new shower

January 24th, 2006

Whenever you venture into a new shower, there are some basic criteria that need to be examined. For your convenience, I give them to you in a fancy bullet point list.

  • Is the water temperature reliable? Can you set the temperature and then lather up knowing it will be the same when you rinse? Or will you have to re-calibrate with soapy hands?
  • What is the ratio on the dial? Is "a 16th of an inch a tousand degrees", or does it allow human steering? My shower is the former, I always know that in a case like this, I might as well give up. If I spent a day in there, maybe I could get the dial just right, or I would have buy some finely tuned mechanical tools from the hardware store. The kind that Swiss watch makers use.
  • Is there a place to position your clothes outside the shower? If not, are they out of range of the water or will you splash all over them when you shower? I got some shelves pretty high up in my shower, those do the job fairly well.

Finally, whoever came up with the shampoo&conditioner in one combo deserves a most sincere pat on the shoulder. I hate waiting for the conditioner to kick in ("that's a tough minute"), so if I condition with shampoo everyday, I can forget all about using the conditioner seperately and my day starts out better.

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4 Responses to "new shower"

  1. ash says:

    Ah, I know exactly what you mean. I fell in love with a shower when I was staying in a guest house once - it was large, it had prefectly adjustable temperature and pressure....the shower in the flat is almost digital in that for most of tap positions it's either very high or very low. There is a small 'switching region' though, and I've got used to knowing where exactly to turn the tap.

    I've never had my clothes in the shower though, or seen anything like that. How does that work? Is it above the shower head? Doesn't it get...steamed?

  2. erik says:

    Screw the temperature; most important thing is that you have a steady and powerful water flow. My shower is like a tiny puppy with the flu that occasionally throws up - try getting your conditioner and shampoo out of your hair with that one in under 20 minutes. It can't be done...

  3. numerodix says:

    [1] I think that's called binary rather than digital .. It's a real pain to have those boundaries on temperature, that's for sure. Mine has temperatures distributed quite nicely across the scale, it's just that the relevant spectrum is too dense.

    You've never showered in a place where you had the clothes inside? You need to do some camping :D

    [2] No, I think temperature is rather crucial, but flow rate is also essential. My shower now has very good flow, it's when they introduced those low flow showers across Europe to save money that resulting in people never knowing what kind of shower they are up against.

  4. ash says:

    [3] Binary, digital, 1s and 0s, On and Off...basically the same.