Thermostatic, it's Fantastic

...When it works.
Lately our shower was not so hot.
It was just warm.  Which is fine.  But It wasn't putting out HOT HOT HOT water.  Even with the thermostatic valve adjusted to the hottest possible water setting.

We have a Grohe shower everything.  Lots of plumbing stuff in our house is Grohe, cuz it's german and cuz it works fantastic.
This thermostatic valve is designed to maintain the temperature of the water no matter who flushes the toilet or does the dishes or whatever.
It's basically designed to prevent scalding.  Which i've personally encountered while taking a shower while staying at our friend's place in HK.

In those situations you can side step the water coming out of the shower and adjust the temp, but he had those full body jets showers and I was getting scalding hot water in places where the sun don't shine.

he told me not to touch the adjustment on their on demand tankless water heater.  But I didn't listen.  Just like those characters in the movies that have to go into the basement to check out what made that racket.  Can't they hear the dramatic music and all the people in the audience saying, "don't go in there stupid!"

Anyways.  When this works, it's amazing.
This valve has a sensor that automatically mixes the hot and cold water to achieve the desired water temperature.
It's terrific. But when it doesn't, it's like, why complicate things?
But I get the Germans and their ingenuity.
They are undeniably good.
I'm not sure why the valve goes bad.
I did take the old one out and flushed the system.
But it didn't change how it was behaving.
So I discovered this has a 5 yr warranty.


I made a call to Grohe Canada to see if there was something else I could do.  In the end Grohe sent me a new one and it arrived 5 days later from Chicago.

I am tempted to send this back to them to tell me what i could have done to keep it working longer.  That is, indefinitely.  But hopefully this one lasts much longer than the original.
We were just 4.5yrs into the 5yr window.
This valve is $204.00 US.  From what I saw online.
German engineering is not cheap.
Just ask all the BMW owners that take their car into the dealership for maintenance.

Did you know that if you install a new battery yourself in a BMW, you still need to bring it into BMW to reset the computer?  it's true.
Otherwise your new battery will get fried within a few weeks. As the battery ages, the BMW computer will compensate by upping the current to the battery to maintain a high cranking output.

The car computer still thinks the battery is old.  After replacing the battery, you need to reset the computer.  And I think you can only do that at the BMW dealership.  These Germans are clever.