By Kerry Hale

The History Of Mira Excel

  • Tuesday 31 July 2018
  • 5 minute read

As the UK's favourite mixer shower, the Mira Excel is the choice of the professional installer and has been for nearly 30 years. As a result of years of continued engineering development and design enhancement, the Mira Excel is still as innovative, practical and stylish as ever.

Its precise thermostatic control recognises and responds to changes in water pressure and temperature, making it the ideal safe shower for all the family.

First Generation

Brought to market in November 1990, the Mira Excel mixer shower provided high performance with a strong, powerful flow, as well as thermostatic temperature control. It was versatile with both exposed and built-in variants as well as being available in white, chrome and sovereign gold finishes allowing customers to find the perfect match for their bathrooms.

With its sophisticated styling and easy to read controls, it was voted the best looking mixer shower through independent testing with more than twice as many respondents preferring the Mira Excel to any other mixer shower at that time.

The built-in version provided protection during installation with its unique shroud and we even provided a free flushing cartridge, to make flushing out the pipework during installation quick and easy. Separate cartridges for whether the shower was low pressure or high pressure were indicated by different colours: yellow for low pressure, green for high pressure. This allowed every type of home to benefit from the Mira Excel shower.

The cartridge was specifically designed to eradicate problems with limescale, with the shower control consisting of unique technology, which meant ceramic plates would grind scale away. This also provided excellent shut off as well as making the shower extremely hardwearing, meaning it could outlast the competition – which is still does today.

Second Generation

With the success of the original Mira Excel, the second generation range was launched in June 1996, with a simple but well-deserved facelift. The new striking curves of the exposed variant complemented customers’ existing fixtures; plus, supplied with Mira Response Shower Fittings, the whole package provided innovative design and superior performance. With the already scale-reducing cartridge in place, the Mira Response showerhead boasted easy-clean rubber nozzles to help reduce limescale build-up. Like the Mira Excel this fittings kit still remains one of the most popular ranges today, check out the latest Mira Response shower fittings kit and upgrade your shower fittings today.

To make life easier for the installer, the separate low pressure and high-pressure cartridges became one simple universal cartridge with a tool supplied for changing the setting at the back between low and high depending on the water system. It kept the easy to read numbers, adding digits 8 and 9 as well an extra safety feature with the override button which allowed the user to increase the temperature of the shower – both great ways to help differentiate itself visually from the original version should any spare parts be needed. For independent showering, levers were designed as a stand-alone spare which made controlling the shower easier. These were also suitable to fit the original Mira Excel.

Third Generation - today's Mira Excel

We’ve learnt a lot about water in the history of manufacturing showers and we’ve used this expert knowledge to ensure our Mira mixer showers continue to be invigorating and high-performing.

Like its predecessors, our latest version of Mira Excel is designed to perform to the highest standards both on high and low pressure. It is also suitable for all systems, providing pressures are nominally equal with one simple cartridge that needs no adjustment. Plus, with Mira Magni-flotechnology, the Mira Excel now gives up to 3 times more flow than similar mixer showers even at low pressure.

The latest Mira Excel is as easy to fit and maintain as ever with the exposed variant featuring adjustable pipe centres, giving it the advantage of being able to replace many other mixer showers. We’ve kept those ceramic discs in place too so it continues to withstand limescale and the large filters give an unaffected thermal performance.

No matter how hot, cool, gentle or invigorating you like your shower to be, the separate temperature and flow controls, and three-spray showerhead mean you can be assured of a great shower every time – plus the numbered temperature dial means you can ‘set and forget’ your shower preferences, saving precious minutes every morning.

Today, the Mira Excel is the UK’s best-selling mixer shower. With its longevity within British bathrooms for its style and familiarity, as well as its installer following for being reliable and unbeatable on all pressures, the Mira Excel is sure to continue well into the future.

Do you still have or recently replaced an original Mira Excel? We’d love to hear from you or see your photos. Tag us on Instagram @mirashowers, or visit our Facebook page.

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