# Fancy shower



## richfield (Oct 29, 2008)

well this is one of my more complicated showers. 2 temperature controls, 6 volume controls, 8 body sprays, 1 shower bar, 1 rain head, 1 steamer, 2 journeyman at 8 hours a piece, no leaks(hopefully), one piece of bended copper and most importantly.... no burned wood(used no gel or any tricks just planned it right). For some reason the contractor put drywall behind. They built studs to fit so the tile is flush with protection plate. then they put a membrane over the whole shower. Im just praying the flow rate is ok because this is on an acreage but has that variable speed grundfos controller. I'm new here by the way. I'm Dan and am located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.


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## Bill (Jun 17, 2008)

all I can say is wow!
I just done my first a couple of weeks ago. Nothing quite this big though, just 1 hand held wand, 4 body sprays, 1 temp control and 1 overhead shower head.

BTW, welcome to the zone!


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## Ron (Jun 12, 2008)

Nice looks like art work, wait we are artist at what we do.


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## richfield (Oct 29, 2008)

thanks guys, I appreciate it.


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## Plumbworker (Oct 23, 2008)

very nice and clean..:thumbsup:


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## pzmember (Sep 20, 2008)

very tight system. level, plumb, and the joints look great. i love doing custom showers. hit the ball out of the park on this one.:thumbsup:


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## pzmember (Sep 20, 2008)

oh yeah welcome to the zone.:laughing:


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## service guy (Jun 26, 2008)

Nice work.:thumbup:
Back in my new construction days, I put in some crazy shower systems. One I can remember had 4-5 thermostatic valves, with 14 body sprays, 3 over-head rain-showers and a hand-held. It put out ridiculously high GPM. We had to rough-in TWO 3" commercial shower drains to handle all the water, in this one guy's private shower. I think the hot and cold water pipes feeding the shower area were 1 1/4" copper. All fancy-schmancy Dornbracht valves. The guy was some wall street hot-shot that sold his company to J.P. Morgan in the 1990s during the Nasdaq boom. I remember he also had rainbow colored marble fire-places. And a commercial-style private kitchen almost the size of my house. Just an absolutely decadent mansion. Learning plumbing in the Hamptons was fun.


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## pzmember (Sep 20, 2008)

service guy said:


> Nice work.:thumbup:
> Back in my new construction days, I put in some crazy shower systems. One I can remember had 4-5 thermostatic valves, with 14 body sprays, 3 over-head rain-showers and a hand-held. It put out ridiculously high GPM. We had to rough-in TWO 3" commercial shower drains to handle all the water, in this one guy's private shower. I think the hot and cold water pipes feeding the shower area were 1 1/4" copper. All fancy-schmancy Dornbracht valves. The guy was some wall street hot-shot that sold his company to J.P. Morgan in the 1990s during the Nasdaq boom. I remember he also had rainbow colored marble fire-places. And a commercial-style private kitchen almost the size of my house. Just an absolutely decadent mansion. Learning plumbing in the Hamptons was fun.


 what i think is funny is that in this day of low flow, water conservation ive put in more 6,8,10 body spray w/ other accessories included than ever in my career. lets get our toilets down to 1 gal a flush and make sure our showers are pumping out 45 gallons a minute.:laughing:


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## service guy (Jun 26, 2008)

mjcoleman said:


> what i think is funny is that in this day of low flow, water conservation ive put in more 6,8,10 body spray w/ other accessories included than ever in my career. lets get our toilets down to 1 gal a flush and make sure our showers are pumping out 45 gallons a minute.:laughing:


Exactly. Its totally ridiculous imo.:blink: :laughing:


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## Tankless (Jun 12, 2008)

WHat kind of hot water heating system is feeding this?


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## richfield (Oct 29, 2008)

a Bradford white 75 gal double coil hot water maker. A vacuum solar panel feeds the tank and if that can't keep up, I have a Trinity 200 boiler that feeds the other coil. The boiler also does in-floor throughout the house but domestic water has priority. pretty much, you will never run out of hot water.


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## Wiser (Jul 25, 2008)

Love seeing all that copper! Such a shame that nice work gets covered up. It should be framed so that up and coming plumbers can see what real plumbing looks like.:thumbup:


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## uaplumber (Jun 16, 2008)

Very nice work! 
Welcome!


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## para1 (Jun 17, 2008)

Nice Job!, welcome to PZ.


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## rocksteady (Oct 8, 2008)

nice and clean. i have one question though, more of a curiosity. what's with the brass nipple and tee on top of the left side temp. valve? why not copper?








paul


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## richfield (Oct 29, 2008)

I put the brass tee and nipple because it kept everything square. Tee's have a tendency to sag and it could have put everything off a bit. :blink: I'll say that because in reality I could have just as easily put a c-c tee but I bought a 3/4" Tee and nipple so might as well us it up :thumbup: I'll show you guys some of my boiler systems this weekend. same sort of deal, lots of copper and I take lots of pride in making them.


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## Protech (Sep 22, 2008)

sweatness. more pics please. got any snaps of the vac-tube system?:thumbup1:


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## rocksteady (Oct 8, 2008)

richfield said:


> I put the brass tee and nipple because it kept everything square. Tee's have a tendency to sag and it could have put everything off a bit. :blink: I'll say that because in reality I could have just as easily put a c-c tee but I bought a 3/4" Tee and nipple so might as well us it up :thumbup: I'll show you guys some of my boiler systems this weekend. same sort of deal, lots of copper and I take lots of pride in making them.


 
cool. that makes sense. i just wanted to make sure there wasn't some functional reason why it needed to be brass, i couldn't think of one. next one, do it all out of cut and threaded brass. :thumbup:

that's the kind of thing i wish i had the opportunity to do. it's been over 10 years since i was doing work like that. now it's all qest leaks under trailers and "i'll just go with the cheaper one" customers.







paul


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## richfield (Oct 29, 2008)

I actually don't have any pics from this job right now but I just finished wiring the boiler and have to vent it and combustion analyze it. I will take a picture then and wont have the vac system installed until after winter. What I did is the boiler is connected to both coils right now and later we will hook the tank to the panel.
all threaded brass? wow, I'm not that hardcore lol. I've never actually done it before, I think you use soapy water as lubricant though. I just do custom houses and light commercial. everything from hydronic towel warmers to 3 story waterfalls. I would like to get into service work though, I turn so much of it away but maybe i'll start.


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## rocksteady (Oct 8, 2008)

if i had the opportunity to do the things you're doing, i would happily turn away service work. i'd much rather put together nice artistic systems than clean somebody's poop out of my clothes.









paul


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## Pipemaster (Jul 29, 2008)

*very very very nice work*

*you should be proud !*


*very impressive ! :thumbsup:*


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## Bulldog Plumbing (Nov 9, 2008)

Thats a real nice job.

It reminds me of a shower we recently did in this gigantic house. For his shower he basically decided he wanted every toy possible. 

So it ended up having:
Main shower head
Handheld
Overhead
6 body sprays
Steam shower

And then get this, he wanted this setup with a mirror image on the other side of the shower, so double it all. The thing was insane, the shower stall was about the size of my whole bathroom. Wish I took some pictures before they put the wonderboard up. Maybe ill take some of the finished product.


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## richfield (Oct 29, 2008)

Here's the final picture. two more body sprays on the left that can't be seen. and a rain head above thats hard to see. a $700 CAD steam controller that I broke the electrical prongs on the first time I tried installing it on the right(behind the body spray).  :whistling2:


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## uaplumber (Jun 16, 2008)

Looks good! But one question, where are the user labels? That is a whole heck of alot of valves to keep track of!! Then again, I have only installed multi-head shower stalls, no customs. However, given the chance, I would love to do the kind of work that you did.:thumbsup:


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## muck (Oct 10, 2008)

Thats alot of valves. looks good tho


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## pzmember (Sep 20, 2008)

richfield said:


> Here's the final picture. two more body sprays on the left that can't be seen. and a rain head above thats hard to see. a $700 CAD steam controller that I broke the electrical prongs on the first time I tried installing it on the right(behind the body spray).  :whistling2:


 seeing as how those mixers and volume controls are all the way over there how did you test it, swim trunks.:laughing:


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## Hyper Piper (Nov 29, 2008)

What size is the drain?


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## rocksteady (Oct 8, 2008)

that sure is purty lookin'. if i had something like that in my house, i'd need lables on all the controls just to remember what did what.







paul


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## richfield (Oct 29, 2008)

yeah it is a lot of valves to keep track of but I kept it as simple as possible. the first four volumes are all body sprays and are in order of where they are located in the shower, the next is the rain head and then the hand held. It's kind of like light switches, after a while you just know which ones are which. a house would look silly if all the light switches were labeled. It was a little tricky testing all of them at once but I got it done somehow and didn't get as wet as you'd think. I put a 2" Schluter in and it works fine but looking back maybe I should have put a 3" in, what would you guys have done?


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## super plumber (Oct 19, 2008)

a couple of years ago i put in a shower that had 6 body sprays, 2 shower heads, and a hand held and i put in a 3" drain. i was concerned with standing water if all 9 sprays on at same time for very long


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## Plumbworker (Oct 23, 2008)

did you calculate the fu's it sure seems like it needs a 3" drain


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## ROCKSTARPLUMBER (Dec 14, 2008)

Looks good. those are pretty popular here, although you must of prefabbed most of it, unless its all pro-press, cant really tell, damn, where are my glasses.


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