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Tap Handles, Knobs
A tap is a valve for controlling the release of a liquid or gas. In the British Isles and normally in the Commonwealth the word is used for any everyday type of valve, particularly the fittings that control water supply to bathtubs and sinks. In the U.S. more...
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the usage is sometimes more specialised, with the term "tap" restricted to uses such as beer taps and the word faucet being used for water outlets; however some Americans use "tap" in the broader sense as well.
Water taps
The physical characteristic which differentiates a spigot from other valves is the lack of any type of a mechanical thread or fastener on the outlet.
Water for baths, sinks and basins can be provided by separate hot and cold taps; this arrangement is common in the UK, particularly in bathrooms/lavatories. In kitchens, in the U.S., and in many other places, mixer taps are often used instead. In this case, hot and cold water from the two valves is mixed together before reaching the outlet, allowing the water to emerge at any temperature between that of the hot and cold water supplies.
For baths and showers, mixer taps frequently incorporate some sort of pressure balancing feature so that the hot/cold mixture ratio will not be affected by transient changes in the pressure of one or the other of the supplies. This helps avoid scalding or uncomfortable chilling as other water loads occur (such as the flushing of a toilet).
Rather than two separate valves, mixer taps frequently use a single, more complex, valve whose handle moves up and down to control the amount of water flow and from side to side to control the temperature of the water. Especially for baths and showers, the latest designs do this using a built in thermostat. These are known as thermostatic mixing valves, or TMVs, and can be mechanical or electronic.
Mixer taps are more difficult to fit in the UK than in other countries because traditional British plumbing provides hot and cold water at different pressures.
If separate taps are fitted, it may not be immediately clear which tap is hot and which is cold. The hot tap generally has a red indicator while the cold tap generally has a blue or green indicator. In English-speaking countries, the taps are frequently also labeled with an "H" or "C". Note that in countries with Romance languages, sometimes the letters "C" for hot and "F" for cold are used, possibly creating confusion when English speakers visit these countries or vice versa. Mixer taps may have a red-blue stripe or arrows indicating which side will give hot and which cold.
In some countries there is a 'standard' arrangement of hot/cold taps: for example in the United States and Canada, the hot tap is on the left by building code requirements. This convention applies in the UK too, but many installations exist where it has been ignored. Mis-assembly of some single-valve mixer taps will exchange hot and cold even if the fixture has been plumbed correctly.
Read more at Wikipedia.org
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