Quote:
Originally Posted by DJJasonp
You just stomped on my dreams!!! Is it really that bad?
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We don't have a water softener, as there's never been a place to install one in our home, so the hard water (DWP) pretty much destroyed the shower panel, bathroom and kitchen faucets along with shower heads.
I purchased Grohe faucets for the master bath and kitchen that were about $450 each back in 2003/2004 because my wife wanted the Master bath faucets to match the kitchen faucet. They barely made it six years due to the water. The handles would get stuck and freeze. The hard water became visible on the fixtures but using a hard water remover like Lime Away also removes the finish.
As for the Grohe shower panel, the valve began leaking about 5 years after installation and the shower head became completely useless. And unless you turn on the jets at least once a week, they'll clog and become unusable because the sediment just sits in the head and eventually blocks the water.
To top that off, the Grohe cartridges are nearly impossible to replace and as I mentioned earlier, I had to have a 2' x 2' area around the valve ripped out so that the valve could be replaced. Such a waste of time and money.
That said, I haven't had any issues with my Maxx Jacuzzi in the master, probably because the jets are much larger than the shower panel's jets. I'd recommend two shower heads in the master bath as opposed to a shower panel, at least for DWP water.
We had several metal rain shower heads that just got the point where they were so clogged that I had to replace them. Instead of spending a ton of dough on replacements, I just started buying 8" rain shower heads on Amazon for $30 dollars or less because it would have been a waste of money to purchase something more expensive. These look good and appear to be metal, so we aren't losing anything visually.
Such is life with extremely hard water...