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out of 571,544,897 reviews
★☆☆☆☆
Beautiful design but poor workmanship
I just received this faucet 2 days ago and had the opportunity to install it today. I bought this for the unique design and the novelty of it lighting up. I went to install this in our guest bathroom, and as I got deeper and deeper into the job I realized this fixture is not what its cracked up to be. First problem is that the hoses were way too short, so a trip to 4 hardware stores and a plumbing supply store tell me it was a proprietary hose to this manufacturer and this hose is not available. I now also realize that the 1/2 inch fitting on the hose will not fit my 3/8 comp. fitting on my water valve. I was forced at this point to purchase two other small hoses for the reach and 2 brass adapters to unite these hoses together.
I figured that even with the extra parts to buy I was still slightly ahead of the game financially on this project. I then proceeded to thread the hoses that came with the faucet on to the base of it and went ahead with my installation. When I tested the faucet with the adapters and extra hoses I installed, I noticed a major leak and it was not from the union of the hoses, it was coming from the base of the faucet. I removed the faucet and noticed that the O rings on these hoses was pinched and bulged out of the hole they were supposed to be in. I pulled the hoses off and tried to figure this problem out, I tried several more times to install them with the same problem. This is when I noticed the difference between American machining of parts and Chinese machining of parts, one of the holes was threaded slightly off center, and this was the problem.
I then proceeded to try without the O rings and using teflon tape, no results. After hours of fooling with this poorly crafted piece of junk, I tried something that the manufacturer did not, the hoses had one end in a metric size, while the other was standard or American thread size, I went to my toolbox and found some old A/C O rings that I had when I had worked on import cars years ago. I found 2 metric O rings that were just a hair smaller than the ones on the hose originally, I replaced them, used teflon tape, and even with a crooked cut thread I was able to stop the leaking on this faucet.
It seems to me that the people shipping these out to the US are installing standard O rings on metric fittings. I also replaced the drain with a popup type and that went a little smoother. In the end this faucet took way longer and more money to install, than if I had bought a US version of this not to mention the almost five hours spent on it.
My suggestion, if you are willing to deal with some agravation and have patience, then the end result is worth it. Also I noticed that when you shut the valve off the LED's stay lit until the water drains from the glass housing, this can take a few hours. The fix for that is after you use the faucet, if the LED's stay lit rub your finger back and forth across the water outlet area and it will drain enough water to shut the LED's off.
November 2011 - To update this review, after an ill fated attempt of the manufacturer trying to satisfy me by sending the updated hoses and fittings, just a few months later the LED's quit working. I replaced the batteries and checked all connections, but in the end my original assumption that this was a cheap piece of junk was right. The light effect was the whole reason I went through the torture of installing this and now that is gone. Save yourself the grief, buy the one with no LED's, at least the only disappointment you might have is when this piece of garbage rust's and then leaks which I expect to happen soon.
September 2011 · Tools and Home Improvement · verified purchase