• Home
• About
• Properties
• Landlords
• Tenants
• Management
• Contact

Today bathroom taps use high-technology materials

I had a talk to my friend at The Tap Factory, www.tapfactory.net he told me that , bathroom sinks, bathroom showers and bathroom products in particular now used very hi-tech materials. I decided to do some research of my own to find out more. (The Tap Factory has both an online shop and a bathroom showroom near Leicester.)

What I found out about hi-tech materials in bathrooms, a little bit of travel wisdom, and some surprisingly old techniques.

Some of the technologies that are now used in bathroom taps, bathroom products kitchen items and elsewhere around the home were first tried out in the regulator valves of scuba-diving equipment. Where I imagine both corrosion resistance and precision really matter. The first a buzzword I learnt was Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) which is used mostly with polished brass or gold finishes. This is a modern plating process used in tap manufacture. Nitrogen and other gases react with vaporized Zirconium to form an extremely durable plated surface. Zirconium is a silvery white metal widely used as an alloy to provide corrosion resistance. Unlike the Victorian bathroom taps where polished brass would easily tarnish over time, (but after all that is what Victorians employed a maid to do), polished brass finishes with PVD are extremely durable and generally are not likely to tarnish or discolour. Mixer taps were invented as long ago as 1880, by a Canadian Thomas Campbell. More advanced mixer taps are available today with thermostatic controls to help ensure that water temperature remains near constant even if the pressure of supply should change. Here is a second buzzword thermostatic mixer valves (TMV).

They are controlled by mechanical or electronic means; of course the electronic controls require the provision of electric wiring and are less likely to be used in older installations. Unfortunately, and this is a pet peeve of mine, the design and layout of mixer taps varies greatly and it can be quite troublesome in a new room to work out quite how to get the water temperature you require. Some rules of thumb, hot bathroom taps may have a red indicator and the cold blue or green indicator or use letter "H" and letter "C", in some Romance language countries the letter "F" for cold and letter "C" for hot, take care! On a happier note I found that some techniques that are used to make modern are not all that new. I'm thinking of course of the lost wax process, which makes use of wax to create a model of the tap with nice curves and fine detail, a cast which is usually composed of plaster is then made around this, the wax is then melted away or lost, molten brass is then poured in and when it sets all the fine detail that there was in the wax model is still where. The lost wax process is known to date back at least to the time of the ancient Greeks. Happy bathing to you.