Question about wall mounted tub filler.

[Pete E.]

Hey guys. Great forum here, literally a wealth of information and I'm glad I stumbled upon it.

I've got what I'm sure is a simple question that I'm hoping someone can answer for me before ordering some fixtures. I am a homeowner who recently found out that my shower stall has been leaking for quite some time. Long enough for the subfloor to be completely rotted out underneath one corner as I discovered after removing it. It turned into way more of a mess than I anticipated, and long story short, my wife and I decided to take out the tub also in order to get the subfloor repaired properly.

We'd like to install a new freestanding whirlpool tub with wall a mounted valve and faucet, but before ordering the fixtures I'd like to be assured that they will work together as they are from different manufactures. The one's we've tentatively settled on are this link for the valve. And this link for the filler. Can any of the experts tell me if they are compatible? Thank you so much in advance.

[jadnashua]

The valve's outlet just leads to a pipe...feeding it to a spout shouldn't require a special valve; IOW, they should work together.

I will say when filling a large tub, you may want a thermostatically controlled valve rather than a simple pressure-balanced one...you'll likely be nearing the capacity of the WH, and a thermostatically controlled valve is much more likely to keep outputting the desired temp longer than a PB valve. And, once you find your preferred temp, you never have to touch that again, as it has a separate volume control (on most, anyway).

[Pete E.]

Thank you for your response.

I might be naive, but when filling a tub (where no water is lost down the drain) wouldn't the water heater capacity be a static amount of hot water regardless anyways? So that if the water is filling the tub a little hotter than you'd like, but then runs out of hot water, couldn't you just fill the remainder with cold until you get to the desired temp? The amount of hot water available should be the same in either situation, shouldn't it?

Like I said, I don't fully understand how these valves work, but we're on a very tight budget as this remodel was un-budgeted for and we'd like to go with the cheaper alternative if we can.

Thank you again for taking the time to enlighten me.

[hj]

As long as the tub is close enough to the wall so the spout reaches over the rim, there is no problem with them "working together". As a practical matter, ANY spout, (not a "tub filler" which is a term used for the valve itself), or even a plain pipe, will all work with it. As far as the water temperature is concerned, you would normally start filling it with water the temperature you desire, and then start restricting the cold water input as the heated water temperature starts to diminish.

[jadnashua]

The water stored in the WH starts to cool off near the end of its capacity. The 'standard' tub (or shower) filler only adjusts the balance of the hot to cold supply volume. SO, you find your preferred temp, step away while the tub fills, and come back to find out the incoming water is now too cool, and you may not have enough hot left to overcome the cold that was coming in. A thermostatically controlled valve adjusts that hot/cold balance to maintain the inlet water stream you originally select. Even if you're sitting in the tub, you may not notice it's cooling off until it's too late. Normally, on taking a shower, you can immediately tell, and would tweak the temp, but with a thermostatically controlled valve, the only time you'd notice is when you actually run out of enough hot.