I’m building a custom shower and want to have both a regular showerhead as well as hand shower plumbed in. What’s been giving me considerable pain has been trying to find an elegant solution to running solely the main showerhead OR both main showerhead AND hand shower. My options seems to be either buying a Moen ExactTemp 5-function transfer valve (which does much more than I want or need), or using a cheap shut-off valve jerry-rigged on the hand-shower hose. Is there nothing I can build in? That is, a valve I can build into the wall (like a faucet) that allows me to direct part of the flow to the hand shower? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!
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Hansgrohe makes such an animal as does Kohler and a few others. It is called a diverter valve.
I may be missing something here, but I don't see it as that difficult. As mentioned above, there is a little item called a diverter valve which is usually used to allow the water to go into the tub or into the shower head, but which can switch between any two outlets.
If you want finer control than a diverter valve, just take a standard mixing valve (preferrably a temperature controlling one) and then just above it place another mixing valve that is inverted so that the single pipe that comes out of the lower (main) mixing valve runs into what is normally the "out" pipe of the inverted upper mixing valve. You would then put the regular shower head (probably one of the $1,000 jobbers, of course...) on a pipe attached to where the hot water would normally feed in and the hand held shower head into where the cold water normally fed in (or the other way around, depending upon which side of the continent you are on...).
You would probably want to make some kind of a limiter or collar on the upper, inverted mixer so that there are not two places where the water could be turned off, or it could be a bit confusing. The "H" and "C" on the cover plate might be a bit confusing, too, so you probably will want to disguise it or make a new one. (Actually, the two different diverter valves will probably be guaranteed to fake anyone out momentarily, particularly any guest who needs a cold shower to sober up after a party.)
Of course, you could do something slightly different by having a mixer valve feed into a "T" and then have a regular (although fancy) water valve on each leg of the "T", one which feeds into the regular shower head and the other valve feeding into the hand held one.
Or, I would probably just install completely separate mixing valves feeding each one, that way when you are showering with a friend during the next drought, you can be taking a cold shower while she takes a hot one...
Edited 8/28/2002 10:50:54 PM ET by CaseyR