On Saturday, April 19, 2014 2:37:57 AM UTC-7, Julie Bove wrote:
"Ed Pawlowski" wrote

The plumber charged me $250 for the faucet plus installation.
I think he ripped me off. I think it is some low end piece
of crap.

Soft water so no sediment.

Stick with better brands like Delta, Moen, Kohler, and
avoid cheap store brands.

In looking at online reviews, Delta isn't good. I have
no clue what brand I can't see a brand on it anywhere.

There's a brand sold only by plumbers, and apparently the
parts are available only to plumbers, to make customers
dependent on plumbers. So always ask any contractor for
the brand and model of anything they'll install.

What Ed said about the brands. Also good are Price-Pfister
and American Standard, but Price-Pfister's warranty makes
you pay about $5-7 shipping for parts. Moen faucets
tighten up as they age, and after 5-10 years they may
become too tight for people with arthritis to operate them,
but replacing the cartridge fixes this. Companies that
offer lifetime warranties on their faucets tend to provide
very good customer service, an exception being Glacier Bay.
Avoid Glacier Bay. Also you may want to check the cost and
availability of accessories, like hoses and spray nozzles,
in case those are excluded from the lifetime warranty.

If you don't want corrosion, get a faucet made of stainless
steel, but faucets made of brass or base metal plated
with chrome or nickel are also good. Avoid plated plastic
because the chrome separates from the plastic, and then
the copper under the chrome corrodes. Still, even here
in Phoenix, where the water is rock hard (so hard I once
had to toss out an old stainless steel cooking pot because
a pinhole had formed from corrosion), the plating on
plastic faucets tends to hold up for at least 4-5 years.

Delta has basically 2 grades of faucets: cheaper ones
that use Delrin plastic cup seals, and more expensive
faucets with ceramic cartridge seals (actually ceramic
coated with semi-diamond). Some people don't like the
Delrin ones, but we've had few problems with them.
However use only genuine Delta/Peerless replacement
parts because a neighbor tried Walmart store brand
Delrin seals, and they kept leaking in 6 months.

What reviews said Delta was bad? Were they valid
reviews, where the author went into detail, or were
they just "it sucks"/"it rocks" reviews?

Lots of YouTube videos show how to fix or install
faucets, and some faucets are even designed to be
installed without any tools.