wrote:

Recently (maybe 6 months ago) I replaced my 14 year old moen
shower head with another moen shower head. * When I first
replaced it all worked fine but now I'm noticing some
streams of water thru the head go in another (slanted)
direction rather than straight. *I live in a hard water area
(Houston suburbs) so I expect this is the cause.

The problem is Energy Star madness. 14 years ago you could buy a showerhead that
was self cleaning by virtue of the fact that the holes were large enough that
the flow of water would clean the mineral deposits.

These days, Water Sense shower heads are limited to less than 2 gpm, even less
than the previous low flow 2.5 gpm heads. The only way you can get any kind of
performance with that low a flow is to make needle size holes that plug up in
the presence of any kind of mineral deposit.

So you get a crappy shower and get to constantly clean or replace the shower
head.