Currently (pre-remodel) we have 3 matching shower heads in a 3x6 shower. We only use one of them because I feel like I'm in a carwash with them all turned on. We have a huge water heater and the pressure is good. We deleted retiling the shower but are going to update the shower heads. The main shower head will be the same. On the wall that you can see from the door, I think I'm going to add some sort of handheld shower on a bar. It will be handy for a quick rinse, but mostly I want to use it to rinse the walls after I clean them. On the third wall (the one w/ all the controls) I'm going to put a fixed shower head that matches what's on the handheld. I'm considering the Grohe Reflexa series; every now and again it would be nice to have a neck massage in the shower. My 17 year old bathroom is a perfect example of what happens to any and all trendy bathrooms in time. The shower is blue-125 square feet of nice blue [expensive] Japanese porcelain with grey grout that is still in perfect condition. That is a LOT OF BLUE. The shower heads give this great jet spray, but they are a chrome and BRASS combination. They look really, really dated [ugly] now, although I'm sure 20 years ago it looked perfect and someone used the words "classic" and "timeless" when convincing the previous owner to select them. I unscrewed one of the shower heads and took it to the nearest Kohler dealer to see if there was a way to order a new chrome piece to replace the brass plate. He looked it up in an old catalog. I nearly died-each one of these shower heads retailed for $735 in 1990!!! Fortunately, I found one all-chrome, never out of the box version of the same shower head online at some plumbing store. (It was only $300 now.) I learned my lesson from these shower heads. Everything but the classics looks dated eventually. I'm sticking with tried-and-true shiny chrome for my replacements. I love the look of brushed nickel and oil-rubbed bronze but I suspect they will both be the brass of 2010. Our house is a new but faithful interpretation of a Craftsman bungalow, with a few modern touches thrown in. I'm doing the floor in white hex tile and getting the Bancroft Kohler sink, so the bathroom will have a vintage feel to it.

Well...first you need to find out the worst case scenario. Add up the flow for your two body sprays, plus the flow of your shower head. That's the GPM that you need to carry to through your shower valve and to your diverter. You;ll need a valve that can pass through that volume of water. You can do what you want with an A/B/AB diverter. Coming out of the diverter is where you can run one 1/2" copper run to the shower head and a second 1/2" copper run to the body sprays. That's when using a separate on/off valve and a separate diverter. However, for your setup, you can run all three outlets from a 1/2" copper supply going into the valve and with 1/2" copper running from the valve to the fixtures. There are quite a few valves that can do what you want. One of the last houses I did I used Hansgrohe Thermobalance III valves in all of the bathrooms in the house. The TB III is an A/B/C/BC type of valve. It's also a 1/2" valve. I used it that way in a couple of the bathroms, in others the A and B outlets are looped together (let's call this new combined AB loop "D") so you now have a D/C/DC setup. "D" can be your shower head. "C" can be your body jets. "CD" can be your car wash with everything throwing water at you. In case that's confusing, think of it as the A/B/AB valve that I described in the beginning. It's an approved way to plumb the valve, and it with the TB III having ON/OFF, temp, and diverter all in one valve, you'll have an uncluttered wall. But again, besides the TB III there are other valves out there. So can you do it with a single control head? Yes. Can you do it with 1/2" copper into the valve and 1/2" copper coming out of the valve? Yes.

The bathroom is Just off of 9'x6'. It is 107"x74". This is the best I could figure out to show the layout of the shower. Shower layout It looks a little too small for dual shower heads and that the current shape is probably the best. But I might consider a "handshower" on the side wall to give a little more functionality and a pseudo dual shower since everyone seems to be big fans of the hand shower. Hand shower Also, I have 36" between the outside of the shower and the wall where the toilet sits. I could steal 6" from that and move the toilet over, but I don't think I want to undergo the cost of moving the toilet. I will already pick up 3-4 inches of room by getting rid of the glass blocks and going with the framless walls.

I enjoy the body sprays in my shower which are temperature controlled by the same thermostatic valve that the showerheads are connected through. You simply need to install a temperature control valve that is large enough to supply all the emitters you're likely to have on at the same time. Either a 3/4" valve or a 1" valve, depending on flow rates of your various emitters. That being said, if you live in a place with high water rates or a high sewer tax that is determined by water usage, you'll want to be conscious of what you have going on in a shower. Shower heads are limited by federal regulation to dispensing no more than 2.5 gallons per minute. Oddly, there's no restriction to the number of shower heads that you're permitted in a shower, so technically, you can blow through as much water as you want. Showering with a single shower head will use a maximum of 2.5 gallons per minute. If you've got a shower head and 3 body sprays going simultaneously, you're now going to be using 10 gallons per minute (2.5 gals per emitter). At that rate, a 10 minute shower is going to send 100 gallons down the drain. It doesn't take long for the costs associated with a luxury shower to really add up. You also need to keep this in mind when sizing your water heater because you'll be using 4 times as much hot water, too. As much as I enjoy my body sprays, I now limit their use to a Sunday morning treat -- for only a portion of my shower. I simply can't justify their use on a daily basis. It just seems wasteful.