Thanks. "faucet" and "tap" are the same - "faucet" is American English and "tap" is British English. You are correct about "mixer" (sometimes said "mixer tap" in the UK, sometimes just "mixer") - it is a tap with hot and cold water running into it but just one spout for the water to come out of.
A mixer tap – quite simply – combines hot and cold water together through one spout, and the user alters the temperature by either one or two controls. This is different to other taps where you may have two separate taps each with their own spout for separate hot and cold water.
Mixer taps are generally fitted with a flow limiter as this helps prevent too much water being taken from the hot and cold pipes at once. In practical terms, you are likely to use less hot water when mixing it into a single flow, which is good for both your energy bills and the environment.
Mixer taps are the most common tap that you see in Australian homes especially kitchens. These are the taps where you have one handle that controls both hot and cold water and are mixed together and comes out from one single spout.
Changing into a kitchen mixer tap has lots of benefits, which includes style and convenience. If you replace two taps with a mixer tap, you'll also save on your bills because most mixer taps are fitted with flow limiters.
So what are the types of taps? There are 3 main taps you should be familiar with and they are: Taper, Plug, and Bottoming tap. The taper tap can be identified by the visible and pronounced tapering of the cutting edges. This provides a very gradual and less aggressive cutting action.
A Cost-effective Solution Rather than having a cold water tap and a hot water tap, mixer systems feature only one tap providing both cold and hot water. As a result, you save both time and water when using a mixer tap.
There are exclusions, but normally when you require a designer mixer-tap, you certainly have to shell out double the cost compared to the ordinary ones.
Better Control This facilitates you to accurately control the temperature of the water for shaving or washing with water as it comes out of the tap, or while having a bath. In contrast, with two separate taps, you're restricted to two flows of water from cold and hot water taps.
Given the ever-improving quality of taps, modern tap designs can be expected to last between 15 and 20 years typically. However, there are a number of factors that could impact on the lifespan of a tap one way or another.