Friday, November 03, 2006

Shower Heads

One of life's little pleasures is taking a shower.

We are spoiled.

Used to be everybody took a bath. If they bathed at all.

Everybody has those things that they are unusually picky about, for me, it is showerheads.

When we were living in our last house I lucked out and found a Speakman showerhead on closeout at Lowe's. At the time I was clueless about the brand. I've since learned that all the higher end hotel chains use them. I fell in love with that showerhead. I even planned on taking it down when we sold that house but for some reason [I'm old and forgetful] I couldn't find the original equipment showerhead and ended up leaving that one behind.

Fast forward to new house. The original Delta shower heads that we ended up with had a lot of potential. Unfortunately my guilty conscience wouldn't let me take out the flow restrictors so we lived with the less than dazzling spray intensity.

After a while I decided to try one of the rainfall heads that I bought for the guest bath.


Unfortunately, rainfall = no pressure but lots of water. I prefer a strong pelting.

Pretty much everytime I go to the local home improvement center I peruse the bath aisle for any new and exciting finds. I ran across this nice looking showerhead and couldn't resist the urge to give it a whirl.


I give it a A for looks, an A for coverage but only a B for intensity.

Our master shower has two showerheads. Yeah, I know, I'm spoiled.

My husband doesn't share my enthusiasm for showerheads so I never bothered to buy him a new one.

The other day I was watching the stream from his and it was nothing less than anemic. This time I decided I would break down and buy another Speakman - why I hadn't before is beyond me since the last actually cost more than the Speakman.

I made the other half install it - I usually do all that kind of stuff. I asked how the installation went and he mumbled about not being able to get something out of the arm. Now that got my attention. I unscrewed the head and there was some funky plastic thing stuck in the arm that resembled a blue whale's plankton screen, ie, the funkiest flow restrictor I'd ever seen. I pried that thing out of there so fast. The improvement was nothing short of miraculous.

I swear, I dunno how he tolerated his old shower head. You couldn't even get the shampoo out of your hair with that pressure. I consider flow restrictors as a necessary evil but two is just waaaaay too many (the head has one built-in).

So, trust me, go to your favorite home center and pick up one of these bad boys. The first thing you'll notice is that it's 5 times as heavy as those cheap ones. Gotta have a sturdy housing to get any kind of pressure - if you recall your Fluid Dynamics from college. The $40 is worth it every morning when you get in the shower. I probably don't need to tell you we now have two!

1 comment:

t said...

wooot

If I ever get a 2nd bathroom...