OddThinking

I can probably count the two-spout basins I’ve seen in my entire life on one hand. What kind of backwater country do you live in? :)

I’m surprised this wasn’t filed under “Thoughts from the Shower”…

Actually, I can’t even remember when I last saw a faucet with two taps.

All faucets in our home and everywhere else I can think of are of the single-lever variety. (Ie. there’s a lever that you turn left or right to mix in more hot or cold water, respectively, and push up or down to get more or less pressure, respectively – which doesn’t affect the ratio of hot to cold water pressure.)

Thoughts of the shower.

I once trawled the B&Bs of Scotland and marvelled that there were no two shower/tap combinations the same. Two taps, one tap, one lever with too many degrees of freedom, two concentric rings that acted as taps, a switch/lever/tap combination.

Every morning the trip to the shower was like a user interface test where the punishment was to be drenched with icy cold water and the reward was an occasional scalding.

oh god, not the single-lever variety! scourge of the americas! you can never consistently get the same temperature out of those m-fing things from one use to the next.

I hate them.

two separate taps are worse, of course. but if the wages of constant rebuilding are single-lever taps, I’d say don’t bother. I had to talk my parents round to getting a two-handle, single-spout tap for their kitchen sink because they didn’t know any better. they quickly realized the advantages, however.

it just goes to show, we may think we’re quite technologically advanced in the U.S., but we often choose something that is not only more complex, but aggressively lower quality than older technology.

Except I don’t live in the U.S., nor have I ever had trouble getting consistent results from the single-lever faucets I’ve used.

Maybe it’s because our appartment block has long-distance heating so the hot water temperature and pressure is absolutely and completely steady.

Hot and cold water next to each other? Luxury!

I’m currently living in a cold garage. I have to remember to rug up before going to bed. And half of my selection of outer pants don’t fit because of the number of inner layers I require. I dream of scalding.

There are also the taps that are so poorly designed that you have to mash your hands against the basin to try to wet them. I thought it was restricted to older systems which, as well as being guilty of forcing the scalding vs frostbite choice, had predated the technology of longer spouts that reach closer to the centre of the basin.

But no. Just recently I used one that was obviously quite modern, but the designers had opted for style over functionality. To give them credit though, it was a new kind of hand basin problem – they had figured out the longer spout, but they combined it with a really shallow basin, so the hand mashing was still a necessity.

What do they think we are? Savages?

What kind of backwater country do you live in? 🙂

Hmmm… I’ve been travelling, so you can’t blame Australia for this.

The two-spout basin which reminded me of my hate for them was in Ireland.

The modern building with the poorly designed spout was in England.

Chris’s complaint about the Scotland applies equally to everywhere I’ve been in Europe. (So, I am not sure why ThoperSought considers them the “scourge of the americas“)

The other day, I used a faucet in Germany with a small thumbwheel to adjust the temperature, and later that day a very similar looking faucet, with a similar looking thumbwheel that would, instead, open and shut the basin’s plughole.

Flushing the toilet can be an equally challenging task – foot-pedals, by Jove!

My favourite was the Irish shower unit that had no taps at all, but a power button and two dials, like on an electic fan heater. I couldn’t figure out how to start the water flowing until someone took pity on me and turned on the power to the shower unit from outside the bathroom. Discussing this problem lead to woman trying to explain that “The water pressure around here is so bad, every time my next-door neighbour has a shower, my lights dim.”

Of course, there’s a difference between weird design and poor implementation – like the single spout I saw in Switzerland with two (allegedly) cold taps leading to it. Irish plumbing – at least in the houses and public toilets I visited in country Ireland – seemed particularly poor – leaking taps were common; I also saw plenty of hot and cold taps back to front and improperly seated taps. Which reminds me of another story about Australian plumbing that I will write up another day.

Should have titled this post “Cool Runnings”

Ya mon.