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Look, man. I have a large body. There are many folds and crevices. I’m not proud of how much effort it takes to keep myself clean, but I’m proud that I’m putting in that effort.
I shower for about 10-15 minutes and feel like that’s “long”. I literally spend half of the time with my arms over the…idk what it’s called, the bar over my sliding glass doors…just letting the hot water hit my back. It’s one of my favorite parts of the day, but after 15 or so min, my hands get pruney and I just want to get out. 30 min seems uncomfortably long.
I really want to take super long showers, but I pay the water bill so…
Fact is, the shower we have is… Strange to say the least.
It’s a wand. Only a wand. Most wand showers also hang up in a way that allows you to just, use it like a normal shower… Not this one. I actually hate it, but don’t have the budget to replace it right now, since it will likely need a partial renovation for the bathroom and that’s our only shower, so everyone is going to get a bit stinky while it’s reno’d.
What I want to do is to add a new bathroom with a shower/bath, then reno the current one, so we can shower during the reno.
I just bought one of those suction cup shower head holders for my current place when I found it doesn’t have a holder. Works fine, although it’s a bit temperamental about the surface.
Those are very cheap so try getting one?
You probably don’t need a full renovation to replace a showerhead. I’m not good at much, but am vaguely competent with basic plumbing. Post a photo of the shower. Most likely you just need a wrench, a new shower-head, and some nylon tape. If you want to get fancy, they also make extenders so you can add extra showerheads without a renovation.
It’s definitely not going to be that easy.
Let me describe what was there when we moved in… So, the bathroom has a fairly typical tub, for the purposes of this explanation, we won’t go into things that aren’t directly relevant… So for now, it’s fairly typical. However, there’s no hot/cold controls on the wall, there’s a faucet on the corner of the tub basin, with a lever that acts as the diverter, two knobs for hot and cold and there’s, what looks like a grab bar, but it actually is a specialty pipe for the existing wand, that actually has a mount for the wand so the shower can be used normally.
Well, without going into too much detail, I’m fairly certain that at least one person cranked on the diverter too hard (no idea why) and basically turned the insides into sand. So now there is a leak that’s dripping into the lower levels creating water damage. We shut off the water. Called a plumber.
Thousands of dollars later, our replacement faucet/diverter is odd to say the least: there is no diverter. There’s actually two water controls, one for the wand, one for the tub faucet. You control both independently. The wand, no longer has a place to mount, when not in use the flex hose for it retracts into the side of the tub, leaving the head of the wand sticking out of the surface.
For the shower itself, we have zero of the usual trimmings. There’s no cutout in the wall for a diverter, there’s no threaded pipe coming out of the wall above your head for a shower head. There’s almost none of what you would expect.
What I expect, on order to unfuck this situation, is that we’ll have to tear out the part of the wall where the diverter and temp controls should be, install a standard diverter box, run a line from there, up the wall to put in a standard fitting for a shower head, then do all of the plumbing to make it all go, which will require copper pipe soldering, something I’m not qualified to do.
Trust me when I say: if it were as easy as you originally thought it was, then this would not be an issue for me, and it would have been completed long ago.
I appreciate that you’re trying to be helpful here. Thanks for that, but unfortunately I think this is over both of our heads as amateurs. As far as I’m concerned, half the shower needs to be pulled apart to fix this monstrosity.
Look, I offered to help, but I need a photo of what we’re working with. Period. You don’t want help, that’s fine too. Maybe it’s over our heads, maybe not. But I need a photo to determine that. That being said, if there’s threading on the pipes, I’m pretty sure we could make something work.
Do you know how long a renovation would take? Maybe you could get away with washing with a wet rag/towel to save building a whole new bathroom. Unless you also just want two bathrooms because that’s neat to have.
Oh. We want another bathroom for completely unrelated reasons. Since we considered this place, we knew that we wanted to renovate to put in a bathroom and some other things. It’s always been a part of the plan.
To be brief: the house purchase was a joint venture by myself and my partner with my brother and his partner. We have two family units under the same roof. I won’t get into all of the reasons we decided to go this way, but needless to say, there’s one shower for essentially two families.
Where the current bathrooms and shower are (we have two bathrooms right now, only one has a shower), they’re in my brother’s “side” of the house. My “side” of the house isn’t even plumbed with water at all.
So the plan is, and always has been, to do renovations at some point to bring water over to that side of the house, and have a bathroom installed for my partner and I. We also want our own kitchen and a couple other small things. There’s space to do it, the garage is far larger than we need, so we’re going to convert part of it over to be the new bathroom space, and there’s a good area in our current “living room” that we want to turn into a type of galley kitchen… More or Less.
So by getting those renovations done first, we would have a second shower and the situation in the house would just kind of reverse. Instead of us going into their part of the house to get a shower, they would come to our side until their shower is finished.
That makes a lot of sense, wish you good luck on the whole process
Thanks. I’ll need it.
You should be able to just buy a new shower head for pretty cheap. It doesn’t require renovation. Unless I’m seriously misunderstanding your shower.
Yeah, I barely understand it. I’ve replaced shower heads before, but we don’t even have a pipe coming out of the wall for a shower head to attach to… I explained in more detail in another reply. In case you’re interested in hearing more. Either way, have a good day.
Got a heat pump so now long showers use much less energy.
Now makes me wonder what the COP is during the summer, if you time the shower so that the heat pump works during the hot part of the day it should be pretty high. 30°c outside, barely needs to work to heat the water.
Doing my installation now for hot water. Combining gas and direct electricity. Will be more or less endless showers with a small bill. First gas then keeping it hot with electric one. Wished I had a heat pump but for another time with bigger budget.
I got the heat pump and all pipework/radiators replaced, the government paid for a bit over half of the total cost as they give you £7.5k now toward replacing a boiler with a heat pump. Plus everything is VAT free as part of the install, so it was pretty much no more expensive than doing the same thing with a gas boiler. The pipework kinda needed replacing anyway, it was shit. Putting more efficient radiators on is a fairly small job when you are having all the pipework replaced already.
Got it done before moving into the house when we bought it, if you already live there I could see it being quite disruptive.
Yea , doing it all by myself as well so nothing close to that. However this is just got water not for the heating , got pellets, wood and sun for that. Think I can get something as well for updating heating and insulation here. so will look into that later.
Shaving
Crying on the floor
The whole routine takes a while
I’m tryin hard going back to fish.
Honestly, I just zone out for a bit. Especially during the winter it’s nice to have warm water pouring over you
I do it to wake up. I am a boulder. Hard to get started but cannot stop until I drop when I do.
Well at least you’re the boulder. I’m definitely Sisyphus, because it’s always stupid hard to start, and about when I think I’ve accomplished something it rolls all the way back down and I have to restart it all again. Just with less energy and hope than before.
I listen to music while in the shower. My playlist is kind of l large, okay?
the noise of the shower is the only thing that drowns out the tinnitus i’ve had for over 20 years. so yea, i’m often in there til the water goes cold.
I used to stare off into nothingness in the shower. It would take maybe 7-8 minutes to actually wash myself; sporadically throughout the process, I’d zone out for a couple minutes at a time.
Now, I’ve got long curly hair that needs frequent tending to. Unless I want my showers to be an hour+ long, I gotta stay focused. I still stare off into nothingness while brushing and whatnot, that helps take away the dread.
sporadically throughout the process, I’d zone out for a couple minutes at a time.
Same. And when I come back to the present, I will sometimes lose track of what was washed already because I was on autopilot/dissociating before stopping to stare at nothing.
Next time you wonder whether you already shampooed:
Grab a stretch of hair between thumb and middle finger. Pull/away from head. Listen for squeak. If you hear the squeak, put the shampoo down!
I zone out and feel like I’ve been in there for hours, then I exit and it’s been eight minutes. I don’t understand why, but the shower completely removes my perception of time (normally one of my better skills). Luckily, it doesn’t go the other way.
Staring into nothingness etc is literally what you’re doing in there, so you answered the question. But I don’t think the questioner misunderstood anything or was accusing you of anything, they just wondered why it takes you so long.
Dude, I’m shaving! Shaving my face and everywhere else I need. Also brushing my teeth. Still doesn’t take 30 but it feels good to be hot water my god. Just like a bath or hot tub. Why rush?
Okay first thing i do is i turn on the water, and hold the shower head in my hand, pointing it away from myself until the water is hot.
Then i quickly spray the water all over my body, so i am completely wet. Then hang up the shower head, and step under it.
Then my brain shuts off for an undetermined amount of time.
Then i put shampoo in my hair, armpits and crotch, then finally soap everywhere else.
Make sure to get all the soap off, then dry myself. Total of ~45min.
lol I do the same thing but I do the washing part first. Because sometimes I will be in their so long I forget if I washed myself or not yet, so I just do it first
Then my brain shuts off for an undetermined amount of time.
After this, I first need to remember if I’m already done washing myself or haven’t started yet.
TIL shampooing non-head hair
I have had a beard for about 20 years. The world has not run out of people who have to ask how I clean it and are somehow surprised that I use shampoo on it. “Oh, yeah, I suppose it is hair!”
Wait, that’s not obvious?
Then my brain shuts off for an undetermined amount of time.
Pretty much this for me.
I’ve gotten pretty good at 10 minute showers before work, but I absolutely blank out from time to time.
