Sunday, October 21, 2007 

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Ceramic Disc Taps

Taps drip. It's inevitable, like death and taxes. Traditional taps seal using a rubber ring screwed down over the end of a metal pipe. Sooner or later the rubber is going to go hard, split or just wear away and it will no longer seal. Then water seeps through, and the tap starts dripping. Left alone the problem gets worse as the water wears away the valve seat. Then you'll have to either re-grind the valve seat(Do you own a valve seat re-grinder? Who would?) or replace the tap. Tedious in either case. But, it need not happen. Many taps now use ceramic discs.


Method of Operation
Instead of creating a seal by forcing a rubber washer onto the end of the water feed pipe, they use two ceramic discs each with matching slots in them. These are held over the end of the water feed pipe. The lower disc doesn't move while the upper disc is turned over the lower disc by the tap head. Water will only flow when the upper and lower slots match up.


Advantages
There are a number of benefits to this arrangement. The most obvious is that ceramic discs are much harder than rubber and much more resistant to erosion by water seepage. Hence they have a much longer life before needing replacement. Additionally, because the water flows between the two discs, the discs erode not the metal of the valve. Also, because of the way the discs are arranged, the taps go fully on with only one quarter of a turn and tap needs only light pressure to operate. This light action has the advantage that they are easy to operate with the back of the hand if your hands are dirty and for people with restricted movement.


Where they are Used
The ease of operation and the long life mean that most good quality sink mixer taps have been made using ceramic discs for a while, but basin taps with ceramic discs are surprisingly less common. The more use a tap gets, the more attractive the use of ceramic disc technology becomes. This is doubly true in hard water areas, which can be murder on traditional taps.


Disadvantages
Everything has it's downside, and there are cons to ceramic disc taps. They do eventually wear out and are more expensive than old style taps and are not suitable for very low water pressure. Unusually, many of the manufacturers seem to use standard sizes, so getting a replacement is often straightforward. Because taps on basins can be either handed or not not, one can't always be sure which way to turn each tap on, this can be annoying! Lastly, unlike traditional style taps, which take a number of turns to be on full, you may easily turn the water flow on far more than meant. The unexpectedly vigorous water flow and splashing can cause water going everywhere, including over your clothes. Not Good!

Bob Plum is the owner of BuyPlumbing co uk Ltd. If you live in Britain then the link http://www.buyplumbing.co.uk gives you access to a wide range of competitively priced bathroom goods and plumbing fittings.

Cl Las Vegas Yoga

 

Honda Perks Up Navigation System with Earthquake, Weather Features

Honda has perked up its car navigation system, which provides the fastest route to a destination that avoids traffic jams with the addition of information about earthquakes and warnings of rainfall ahead on roads.

This special Honda service will be offered starting with the remodeled Fit subcompact which will be going on sale in Japan later this year. Unfortunately, there are no plans yet to offer the said service to Hondas overseas market according to executive Manabu Nishimae.

In an interview he told reporters, "We believe information services are an important part of a car's quality."

The service is free but drivers have to pay mobile phone bills for relaying data. For frequent users they may avail of data transmission cards for a set with a monthly fee of about $8. In Japan alone about 530,000 drivers use the current navigation service in Japan or about 40 percent of Honda owners.

How does the additional navigational feature works? Up-to-date, email warnings will be sent to a pre-assigned address when car with the system happens to be in the area of a strong earthquake. This special feature is very handy in quake-prone nations. In case heavy rain is forecasted on a planned route, icons of exclamation marks pop up on the monitor.

Honda, Japan's number 2 automaker has also upgraded its map system with updates that only takes a few minutes to download since it is vital for disks with map data to be updated.

Tokyo-based Honda has also found a way to compress data so that portions of a map, such as new roads get relayed gradually. Honda added that with the new navigational system driving time is cut by 20 percent.

Honda is not the only automaker that offer navigation services as a matter of fact all of the worlds major automakers offer this car service but of course with additional twist of their own such as giving directions to restaurants, automatically call ambulances in accidents by connecting to human operators and many more.

Honda's navigation system has a unique feature wherein it collects information from individual Honda cars on the road, its more like Honda cars are talking to each other. In the new earthquake notification service, the system will be able to show which roads have been shut down. This kind of information is so accurate that it could even tell drivers exactly which lane of the freeway is congested, that is according to General Manager Takeshi Imai. He also said, "Honda's telematics is already moving toward the next stage."

Visit your online sources if you have some queries regarding your Honda fuel filter part needs.

Ally Wahlberg is a Computer Information Systems specialist. Ally leads an active lifestyle and he is a fan of extreme sports. He is also a car enthusiast and writing about his interests is one of his passions.

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