It seems to me that bathroom fittings have gone insane…bear with me.
My son has a rather expensive (£1500) floor mounted “tub filler” made by a company called Crosswater. A few weeks back, water started dripping through the ceiling below the bathroom. The tap is connected to the supply pipes beneath the tiled bathroom floor so there’s no way of isolating it. I turned off all the water and dismantled the tap. There are no less than 21 low profile O rings in this tap plus one Chinese cartridge and one shuttle valve and four push fit internal pipe connections. The O rings are non standard and the manufacturer doesn’t stock any and can’t tell you any technical information on them (so just another fake manufacturer supplying Chinese goods) but bless them, they can sell you a replacement Chinese plastic cartridge.
Don’t get me started on built in toilet cisterns.
