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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
(HTM) Delta single handle ball faucets (1963)
haritha-j wrote 49 min ago:
These are such a horrible horrible idea, particularly the shower
variant. You just can't have fine control when the thing moves in two
dimensions, you want a little bit more shower pressure? How about I
burn you instead? Whats wrong with having one dial for temperature and
one for water pressure?
jetsetman192 wrote 3 hours 32 min ago:
These types of faucets are so common where I live that I canât really
imagine what the alternative is. What do you have if you donât have
this?
pm215 wrote 44 min ago:
You can have either completely separate hot and cold taps, each with
their own spout, or you can have a setup with separate hot and cold
knobs and a single spout.
For my bathroom sink I specified a two taps/one spout unit (similar
to this one [1] ) because I prefer to be able to get "this is
definitely cold water with absolutely no hot water mixed in" when
that's what I want. (My hot water comes from a combi boiler, so if
you run the hot tap for a short time all that happens is you burn
some gas when the boiler detects the water flow but you just get the
cold water in the pipe.)
I like the combined handle type for showers, where you always want
some hot water and are generally running the water for a long time.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.screwfix.com/p/swirl-traditional-chrome-104mm-cl...
pastel8739 wrote 3 hours 25 min ago:
Separate knobs for hot and cold, like this:
(HTM) [1]: https://www.homedepot.com/p/MOEN-Brantford-4-in-Centerset-2-...
abcd_f wrote 44 min ago:
... or two separate taps even. Though it's quite a bit more exotic
and ancient.
(HTM) [1]: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/AF32/producti...
jetsetman192 wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
Getting âAccess Deniedâ from that link.
ggm wrote 3 hours 38 min ago:
If you live in an economy where these are uncommon, travelling to one
where they are common and especially the equivalent for shower control
in hotels.. is a logistical nightmare.
Its the eigenvalue of taps. It's hot, or it's not, and which orifice
it's coming out of is completely unclear as well as which motion causes
more, or less of water and heat.
userbinator wrote 2 hours 46 min ago:
Left and right for hot and cold, up and down for more and less flow.
Very intuitive.
It sems these days shower valves have all been enshittified to have
exactly one dimension, which proceeds from "off" to "small trickle of
cold water", then "slow flow of warm water", and finally "slow flow
of barely hot water".
TeMPOraL wrote 1 hour 9 min ago:
> Left and right for hot and cold, up and down for more and less
flow. Very intuitive.
Unless someone wired the cold/hot in reverse, which happens
surprisingly often.
Otherwise, agreed. Should be obvious and intuitive the first time
you start using one.
dpe82 wrote 4 hours 52 min ago:
I've never see the MR-510 dishwashing handle before - that seems so
convenient!
matthewmcg wrote 5 hours 20 min ago:
The terms of sale are so clear and concise. But I donât see a
warranty period. Would they still replace a part on a 1961 sink?
eclipticplane wrote 4 hours 45 min ago:
Not sure about warranty, but a few years ago my mother's 80s(?) era
Delta faucet started leaking. I sent a blurry photo to Delta's
service team and a few days later had a link to a replacement part
and an old manual scanned as a PDF. For a 40 year old product!
Ultimately we replaced the whole faucet and fixture, but that single
reply probably made me a customer for life.
throwaway173738 wrote 5 hours 26 min ago:
I just changed a valve in one of these shower handles last year.
Theyâre great. The Moen shower handles are pretty good too but the
cartridges require a special tool to replace.
bob1029 wrote 3 hours 53 min ago:
> the cartridges require a special tool to replace.
I find foul language to be the most effective tool for this job.
pengaru wrote 5 hours 29 min ago:
I need a time machine.
jessmartin wrote 5 hours 31 min ago:
Wow. This is exactly my kitchen faucet. Which makes sense, because my
house was built in 1961.
Works great. Amazing how durable the faucet is!
800xl wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
I paid a little more and waited a couple weeks to receive a Delta
single handle faucet for my kitchen back in 2020, rather than just
buying what was available on the shelf at Lowe's. Model: #400LF-WF. The
reviews at the time said it was basically the same faucet made back in
the 60s. I'm glad I did - it has been an excellent faucet.
userbinator wrote 5 hours 7 min ago:
It's interesting to see the prices back then - the model 400 cost
$24.95 (see page 15), which would be around $260 today.
Incidentally, the newer variants also have flow restrictors, which
aren't hard to remove.
vel0city wrote 5 hours 22 min ago:
> rather than just buying what was available on the shelf at Lowe's
Funny, that exact model dominates the shelf space at the Lowe's near
me. Practically a whole bay for just those, over 50 in stock right
now.
800xl wrote 4 hours 23 min ago:
Weird. I figured at the time it was due to COVID related supply
chain issues, but I just checked and they still don't stock them
locally.
nik282000 wrote 5 hours 57 min ago:
Oh my god, actual dimensions on a drawing, part numbers, AND service
instructions!?! I work on industrial equipment with 1/10th the
documentation presented here.
Cool find, op!
mns wrote 40 min ago:
Is this a US thing? We renovated the apartment in Germany in the last
year and every faucet and piece of equipment that we got has a manual
including a table with list of parts and technical drawings and how
to take it apart. We also got from the original owner all the manuals
of the existing things, and this helped a lot in finding the proper
part to replace and fix the bathtub drain. None of this is old stuff,
the building is 15 years old.
Aurornis wrote 4 hours 24 min ago:
In the architectural space itâs common to have design files for
everything, especially today.
I looked at Deltaâs website and sure enough you can even download
CAD models and drawings of their faucets:
(HTM) [1]: https://www.deltafaucet.com/bim-library
dpe82 wrote 4 hours 48 min ago:
No wonder our grandparents generation were good with mechanical
things. If they were looking at materials like that all the time - I
feel like you'd build an intuitive sense of how common household
devices work pretty easily if it were so clear and accessible.
jackyinger wrote 3 hours 30 min ago:
Literature on doing things was much more practical. There was a
culture of things being repairable. There was a pride in oneâs
work. Check this out if you donât believe me: [1] The rise of the
publicly traded corporation run by fiduciary duty has, in my
opinion, squeezed out repairability, pride, and workmanship for
marginal financial gains.
I fear it wonât have been worth it in the long run. Shame short
term incentives run the show.
(HTM) [1]: http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/1617/30720.pdf
Aurornis wrote 4 hours 5 min ago:
Materials like this are infinitely more accessible to us than our
grandparents generation. We all have devices in our pockets that
can get to service manuals for our products in minutes. I can have
common parts at my door overnight from Amazon with the press of a
button on my phone. Every local hardware store carries replacement
cartridges and gaskets for common faucet types.
The reason our grandparents generation was good at fixing things is
because they had to be. My grandparents lived through the Great
Depression and worked difficult manual labor jobs. Contrary to the
Reddit memes about how past generations lived like kings on trivial
jobs, they worked extremely hard for everything and made it last.
Itâs really easy to get service manuals and do basic maintenance
on simple things like faucets these days. I think the only reason
itâs becoming common for people to not know how to do basic
repairs or even find basic service information is that many people
grew up never having to think about it. I still have adult friends
who went from living with their parents to dorms to rented
apartments who never learned the first thing about maintaining or
fixing things around the house because theyâve never had to and
they donât want to - and they can keep going that way without
really losing anything. Itâs a choice at this point, but it works
for them.
TeMPOraL wrote 1 hour 19 min ago:
> Materials like this are infinitely more accessible to us than
our grandparents generation. We all have devices in our pockets
that can get to service manuals for our products in minutes.
You mean minutes to find the right bootleg manual site with PDF
for an adjacent product category, then some more minutes to
realize you cannot safely (if at all) get at the manual, some
more minutes to find a different bootleg PDF site, realize that
it's actually not close enough to the model you have, and 1h
later, finally find the good enough PDF... only to realize that
"service manuals" today are often useless, and decide to repeat
this process on YouTube?
> I can have common parts at my door overnight from Amazon with
the press of a button on my phone.
Overnight is often too long. Also good luck finding the right
parts and reconciling conflicting IDs between manuals,
manufacturers and vendors.
> Every local hardware store carries replacement cartridges and
gaskets for common faucet types.
Except when 90% of the faucets are uncommon, and support for them
gets effectively discontinued after a few years.
Now contrast that with our grandparents, who usually had repair
manuals included with the product, most parts were universal (and
probably on-hand or extractable from something else at home), and
you could actually go to a local hardware store where the clerk
would be able to figure out what parts you needed on the spot,
and with luck had them in stock.
I'm not claiming our grandparents had it better in general, but
let's also not pretend there are no downsides to ongoing
specialization and market competition. We may have more stuff,
prettier stuff, better stuff[0], but nothing is ever compatible
with anything, it's that way on purpose, and people are no longer
supposed to repair anything themselves.
--
[0] - That's highly debatable in appliance space.
wredcoll wrote 2 hours 58 min ago:
I mean, a generation or two ago, people frequently learned to do
things like replace spark plugs and alternators and mess with oil
changes.
My generation learned how to plug computer components together
and install operating systems and drivers.
The reason people did that is because they (more or less) had to.
The generation being born today will need neither of those skill
sets.
Cars, by and large, stay working for as long as people care to
keep them and the things that do go wrong are, mostly,
uneconomical to fix at home.
It's likewise rare for, dunno, uninstalling a video game to
accidentally delete some crucial OS dependency that causes the
thing to need to be reformatted.
It's hard to say what skills the next generation will learn, but
I can guarantee there will be something that they need that their
children will not. And that they'll complain about their children
being useless for not knowing whatever that is.
urig wrote 1 hour 27 min ago:
No, we just outsourced car maintenance to professional shop
services. Both because mechanical aspects have become reliable
enough to last a year without maintenance and because
electronic/computer aspects are mind-bogglingly complicated.
TeMPOraL wrote 1 hour 13 min ago:
> because electronic/computer aspects are mind-bogglingly
complicated
And because it's software, it happens to be a perfect way for
the manufacturer to extract rent (er, "recurring revenue")
from car repair business. It's not complexity that's shaping
how end-user repair experience looks like, but the fact that
you often need proprietary connector, proprietary software,
and a valid license key to interface with the car's computer.
buran77 wrote 6 min ago:
And because plenty of engineering goes into designing
subsystems with the explicit but unstated purpose of making
them close to impossible to repair without ultimately
resorting to help from the manufacturer.
Software is just the latest layer on the cake.
Non-repairable designs, special tools, unavailable parts,
unavailable instructions, fragile and error prone
procedures, encryption, and more. They're all occasionally
used to with the main purpose of blocking any attempt to
easily repair without generating revenue for the
manufacturer and their network.
Source: I have family working for two large car
manufacturers both in engineering and management, who have
personally experienced explicit demands to make things hard
to repair by the owner but make them in a way where a
reasonable explanation can be used for plausible
deniability.
jibal wrote 5 hours 59 min ago:
My shower and all my sinks have this design.
amarant wrote 6 hours 3 min ago:
These are still very common in Sweden. I installed one when I renovated
my kitchen a couple of years ago for example. Different design of
course, but the same mechanism. 2 out of three bathrooms have similar
ones too! Iirc the shower in the guest house does as well, but memory
is fuzzy and I'm currently too far to check
nemetroid wrote 10 min ago:
Not common for showers, though. Those almost always have separate
temperature and flow controls.
pzlarsson wrote 3 hours 53 min ago:
When shopping for a home in Sweden, seeing a kitchen without single
handed faucets is a telltale sign that the whole kitchen was designed
with form prioritized over function.
trivialities777 wrote 6 hours 9 min ago:
I just installed a similar one in my bathroom, except the handle is on
the side instead of on top. Also has a pull-down flexible hose that
snaps back in with a magnet, very useful for cleaning.
voidfunc wrote 6 hours 23 min ago:
We had one of these in our kitchen when I was growing up before we
renovated in the late 90s. Very cool.
seg_lol wrote 4 days ago:
Haven't seen one of these in years!
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