Who writes this

Jean-Benoit Buisson

Every page on this site is written and signed by one person. This page says who, how the judgements are reached, and — just as importantly — what he is not.

How I got here

What made me start writing things down is the emptiest number in this whole trade: a flow rate printed with no pressure next to it. The same shower head is honestly 9 l/min at 3 bar and about 5 l/min at 1 bar, and a listing prints the first figure without ever saying which one it is. Once you notice it, the pattern is everywhere. A "water saving" claim that describes a plastic restrictor. A 38 °C stop described as a safety device when the manufacturer calls it a detent you can push past. The word "chrome", which describes a plating and says nothing about the brass, zamak or stainless steel under it. Every page I found while looking for an answer had the same shape: a ranked list, a score out of ten, an affiliate button, and not one measurement I could check against a specification sheet.

And there is a second problem, which is worse because it is settled before the box is even opened. Bathroom fittings are bought on photographs and returned on measurements. A tap that needed 150 mm between the wall outlets, meeting a wall that has 153. A toilet seat ordered without measuring the hinge holes. A basin with no overflow fitted with a slotted waste, quietly emptying into the cupboard. A drawer vanity unit that will not close because a standard bottle trap sits where the drawer goes. A shower channel that needed 9 cm under the floor in a renovation that had 6. None of that is on the front of the packaging, and all of it decides whether the thing can be fitted at all.

So this is the page I went looking for and never found. I read what manufacturers publish, I verify every product reference market by market, I write down the measurement that decides — the centre distance, the tap hole, the hinge spacing, the thread, the build height — and I say plainly when a figure is not published at all. That last part carries more weight than it sounds: most of the disappointment in this subject comes from a number nobody printed, or from one printed without the condition that makes it mean something.

I keep notes — the honest specification of each family, the place where the manual contradicts the sales page, which trap fits behind which vanity unit, what a thermostatic cartridge needs in pressure before it regulates at all, and the buying mistake each category invites. This site is those notes, put in order, in five languages, because the same question is asked in French, German, Spanish and Italian and gets a far worse answer in four of them.

I am not a plumber, a fitter or a bathroom designer, and I do not pretend to be. What I can do is read carefully, compare honestly, report every manufacturer figure with its unit and its source, and tell you which measurement the maker left out.

What this site covers

Everything listed here is taken from the catalogue of this site, and each entry links to its own page. When the catalogue changes, this list changes with it. It is a list of what is covered — not a list of what I own.

What I care about

Three things, and they shape every page here. The number that gets quoted is usually the wrong one — a shower head sold on a flow rate with no pressure beside it rather than on the minimum pressure it needs, a tap sold on its finish rather than on its cartridge diameter, a trap sold on how neat it looks rather than on the depth of its water seal, a hook sold on a load capacity measured as a straight pull on dry tile. What the thing costs over ten years decides more than what it costs today — a cartridge is a spare part, a soft-close hinge is a wear part, a filter is a subscription, and a tap whose insert only that maker sells is one you replace instead of repairing. And the thing that matters most is rarely on the specification sheet at all: whether the fitting can actually be cleaned, because a shower head whose nozzles cannot be rubbed clear and a brush that stands in its own water both get thrown away long before they break.

What I am not

I am not a plumber, a bathroom fitter, an electrician or a designer. I hold no qualification in any of them, I have never worked for a manufacturer or for a retailer, and nothing here rests on any professional title. This site describes a product — its dimensions, its threads, its published specifications — and stops there. In particular, every dimension, centre distance, thread size, flow rate, operating pressure, water seal depth and load figure on this site is reported from the manufacturer with its unit written as published and its source named, and never derived by me. Where a maker states 5 l/min at 3 bar or a 50 mm water seal, I report that the maker states it — I am not a testing laboratory, and no product here is described as stronger or more economical than another on the strength of a specification alone.

And this site is emphatically not an installation manual. For anything that goes on a wall, holds water under pressure or takes an electrical supply in a damp room, it points at the maker's instructions and at your national plumbing and wiring rules rather than paraphrasing them. It repeats two statements rather than assuming them: the 38 °C stop on a thermostatic mixer is a mechanical detent, not a scald-prevention device, and a water softener treats limescale and is not a health product. If a page here touches a rule, it describes it and points to the authority or the manual that publishes it, and goes no further.

No verdict here asks for your trust on the strength of a byline; what each judgement rests on is set out on the page it appears on, and you can read how this site reaches a verdict in full.

How I work

Every figure names its source: a manufacturer specification, a manual, a declared rating, or the weight of long-term owner reports.
No price, product reference or specification is ever invented. Where a figure is missing, the field is left empty and the gap is stated on the page.
Product references are verified against Amazon before publication, per market. Where a model is not sold in your country, you are sent to a local search rather than to a page that does not exist.
Where the cheap option wins, the page says the cheap option wins — and where the honest answer is changing a setting on the equipment you already own rather than buying something, it says that instead.
Nothing here is sold on a headline figure. No page is built around the largest number on a box, and where a product changes very little between generations, the page says so.

Why this site exists

Because bathroom fittings are sold on photographs and on the wrong numbers, to people who will live with the result for fifteen years. A flow rate is printed where a flow rate and a pressure belong. A finish is printed where a material belongs. A drawing is printed where a centre distance belongs. And the parts treated as afterthoughts — the unslotted waste, the space-saving trap, the pair of cone seals, the eccentric connectors a 153 mm wall needs — are usually what decides whether the expensive thing can be fitted at all.

There is also a part of this that is not about buying anything. The single most useful sentence on this site is that a declared feature is a description, not a guarantee. Writing it the other way round sells more fittings and leaves a reader disappointed by a purchase that did exactly what it promised. Plenty of what fixes a bathroom costs nothing at all: unscrewing the trap before buying a bottle of drain opener, taking the moulded restrictor out of a new hand shower before deciding the pressure has dropped, soaking an aerator instead of replacing a tap, and letting an adhesive fixing cure for the full twenty-four hours before hanging anything on it. Those things are free and almost never written down. That is the subject a page full of new fittings is guaranteed to skip. It is not skipped here.

Correcting me

If something here is wrong, tell me and I will fix it and date the correction on the page. Write to [email protected].

Jean-Benoit Buisson · Montrollet, France