Appendix 10 Shower Heads: What Sprays and Handles to Choose?
A10.1. Excerpts from recommendations for selecting the type of spray
The spray jets that are provided in various models of shower heads, which need to have a satisfactory level of power, come in a very broad range, according to:
- – the continuous or pulsating nature of each elementary jet;
- – the basic number of jets produced the stream (a more or less abundant spray or a single jet);
- – the size and configuration of the stream of the jets when leaving the spray nozzle (splash, crown, focused or mixed stream);
- – the shape projected by the stream of jets (parallel, divergent (conical) and convergent (focused at a distance) jets);
- – the size and physical appearance of each basic jet (fine and tight, medium-abundant, medium-vigorous, medium-foam, thick foam).
The indications generally given in catalogs, on the Internet or on packaging, labels such as “rain jets” are not sufficient to fully characterize the type of jet that produces the model of spray considered. “Rain jets” always consist of continuous streams which are relatively homogeneous and mostly fine and tight.
However, the stream provided by these kinds of jets while leaving the spray nozzle is either a rather large flow or shaped in a ring of a rather large diameter; and the projected jets form a parallel stream, or basically diverge (into a mostly open cone). For a handheld shower head, the efficiency and aptness of the spray for cleaning (initial wetting, ...