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Pressure Balance Valve or Thermostatic Valve for New Shower?

17 years ago

Moving forward with out bathroom demo - which type of shower valve do you recommend: Pressure Balance Valve or Thermostatic? (I'm not even certain that I'm using the correct terms?) Recommended brands? Grohe for the high end? What do you consider a good value/solid quality - Kohler, Danze?

Buy on-line, e-bay, HD/Lowes or plumbing supply house?

We have already purchased a Dreamline shower enclosure.

Thanks a lot.

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Comment (1)

Kevin Garabedian
17 years ago
Just finished building my somewhat modest master bath addtion (I did all the plumbing myself). My experience deals with a stand up shower in this particular instance.

After some resarch, I decided that I did not need to spend north of $2k on Kohler thermo valve, and I did not need 15+ GPM with 3/4" inlets. By the time I added the body sprays and a couple of shower heads i was in for over $3k which was way over budget.

I ended up doing a Moen Vertical Spa. IIRC, I think it was about $1,300 with two shower heads, 4 body sprays, a handheld shower, 5 position diverter valve, and the thermo mixing valve. I just fired it up last week and am very happy with the whole set up. Moen does a nice job, they have some great info on their vertical spa and thermo valves on the moen.com website. It took me a full day to pipe, but I used long radius elbows and took my time to ensure good flow. Having both the pressure balanced and a thermo valve, I prefer the thermo valve and being able to adjust the flow volume. Plus I think it looks better.

I ordered it online from faucet.com, no tax + free shipping....plus they price match. If you google the part number and you find a lower price and email it to the price match department and they re-quote the product. Customer service was superb and ended up ordering my sinks, faucets, med. cabinets, and towel/TP holders from them. Again, with no tax and free shipping the net result (to me) was a great deal. I go out of my way to keep from purchasing at the big box - but that might be my personal grudge, but they dont have anything "good" in shower valves in stock any ways, so why bother ordering it from them?

Hope that helps.
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zl700, we are having problems with our tankless water heater during the winter months. We will turn on the hot water in the shower (full hot), wait for it to heat up, and then dial in a comfortable temperature before stepping in. In the middle of the shower, the water heater will suddenly shut off, indicating an error code, and of course the water becomes ice cold. We have found that simultaneously running the hot water on a second faucet, for instance the bathroom sink, prevents this problem. We have PBV's in our showers and are looking to replace them with thermostatics in order to eliminate this problem, but it would be nice to find some published literature that confirms that this is likely to remedy the situation, especially given how invasive a valve replacement can be. Can you tell me where you learned about the possible problems with using PBV's with tankless water heaters?
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Thank you all for your help. The issue was going to cause me to have to buy a local faucet (verses the one I purchased many months ago while traveling) and a difference of a couple thousand dollars so they could get their inspection underway and not delay the whole project. I did make that call castoff (I was a bit worried it was like calling the police and asking if I could smoke just a "little" crack). They walked me through the issue and said it should be fine but also helped me out with a variance I could go through as well if necessary (they wanted to see the actual item before giving me a 100% go ahead). All that savings can go to cost over runs elsewhere heh heh Again, thanks so much!
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Untrue. No reason you can't get the same benefits of a thermostatic valve with just one showerhead, and certainly two.
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The ones with one knob, you are really adjusting for temperature only. The only way to get less water is to go cold. I have had a Delta Pressure-balance system with one knob for years. No volume control, really, unless you don't care about the temperature. The only other way to control the volume is to get a shower supply pipe with a T coming off of it for a handheld. I have a valve up there where I can choose the shower head or the handheld shower. If I choose the handheld, I have another valve on that head that allows me to turn the volume to whatever I want. None of that has anything to do with the Pressure-balance system, though. That is still set at the same setting through all of this. My new system will be a Temperature balance system with three volume controls. I will be able to turn the shower head on full, off or anything in between, ditto for the handheld, and ditto for the rain head. The water heater will not support all three at the same time, but we are a house of grown ups and if we try that kind of shenanigans, we will suffer the consequences of finishing with a cold shower! I usually turn it all off to soap up now. I imagine I still will do that, and the rinse will be faster with the rain head. I am hoping to use less water with the new system, with less time fussing with valves.
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