Idea Guide

Bathroom & Shower Faucets from Chicago Faucets

After some research we settled on Chicago Faucets fixtures for our bathrooms.

We did find attractive faucets from Price Pfiester, Moen and others. However, research on Fine Homebuilding's "Breaktime" discussion board revealed that many plumbers prefer Chicago Faucets and Grohe. The problems with other brands they cited include:

(1) Poor quality control with a high rate of leaking, and
(2) Occasional problems with low water flow.

In contrast, Chicago Faucets have a reputation for durability. They are often used often in institutional construction. (They're particularly common in science labs, apparently.) That's important to us since we're going to do new tile over the plumbing that we won't want to ever remove for a water emergency.

Another benefit of Chicago Faucets is standardization and easy upgrade of their parts. That mean that we can replace parts if the sink ever leaks or valve technology improves. In the case of their kitchen faucets, their Quatern cartridges are interchangeable with a Quatern from 1913 (one year before they built our house!) Finally, interchangeable parts also mean we can choose the coolest retro handles:

Posted by aaron on January 3, 2004 at 6:28 PM