New Homes 101
One of the things that inevitably comes with moving into somewhere new is learning how everything works; the oddness of light switches in unexpected places, the intricacies of the heating system, the exact position for a cooker dial that will get the pilot light to light the ring, the fact that one key in the house will always work the opposite way round than all the others.
But…. the thing I wouldn’t expect to stumble over is how to work the shower. I’ve stayed in a *lot* of hotels over the years and I doubt that any two had the same specific plumbing control arrangement, and I’ve never despaired of getting clean.
The new place almost pushed me to that point though. It’s a standard enough looking affair, with everything built into the wall and just the shower head, mixer control thing and the bath ‘faucet’ visible. Turn the dial and water starts pouring into the bath, turn the other dial and the temperature changes. Easy.
Now make water come out of the shower.
Ah.
This was a struggle. No, you don’t pull the knob out from the wall. No, you don’t turn it one way for the bath and the other for the shower. No, you don’t twist the handle on the dial. No, there isn’t a little pull-up knob on the faucet that switches them. I tried all these and a number of other standard conventions besides. I could have a bath, but a shower seemed out of the question. I even wondered if the shower was actually really connected to the system.
Then I remembered the huge stack of manuals and product paperwork in a kitchen cupboard. Yes, gentle reader, I read the instructions for a shower… And actually, they were the installation instructions, so they didn’t even immediately answer the question. Careful scrutiny, however, highlighted the critical detail.
Please tell me that you think this is as ridiculous as I did. To get a shower rather than a bath, you have to pull down the ring that terminates the bath water outlet. Yes, what looks like it’s just the circular business end of the tap is actually the switch to divert water from one to the other. I’m not explaining this very clearly - I really need photos to illustrate the point.
Suffice to say that no reasonable-minded person would think this was sensible. I know, because I asked myself.
September 25th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Oooo….let’s see the photos!
September 25th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Apparently, another blogger is having the very same problem today:
http://melissacmorris.blogspot.com/2008/09/shower-power.html
September 26th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I’ve used one like that before, just me clearly, but it seemed quite obvious at the time, of course the fact I’d fallen out of a plane half sober probably helped in this instance.
;-)