just for clarification, I am more concern about water pressure than the precise temperature control

Not a pro but like my thermostatic a lot. Not instantly hot but gets hot waaaaay faster.

Mrs1916,

thank you for the comment!!

What brand do you have?

It’s Riobel (Canadian). I should have added that I haven’t noticed a difference w water pressure from our previous pressure balance unit but I also never compared stats on them. I also like that it has 3 settings:
1 handheld only (on adjustable arm)
2 rain head only
3 both at same time

Gives a lot of flexibility compared to the basic handheld we had before.

I also have a thermostatic system and like it quite a bit. I am in California so shower fixtures need to be low flow in order to pass inspection. Mine has a three way diverter as I have two hand held shower heads and a standard fixed shower head - California only permits one shower fixture to be operation at one time.

Theoretically I have instant hot water since I live in a high rise but that is theoretical because it there is always cool water in the pipes which comes out before the hot water reaches it but that really isn't an issue for me as I generally set the diverter on the hand held and just point it away from my body :-).

My fixtures are Phylrich but the actual shower head for the fixed shower head is a Speakman,

I found this very confusing because there seems to be a third option that we ended up going with - thermostatic with pressure control.

I haven’t had great experiences with true thermostatic valves in hotels, but knew that I wanted to be able to control pressure independently from temperature. We chose Brizo/Delta (Brizo calls theirs Tempassure and Delta 17 series, they both use the standard multipurpose valve) for the master and Moen (M-Core) for the guest bath. The Delta/Brizo trims have two handles, the smaller one sets the temp and can be left in a preset position and the bigger one sets the water pressure. Moen is a single handle that tilts towards you for pressure and adjusts left-right for temperature. I couldn’t decide between the two so decided to try both out is separate bathrooms. :) Remodel hasn’t started yet, but I look forward to testing them out.

To be honest I could never figure them out and found them very frustrating to use - it seemed like no matter what you did and which way you adjusted, the water temperature would always stay the same. My husband had the exact same issue (one of the few things he requested in this remodel is “no Euro shower”), and we are in our 30s and pretty tech savvy! I’m sure it’s different when you’re selecting your own and have a manual on hand, but we both saw no need to pay a premium for full thermostatic given our experience. Also he likes his showers boiling hot and I don’t, so the super precise temperature adjustment is not something that would benefit us as we’d be constantly switching.

I think the setup that we chose is very easy and intuitive to use for both us and any future owners, fits our needs very well and doesn’t come at a significant price premium, so it seemed like the optimal choice in our case. Hopefully everything works out!

This is the kind of setup we had issues with:

I also just realized that I called the valve we chose thermostatic with pressure control when it’s actually pressure balanced with temperature control. 🤦‍♀️ Sorry about that - as I said I found the selection process pretty confusing!

And to complicate things further, Delta/Brizo actually calls their 17T/TempAssure systems thermostatic, but they use the standard multichoice valve (thermostatic cartridge is in the trim) and have a 4 degree Fahrenheit variance? In my mind thermostatic is like the one shown above - where you set the temperature to the degree. Why can’t things be a little easier to navigate!

recordaras, I know this is an old thread but am wondering if you actually did end up putting both the delta and the moen fixtures in your showers and what comments you could give regarding each. I am stuck, trying to understand the different "systems" when all I want is the ability to adjust both the pressure and the temperature on my soon to be new shower. Why does such a simple thing that I've taken for granted with all my old showers/baths become such a complicated thing? It's very frustrating.

Would love to hear feedback too. I am working on a new shower also