Favorite Gadgets #1 - The Shower Mixer

This is the first in a series of hopefully short blogs about gadgets that we have added to Kavenga since our last cruise that are making the cruising life more enjoyable.

The honor of being the first gadget featured is our shower mixer.

Prior to this cruise we had an ordinary household-style shower mixer; i.e. a hot tap and a cold tap that you turned on and adjusted until you got the water to a comfortable level for your shower.

There were several problems. First, both sources of heat, our diesel engine and our diesel furnace made water much hotter than a normal household water heater; e.g. 165 degrees or even hotter. Consequently, you could only just barely turn on the hot water tap or it overwhelmed the cold water tap, especially down here in the tropics where the ambient temperature never drops below 70F.

Second, due to the small capacity of the heat exchanger tank, the temperature of the hot water would rapidly decline while you were taking a shower. The net result was that it took a lot of fiddling to get the temperature set initially, and then midway through your shower you had to readjust it. This was not only inconvenient, it also wasted water.

Thanks to our Mattison shower mixer all those problems and frustrations are gone. This shower mixer has a thermostatically controlled valve in it much like a cars radiator. It adjusts the mix of hot and cold water in order to maintain a comfortable, preset temperature. In fact it has a notched position for a standard comfortable shower temperature. Just set it there and its good forever. If you want a hotter or cooler shower though, you can change the position.

So now, no matter how hot the hot water is, or how much it changes over the course of a shower, we always get a constant temperature all the way through.

Any cruising sailor will tell you that fresh water showers are one of lifes best simple luxuries. On this, our second blue-water cruise, life is just a little sweeter thanks to our smart shower mixer.

Send any questions about this to kavenga at-sign att dot net (spelled out to foil spammers)