I have had a Hydrosystems Fuji 6040 fiberglass for years and find it wonderful... sitting in a dry tub in a show room isn't a very good way to judge the comfort, since when the tub is full of water your body is almost weightless and very little pressure is put on your body. I put my overflows on the deck of the tub, so as to get the full 32 inch depth immersion. This placement of the overflows means you must recess the tub an additional 6 inches into the deck and tile the recess to make it waterproof when the tub overflows during vigorous activity. I use two 50 gallon 40,000 BTU hot water heaters to fill the tub through a one inch copper line with ball valves and side spout. The filling takes about 5 minutes. I also have installed the Fuji in some of my apartment units and the tenants love them. Here in Venice Beach, California, the cost of filling the tub is about 50 cents total for the water and the gas to heat the water. Feel free to contact me for any questions.

We just had the brass box installed under our floor a few weeks ago. Plumbing and faucet above floor not installed yet. I think part of the design is that it is an "anchor" for the whole faucet. You wouldn't want someone to trip/fall and grab the faucet and rip it out of the floor as they fall ... major flood! There were large bolts holding that brass "anchor" in place, so I think you are asking for trouble if you install the faucet without it. My GC did not want to make large holes in my subfloor to install the new plumbing. Luckily we had access from the garage below the bathroom and he preferred to make holes in the garage ceiling.

Lovely! I like the classic white tile and porcelain and how you used furniture pieces in the bathroom. I love that the storage at the end of the tub has pull-outs that can be reached from the toilet. Your custom sink and backsplash and counter are unique and beautiful. Yours may be the first bathroom sink I have seen in which a small or medium dog could be washed! That is a good thing! I showed your pictures to my DH because I am thinking of classic tiled walls with a chair rail for when we redo our bath in a couple of years. He liked it! I was expecting him to say, "too old fashioned." He did not, he said it looked nice. From him, nice is a compliment. He even liked your rows of listello. I was just at the Tile Shop's site the other day looking at the Hampton tiles because someone was selling some on Craigslist. I am hoping to do as you did and get what I can cheaper there, and fill in the rest from the store. I can see that you worked very hard to secure all of your materials - and then cut the floor tiles to size and culled the Hampton tiles, too! You succeeded very well in getting the look you wanted while saving money along the way. Congratulations, and thank you for the pictures and great detail and supply list.

"Hmmm, I am very concerned, as the instructions on the filler, don't mention any sort of rough in valves...." A misunderstanding of what I wrote. You are right, there is no rough-in valve for your installation. Your "valve" is built in to finished piece, where the hot and cold handles are. When I wrote "Rough plumbing gets located and stubbed out" I was referring to just the hot and cold supply tubing coming up through the floor. After reading the directions you linked, you don't need any stub outs coming up through the floor. All you need is a 1-1/2" hole through the tile and through the subfloor. Your hot and cold water supply lines underneath the floor need to terminate with (probably) threaded end fittings within 4"-6" of the underside of that hole. I'm guessing (could be different, see the parts in your faucet) that the fitting will be a 1/2" CxM fitting that'll probably look like this. One end of that CxM fitting gets soldered to your 1/2" copper supply lines, one hot, one cold, that are under the subfloor. The flex tubing included with your faucet goes from your faucet's threaded connector to the threaded end of that CxM connector. Again, all that 1/2" stuff is a sizing guess on my part. Back to the main question...the plumber should designate where he wants the faucet hole in the floor. He can drill a hole through the subfloor where he wants it and terminate the supply lines under the floor at that location. Your tile guy can then come in and tile the floor and while doing so, leave a nice 1-1/2" hole right above the hole that the plumber drilled in the subfloor. If the tile guy will do his work before the plumber does any of his work, just tell the tile guy where to leave the 1-1/2" hole. In writing. With a measured drawing. Or with a big "X" on the floor. Make sure it gets put in the right location. lol The plumber can come later and plumb to the hole from below and install the faucet from above. Lots of words! Sorry!