I got a call from a customer who was unhappy with his shower. I was the Rinnai Rep at the time and was asked to go help the plumber out. I meet the homeowner and plumber and see this enormous custom head with dozens of brass nozzles. Plumber says the system checks out. HO says I paid $4000 for the shower head, which he did not buy from the plumber. I go check out the water heater install, Everything checks out. The single unit is making 4.8 gpm at the flow and temp rise which is right on spec. We then got a 5 gal pail and filled it really quickly. The HO getting pissed off keeps telling me that he paid $4000 for the shower head. Me, going through the numbers makes no difference.. “I paid $4000 for the shower head…” He had a 20 gpm $4000 shower head on a 4.8gpm hot water supply system. I told him he will need a larger gas supply and three more tankless units to feed said shower head. As I left the building I hear him fading into the background, “I paid $4000 for the shower head…”
So, got Hot Water?
I have to laugh at that, and thank God I don't have to deal with stupid customers. As for the $4K shower head,
"there's a sucker born every minute." They don't have the brains to understand that the installation calls-for certain parameters, to function properly.
If he wanted that much hot water, maybe he should have put the $4000 into a heated swimming pool!
$4K will probably get you a quality heat pump, installed in your pool. Depending on your electrical or gas availability in proximity to the heat pump, that would be more to service the new appliance.
You could get a good start on a Toto tankless toilet/bidet
https://www.totousa.com/products/neorest with that $4,000. Here is ours, a Toto toilet/bidet, which in your elder years, makes it easier to maintain health 'down-there.' The electronic control, wireless and removable from its mounting bracket, has more controls on it than our cable TV remote. Water temperature, the force and direction of stream (female and male) and force; air volume, temperature, and direction, and more; my favorite function is that it senses your arrival and you can program it to raise the top lid and the seat, or just the top lid. I'd like it to greet me: "
hello Dave, have a seat."
Lol. How much do you think a pool costs?
We just got a final (inspection) this year on a pool renovation. We kept the hole, and replaced
everything else. The permit took over a year to go thru the city planning dept. Remember, this was for a
renovation, not a new installation. It was sealed by a P.E. and the pool contractor. The job cost > the first FL home I bought, a mile from the Atlantic Ocean, in 1980.
After we got the 15 months of waiting permit, work was underway. We got all new plumbing, and two skimmers, code required 1. We also added a spa w/a spillway into the deep-end. It's about 7 ft square. A new floor drain, and a spa; the spa we didn't previously have.
The pool has 3 'wet' lights, the spa, 1. They have a rainbow of colors, choose one, two, or three. The fiber optic system circles through your color choices or you can set it on one. I like the one that's red, white and blue, perfect for Memorial Day, the 4th of July, or Veterans' Day.
We changed the pool configuration, now the shallow end has 3 steps into the pool. The deep end has a full-width seating area, and you can get into the spa spillway there too. Here's a satisfied pool/spa user.
One of the issues we had was that we didn't want to order any material until we had an approved set of plans. Once we had the approved plans, the sandblasted Turkish marble (non-skid, or at-least
less-chance of skid) we wanted, for the pool deck, was not in-stock and we had to wait nearly 3 months for the freighter from Turkey to deliver the Sea-Tainer of tile to the Port of Miami. We could have chosen another material/finish, but we decided to wait to get what we wanted. I'm glad we waited, as it came-out beautifully. The pool deck was sand-filled between adjacent tiles, and then sealed.
The #1 improvement for the deck was that the old deck, of concrete under red brick pavers, was too-hot to comfortably walk upon in the heat of the summer. The red brick pavers also held a lot of heat, and after sunset, you could feel the radiated heat, well-into the night. The pool would get into the mid-90'sF during the summer, good for a shower or a bath, but not for escaping an
'en Floride' summer heat. It wouldn't be until September that you could sense the pool temperature lessening, and the red brick paver deck also.
They laid the Turkish sandblasted marble with shallow pitches, you can't really see them, until it rains. The pitch channels the runoff rainwater into shallow depressions away from the house, and to the grass outside the pool deck. Watching them do the layout was fascinating. They used a surveyor's twine to establish the pitch and direction of the depression and most-importantly, it works, even in a South Florida
'frog-choker' summer afternoon thunderstorm. For those the runoff spreads a bit wider on the surface of the Turkish marble deck, and it drains well, and quickly. The grass has a good pitch down and away from the pool deck, to the property line.
I found this Speakman shower head at the local Habitat for Humanity. I soaked it in vinegar for several days, and it cleaned-up nicely. You can see it says,
"inside volume regulator," and it probably weighs a couple of pounds. We have hansgrohe bathroom fixtures in our four bathrooms, the house got re-modeled w/additions front & back, just before we retired ~ 8 years ago. So the Speakman sits on a shelf in a garage cabinet.
Speakman Anystream Self-Cleaning Head No. 1 12-19-50 patent pending
The hansgrohe rear-of-home
en-suite master bedroom has a good-sized shower, two sides are tempered glass. On the two CBS block walls, we had installed 4 hansgrohe body jets on connecting walls, hansgrohe diverters, and temperature controls. Overhead is a rainfall shower head, probably 8-9" wide. Like many other houses, we have a hand-held showerhead, on a vertical bar, allowing you to remove the hand-held showerhead, or to use it, sliding up/down to suit the personal needs of the user. The space is big-enough that two people can use it. It's fed by a Rinnai tankless gas water heater, so no running-out of hot water.
I find myself using the wall-mounted hand-held shower head mostly, though sometimes I do a cycle through the overhead 'rainfall' fixed shower head, and the 4 body jets. You can just pirouette-around at the points of convergence of the body jets, and get a good rinse, or just a therapeutic all-over body shower.
There are a couple of reflections on the rainfall showerhead, those aren't corrosion. The big one is the floor drain.
