap the water started to whistle/make noise as it comes through, it only happens on the cold tap (fed from mains) the hot tap is fine and doesnt make any noise at all.

My only guess is that the cold water mains is quite high pressure, and the flow velocity could be causing the noise as it passes through the cold tap? I've checked the washers twice and they seem to be seated/fitted okay.

Thinking of changing the taps but theyre not cheap.

Any other ideas gents?

Cheers
Matt

Additional info:

When the toilet is flushed the cold tap no longer makes the noise, i assume cos half the flow is going to the toilet, both are fed from the cold mains.