Hi all,
There seems to be a few people that know what they are talking about when it comes to plumbing on here, of which I have no idea. Any help would be greatly appreciated - my shower hot water tap seems to need to be turned waaaaay further on that did last week. Water still hot but why would this be?

Not an expert, but I've had this happen to me. If it's a domed washer, then the dome part can get cut by the valve seat, so the dome sort of pushes into the valve seat. You notice that even though the water has stopped coming out of the shower, you can still turn the tap a lot as you do it up. What you're doing is pushing the domed part (more like a cylinder now) right into the valve seat itself.

Simple solution, change the tap washer.

Awesome, I was hoping for that reply!!

Why is it when I turn the shower on the hot water comes out, then stops, then I have to turn it on even more, then it stops again, and so on a few times until finally a balance is found?

What about all that water that goes down the drain while you wait for the shower to get hot? Can't it go back into the system so that no water comes out until it's hot? Seems like a huge waste - I hate it.

Plumbers?

Maybe best if you put up a video of what is happening in the shower...preferably with a hot chick in their at the same time.

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AUS1111 said..
What about all that water that goes down the drain while you wait for the shower to get hot? Can't it go back into the system so that no water comes out until it's hot? Seems like a huge waste - I hate it.

Plumbers?

You can install systems that do exactly that. Or, you could catch the cold water in bucket then re-use it in the washing machine. We did that all through the drought and the missus continued doing it with the rinse water from the washing machine.

lmgtfy.com/?q=cold+water+recovery+systems

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evlPanda said..
Why is it when I turn the shower on the hot water comes out, then stops, then I have to turn it on even more, then it stops again, and so on a few times until finally a balance is found?

Thermal expansion in the tap.

^ heh. Makes sense. And here's me wondering about that for decades

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Mr Milk said..

evlPanda said..
Why is it when I turn the shower on the hot water comes out, then stops, then I have to turn it on even more, then it stops again, and so on a few times until finally a balance is found?

Thermal expansion in the tap.

Could also be that you've got one of those stupid water saver fittings in the shower head. Unscrew the shower head, if there's a little plastic fitting in there pull it out and chuck it in the bin.

Youll waste as much water waiting for the the hot and cold water to finish fighting each other as the fitting will save.

edit: don't chuck it if you're renting. Just put back in if/when you leave.

If you have one of the smaller volume instantaneous hot water systems, it is best that you don't fit the water saving devices, as the hot water system needs to be able to flow to work properly.

Our previous system had an 11 litre [??] output of hot water.
The shower rose was rated the same.
Trying to get the right temp resulted in the HWS cutting out due to low flow.

Ripped out the restrictor in the rose and everything worked fine.

What I don't get about low flow showers is the point. If it was illegal to have a full flow hose they might make sense