When you are in someone else’s bathroom and go to turn the hot tap on, there can be a lot of confusion if there is only a single-handle faucet.
A single handle faucet means that one tap produces both hot and cold water, you just need to make sure that you turn the handle the right way for the temperature that you desire.
Finding out which way to turn a single-handle faucet is important for having the right temperature from the tap.
You don’t want to suddenly burn yourself or have a gush of cold water on your hands, so it is important to know which way hot is on a tap to avoid any surprises.
This article will inform you about which way you should turn a single-handle faucet to make sure that you are presented with hot water instead of cold water. You can find out more below!
Which Way Is Hot?
Usually, on a single-handle faucet, the left-hand side is hot and the right-hand side is cold.
There isn’t any real reason for why the hot water is on the left and the cold water is on the right, but some people have speculated that it is for safety reasons as the majority of people are right-handed, so turning the tap to the right is better than being met with unexpected hot water.
Although this has never been proved as the reason, there is no explanation for why the hot water is usually on the left and the cold water is usually on the right.
You can sometimes see on a single-handle faucet either a red or blue circle to indicate which side is hot and which side is cold.
How To Change The Temperatures To The Opposite Side
If your single-handle faucet has the hot water coming from the right and the cold water coming from the left, it might get confusing if the majority of single-handle faucets have the opposite.
Are you able to change the temperature around and switch them to the opposite sides?
You can change over the water lines and it isn’t very difficult to do.
The first thing that you need to do is turn off the water supply by turning the valves towards the left that are located under the sink on the metal water lines.
You then need to loosen the nut that is located on both of the supply lines and remove them.
You can then switch the supply lines and screw them the opposite way. Make sure you do not get confused and end up screwing the same supply line back on the same side.
Tighten the nuts to make sure that they are secure and there are no leaks.
Turn the water back on and make sure that there are no leaks.
If you find that there is a leak, make sure that you screw the nuts tighter to avoid water being able to leak out of the pipes.
When the leaks stop, you will have then successfully swapped around the temperatures!
How To Adjust The Temperature
Single-handle faucets can have a lot of different issues, and one of the main ones can be the temperature.
If you notice that the hot water is too hot to use or the cold water is too cold to touch, you can adjust the temperatures to make them more bearable to use.
To adjust the temperatures, remove the handle by unscrewing the screws and see if you can change the temperature by either using a screw or a dial underneath the handle.
If your faucet has a screw to change the temperature, turn it to the left to make sure that there is more hot water in the mixture, or turn it to the right to make sure that there is more cold water.
This will help to either increase or reduce the temperature.
If your faucet has a dial, turn it to the left to add more hot water to the mixture or to the right to add more cold water to the mixture.
This will change the temperature of the water and make sure that the hot water isn’t too hot and the cold water isn’t too cold.
Final Thoughts
To conclude, hot water is usually found on the left-hand side of a single-handle faucet, but it can sometimes be found on the right.
If you want to change the supply lines over and have the hot and cold water on opposite sides of the single-handle faucet, you can do so easily by unscrewing the nut and swapping the lines.
You can also adjust the temperatures to make sure that the hot water isn’t too hot and the cold water isn’t too cold.
This can be done by turning the screw or the dial underneath the handle and making the water a more suitable temperature.
