Gregory's ServerI’m in a hotel room where the sink has separate taps for hot and cold water, opposite sides of the basin. How are you supposed to use it?
 113 comments
  @Gargron Don't drink the hot water! That's what I've learned from a Tom Scott video about the taps in England. @Gargron Run the hot and then add as much cold as needed to get the perfect temperature. It's an old setting, is it the first time you see it ?  @Gargron Gosh, I hope the basin is clean if you have to fill it. Oof. Don't think about germs. @Gargron fill the basin with a proportion of hot and cold until you have a basin of water at the right temperature. Yes, it's primitive and one step away from unplumbed vanity basins. Are you in the US? Separate hot and cold taps seem common in old buildings in the eastern USA.  @Gargron My Dad got one of these. I realize it doesn't help you in a hotel room, but it's something. https://www.amazon.co.uk/RETROMIXER-adaptor-separate-kitchen-bathroom/dp/B072Y7XVDY?th=1  @Gargron Run them simultaneously to get the temperature you want. This was the norm when I was growing up. @Gargron if you need warm water at a normal temperature (to wash your face for example), you'll have to mix it in the basin using a sink stop. Very old-school. 😆 @Gargron close the drain, run h & c to taste, use warm water for whatever, open drain, rinse sink if socially woke, wonder why you started this thread. @Gargron I know, it's idiotic. You fill the basin from both taps to the temperature of your choice and treat it like a miniature bath. Or you travel with a thing that fits over both taps and unifies the output into a single stream.  @Gargron (Blinks slowly) are taps like that not normal wherever you live? (Because those are totally normal here in the UK.)  @Gargron Tom Scott gives a pretty good explanation for why this still is the case in Britain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfHgUu_8KgA  @Gargron Been there, done that. Sometimes you just open the hot tap and just use it while the water gets warmer and warmer, shifting to the cold tap if it gets too hot. If hot water is too quick to come, you just use the cold tap. Or cup cold water in your hands and add quick splashes of hot water to it until it's warm enough. Thanks for the answers; indeed, I’m in the UK. Plugging the sink is exactly what we did, I was just curious if that was the canonical method.  @Gargron Brit here. No, the canonical approach is to ignore the cold tap and wash your hands under only the hot tap, which will be cold when you turn it on, and hope that by the time you've finished it's just reached a pleasant temperature rather than scalding you. @Gargron @Gargron I've certainly never had any luck with the alternative that occurred to me, which is saving my hands back and forth really fast under the taps. :)  @Gargron the canonical method is to wash your hands in cold water. It’s to do with how older houses’ plumbing works, and even now that we have more modern systems available to us, we often don’t use them, because we’re British and we’re like that.  @Gargron Canonical behaviour is start with the hot for the second or so before it's scalding, then switch to the cold while complaining under your breath about why can't we have bloody mixer taps.  @Gargron Well, don't tell the Britons, but when our daughter had her "English language week", we actually had to sign a waiver that included that we acknowledge gems like "UK building standards are not up to European standards" (that was before the BrExit referendum). But yes they still install appliances like lamps permanently connected to the wall plug (with a cable that cannot be unplugged). Here in AT we stopped that for washing machines 25 years ago or so.  Don't tell me the next public statement is about sockets—to plug-in any cables—free of charge.  @Gargron So maybe it *was* you I saw at the station the other day?! I just assumed from all the other times that there are a lot of people who look like you...   @Gargron you burn one hand and freeze the other - but your face gets nice warm water.   @Gargron are you in the UK? I (an American) lived in Scotland for a year and never got the hang of the separate hot/cold taps. @Gargron While I've never been over in the UK I experienced a sink like this only once in the US at a university I attended. It was in the athletic building. Literally the only bathroom on the entire campus that had that sink, and it was the only type of sink in the bathroom. Never understood why they didn't replace it. Further didn't understand how to properly use it. Ah, 1890s plumbing design. The two-spout design is particularly fun when you have a baby in one arm!   @Gargron  @Gargron Put the stopper in the bowl and mix the water in the bowl, and use water from the bowl. It's not idea, but it was like that back in the day — and, as you see, even now in some places.  @Gargron you have to open both taps and switch your hands quickly between them, from hot to cold then hot water etc. Repeat this until you your hands are free from the soap.  @Gargron I grew up in a rambling old house in Massachusetts, all four bathrooms were like this. The only mixing tap was the kitchen sink. In a mystery of topology, every sink was as far away from the water heater as possible, so you had to run the hot water tap for a minute or two before it got warm.  @Gargron Haha 😆. Grew up in a house that had that in the bathroom. Hated it. Glad sinks have evolved (at least in most locations).  @Gargron  @Gargron The hot water tap is for use in winter only, when you have to quickly move you hands between boiling and freezing water in an attempt to avoid either blisters or frostbite. I grew up in a house with no hot water or heating and the toilet was outside. Needing the loo in the depths of winter was... refreshing to say the least. @Gargron I'm from the UK. I don't have this in my house. I don't understand this either.  @Gargron All sinks will look like this in the future. It prevents the wasteful practice of e.g. washing your face with the tap running. Save water. Don't cross the streams. @Gargron it's kind of like doing the hokey pokey except with your hands over the sink instead of over your knees.  @Gargron Don't ask why it's an Amazon UK link. Well technically you can fill up the sink a bit, and mix the water to a bearable temperature.  @Gargron How to say you are in the UK without saying you are in the UK... If you haven't had the "continental breakfast" yet, prepare for disappointment.  Mixer taps aren't that common here but you will see them in kitchens and bathrooms more then you used too. The main reason is that the water supply for the hot water system wasn't generally considered safe to drink. In many homes there were water tanks in the roof space to feed the hot water heating system. Poorly covered and sitting in a header tank isn't a recipe for water safety 🫤🤷♂️  @Gargron close the drain. Fill it from both sides to a suitable temperature. Wash and drain.  I feel like this is an allegory for some of the quirks of the #fediverse 🙂. Something isn’t as you expected (two faucets?) and you find out there is a workaround that’s easy enough (plug the drain!), but there are probably some people who just won’t get it (omg….it’s always super hot or super cold….why can’t there be one faucet??) @Gargron Isn't that normal? It is here... If you want cold water, you use cold and hot water for hot. You aren't expected to want to mix them...  @Gargron you're supposed to run your hands under the hot tap, curse when the water gets too hot, then quickly put them under the cold tap to ease the pain. The split taps are because of hot water tanks being potentially dirty water so cold is separate and therefore definitely clean/drinkable. I don't know a single person here in the UK who LIKES them but they're still the default. |
@Gargron Are you in the UK?