“I read your blog with interest. As the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. From experience (some would call it knowledge) working with European Masco companies, the biggest reason on-wall and hand showers are so popular in Europe is primarily due to construction methodology of typical homes. You see most homes there are constructed of block or cement.  My guess is it goes back to the dark ages of stone castles where everyone wanted to have their own "personal castle".

  Anyway, traditionally most European homes are built to last many hundreds of years and, in many parts of Europe, the tradition has been that when you built a new home, err castle - when your kids or your kids-kids grew up, you'd make room for them by adding on. You'd even build rooms for your farm animals. As one grew old and eventually died, your relatives would assume ownership. With stone wall construction in-wall type plumbing is impossible so pipes were mounted to the surface of interior wall at first. This was the birth of the traditional on-wall valve, although probably for bathtubs. Europeans being sooo traditional have stuck with this construction method even up to today, albeit with a twist. Most homes now are constructed of prefab or poured cement walls like your basement - yes, interior walls, too. That's why you see these big tall cranes everywhere in residential areas in Europe. 

  Most of today's European homes have pipes (mostly iron) buried into the wall or in wall trenches and the supplies are stubbed out and permanently anchored in concrete. The wall is then tiled over never to be opened again. Now the shower valve can simply be mounted on the surface. OK, you say, what about the hand shower vs. shower head, why? Simple answer, most older European valves were derived from traditional tub fillers also on-wall mounted. All they'd need to do is flip the valve over and attach a hose, and voila - instant hand-shower valve. 

  Eventually someone got the bright idea of raising the thing up to allow more reach for the same length hose, and since we have this big ugly pipe running up the wall, we might as well make it useful and hang the hand shower on it. Europeans secretly scoff at our cheap tinder box method of home construction, citing poor noise isolation, flammability, lack of solid structure - but mostly the temporary nature of wood. Remember, European's frame of reference for history is 700+ years, and they also remember their parents’ homes/estates/castles being 200 years old. About the only thing we American boomers remember about our parents’ home(s) is how many of them we've lived in and how cheaply they were constructed. Good or bad, in my opinion things like this are a reflection of our cultural differences.”

Illustration of conventional concealed shower valve mounted onto fiberglass wall courtesy of Price Pfister.

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