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I don't really understand this either. Mixer taps are just better, but I have separate taps in my bath tub despite the block of houses being built in the 2010s. Guess some people like the aesthetic.

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Probably not in your bath, but in houses with water tanks at least one of the cold taps will be fed directly from the mains supply. If you are drinking it then you want it straight from the mains rather than from the tank in your loft that’s been sat there for a while and had all sorts of things falling into it

but in houses with water tanks

This is another big surprise to Americans, which went from no running water to high-pressure mains.

... Huh. So, these seem to have totally died out in Ireland, despite us changing the rules on mixers at about the same time as the UK did (Irish plumbing and electrical rules tend to follow UK ones). You'll see them in old installations, but more or less never in modern ones (even modern antique-stylised plumbing has anachronistic mixer taps). Hadn't realised that they were still a thing in the UK.

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