Who writes this

Jean-Benoit Buisson

One person writes and signs every page on this site. This page says who that is, how the judgments are arrived at, and what would count as a reason to distrust them.

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 100 °F (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 widespread faucet that needed an 8-inch spread, meeting a sink drilled at 4. A toilet seat ordered without measuring the hinge holes. A sink with no overflow fitted with a slotted drain, quietly emptying into the cupboard. A drawer vanity that will not close because a standard bottle trap sits where the drawer goes. A shower drain whose base did not match the waterproofing already on the floor. 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 center distance, the faucet 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, 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

Every entry on this list comes from the catalog of this site, and each links through to its own page. When a write-up is revised, the date shown is the date of the revision.

What I care about

Three ideas, and every page carries them. 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 faucet 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 faucet 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, center 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 1.8 gpm at 80 psi or a 2-inch trap 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 100 °F (38 °C) stop on a thermostatic valve 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 on this site asks to be believed because of a name at the top; what each judgment rests on is written out on the page that carries it.

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 that store, 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 center distance belongs. And the parts treated as afterthoughts — the unslotted drain, the space-saving trap, the shower hose washer, the rough-in valve a Roman tub trim 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 molded restrictor out of a new hand shower before deciding the pressure has dropped, soaking an aerator instead of replacing a faucet, 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 anything here is inaccurate, say so and it will be put right, with the correction dated on the page. Write to [email protected].

Jean-Benoit Buisson · Paris, France