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Delta single handle ball faucets (1963)

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Re: Delta single handle ball faucets (1963)

#31

Post by TeMPOraL »

Aurornis wrote: post #20
dpe82 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 wa…

> 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.

Re: Delta single handle ball faucets (1963)

#32

Post by TeMPOraL »

urig wrote: post #30
wredcoll wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

> 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.

Re: Delta single handle ball faucets (1963)

#33

Post by TeMPOraL »

userbinator wrote: post #28
ggm wrote: post #23

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.

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".

> 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.

Re: Delta single handle ball faucets (1963)

#34

Post by haritha-j »

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?

Re: Delta single handle ball faucets (1963)

#35

Post by abcd_f »

pastel8739 wrote: post #26
jetsetman192 wrote: post #24

These types of faucets are so common where I live that I can’t really imagine what the alternative is. What do you have if you don’t have this?

Separate knobs for hot and cold, like this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/MOEN-Brantford-4-in-Centerset-2-...

... or two separate taps even. Though it's quite a bit more exotic and ancient.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/AF32/production...

Re: Delta single handle ball faucets (1963)

#36

Post by pm215 »

jetsetman192 wrote: post #24

These types of faucets are so common where I live that I can’t really imagine what the alternative is. What do you have if you don’t have this?

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 https://www.screwfix.com/p/swirl-traditional-chrome-104mm-cl... ) 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.

Re: Delta single handle ball faucets (1963)

#37

Post by mns »

nik282000 wrote: post #7

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!

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.

Re: Delta single handle ball faucets (1963)

#38

Post by nemetroid »

amarant wrote: post #5

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

Not common for showers, though. Those almost always have separate temperature and flow controls.

Re: Delta single handle ball faucets (1963)

#39

Post by buran77 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #32
urig wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 c…

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.

Re: Delta single handle ball faucets (1963)

#40

Post by huhtenberg »

jetsetman192 wrote: post #29
pastel8739 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Separate knobs for hot and cold, like this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/MOEN-Brantford-4-in-Centerset-2-...

Getting ”Access Denied” from that link.

I'm in Europe and the whole site is "Access Denied".
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